Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 10/28/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Courtesy Google official Web site Screenshot of Google Wave

Here's all you need to know about Google Wave - it's a shiny, shiny new toy that does newfangled things, like let you talk to people.

If you want to know more than that, there's a much more complex - and slightly more useful - explanation.

Wave is Google's answer to the question, "What would e-mail look like if it was invented today?"

It merges e-mail, instant messaging, documents, file sharing and wikis into one souped-up communication hub.

Exciting. New. Shiny.

I like Google Wave quite a bit, its real collaborative power simply flies over the head of most users.

How Google Wave Works

Instead of opening up a new e-mail and addressing it to someone, users open up a new "wave" and then add other users into their wave - users must have their own Google Wave accounts.

Users can then add "blips" of conversation to the wave, whether it's long text, short text, links, photo or video.

Multimedia files can be embedded, unlike e-mail, which has to convert them to attachments.

All the conversations, such as Gmail or Facebook message threads, are kept in one place, versus traditional e-mail, which treats each message as a separate entity.

Google Wave is brilliant for group brainstorming, discussing and document creating.

It's simply more organized than using a Google document, and every blip is archived and searchable.

You also don't have to keep reminding your team to hit "reply all" to every message.

In fact, you can insert replies at any point in the wave.

Double-click on a word and you can start a nested conversation at that point.

If others in the wave are adding blips at the same time, you can see them appear in real time.

You can also edit anything from within the wave, just like a wiki, including other people's blips.

All changes are on record, and each change is labeled with the person who changed it.

Wave includes a playback feature to see who added what when.

Hit the "Play" button and then scroll through the timeline blip-by-blip. You'll see each one appear and change in sequential order.

You can also add and remove people from your wave at any time in the conversation.

Newcomers will be able to replay the whole thing from beginning, and the ones who leave won't have access to any conversation that happens afterward.

Continued...

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