Google Wave will change the way we collaborate

Google Wave is going to change how we collaborate and work. The communication tool aspires to redefine not only email, but the entire web. You can read everything about Google Wave here and here.

What I found interesting is - what is the key difference it brings in ?

In the current model of working, when individual sends out email to people, the email gets stored in people’s mail boxes (email folders). So everybody gets a copy of the mail. Subsequent replies are also routed to everyone mail box. The email client will try to group the email based on the subject as one conversation. Using the conversation mode, one can go through the mail chain to find out what happened. 

In this model, we usually face 2 main issues

• In case, one needs to introduce a new person to the mail chain, then either we need to send the whole bunch of emails to the person

• The mail chain participants decide to reply to older mail, one has to manually add the new recipient name or somebody specifically needs to forward the mail. It is very difficult to track the in-between conversation between 2 people

What Wave intends to do is to bring a sea change on how the current model works ?

1. When you want to start a conversation, you start what is called 'Wave'
2. Next you add members (email participants) to the wave
3. You type the message and send across
4. All the participants to the wave will get the wave(message) in their mail boxes
5. The wave conversation is stored (kind of centrally) and keeps track of the participants who are part of that conversation
6. Now when a new participant is added, the participant is directly provided access to the Wave. There is no need to forward mails to the new participant.
7. Another new feature that Wave brings is the ability to Play-Back the whole conversation. This allows the new participant to come to speed on what transpired and how.
8. Another feature in the Wave allows to directly post replies to specific queries to the Qs/Issues raised in between the conversation. It is like discussion forum where anyone can post a reply to any part.
9. There are some more interesting features - like ability to drag and drop files directly to the wave, conversation is near realtime - meaning if communication is happening char by char, so one sees the message instantly as the person on the other end is typing, one can add the blogger email id and the whole conversation is posted as blog entry (very cool)

Now, imagine, all sites over the web (orkut, linkedin, facebook) adopt the wave as their central conversation piece. Each wave can be tracked from my mail box. Since I have participated in the same, I can see what others are talking and reply directly to the wave from my mail box. No need to visit umpteen sites to check whether somebody replied to my message or not or what others think. Everything is managed and conversed from my mail box. This will be path breaking change and will look like will change we work.

The Google Wave will open for public by end of this year. It has opened for selected group of people who can start thinking and developing applications around it. Why ? Because it is Open Source. 

Internet experience will never be the same after Google Wave !