Some more first impressions on the (awesome) Google Wave.Ok, first of all, I’ll admit it. I was a huge fan of Google Wave even before I could get my hands on it. Ever since the Google I/O video came out and Lars was presenting it, I was sold.

To rethink email as if it were designed today. Ambitious, but if someone was going to do it, it had to be Google.The concept of a “wave” is very much like that of a conversation in Gmail, only a bit more advanced, since anyone can go back and edit what someone has said before, and you don’t “reply” after everyone, you can do it wherever you want it. So if you thought threaded conversations was cool in Gmail… you’re gonna love “waves”. Think of it as if each project you’re working on had it’s own wave. No more waking up in the morning and seeing 50 unread emails!

In each “wave” there are “blips” which are basically replies or “new posts” to a wave. You can chose to edit a blip, or reply to a blip. I still need to figure out what is the best strategy here depending on whether you’re having a chat or a more thoughtful conversation or discussion. Chats can get messy if you have more than one person chatting with you, specially if everyone starts editing each other’s blips. So the basic rule here is to keep chatting like you used to, and use a new blip for each message. Theoretically you could chat without ever hitting “Enter” by just typing and deleting what you’re typing, if the other person had enough time to read what you typed. It sounds cool, but there won’t be a record of what you typed… 
So far I’ve had two error messages appear, and the errors seem to be pretty random.

Uploading pictures is trivial, with a simple drag and drop from your desktop working like a charm. You’ll need Google Gears for that. Also, if you have Google Gears installed, you’ll see the possibility to stay offline and see all of your “waves”. Also, you’ll see a “syncing” notice You can embed, maps, videos, pictures, documents, cookies and cats!

Picture sharing is great with Google Wave. Again, if you have Gears installed, you just drag all the pictures into the wave, and wait for them to sync and upload. Once that is done. Everyone on the wave can open an image individually, or they can start a slideshow of all the pictures in that whole wave. It looked very cool I tried Google Wave on an iPod Touch, and it gave me an error message saying my browser wasn’t supported, I anyway went ahead, and it worked just fine. I could see waves, edit them and create new waves.

According to MG Siegler of Techcruch, there won’t be any more invites for those who got invited by someone else. But that sounds odd, since I got invited by another user and still had 8 invites to give away… We’ll see. Anyway, for now it feels very lonely, since no one else is using it. It’s like chatting in an empty room, but as soon as more people start to use it, it sure has the potential to replace email

For now though, you won’t be able to use it to see your emails as waves. I wonder when and how that integration will take place.<div style=“margin:0;text-align:center;width:480px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;color:#FF9B00;”>Video Game - E3 2009 - Attack of the Show</div>

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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