What is a wave? What can you do within a wave?
A wave is a collection of information, such as text, photos and videos, within a hosted conversation that is shared among those who are invited in the conversation. It’s kind of like email and IM on steroids.
Some of the cool features are listed below:
- First of all, everything is real time.
The text that a person types will be available for others in the wave to see as the person types it. In the same way, a photo uploaded by a person will be available for others to see as soon as it is uploaded. There is no need for refreshing the browser to see changes within a wave. In the real world, no one waits for others to completely finish his or her sentence before replying, while people must wait for others to finish typing in an IM conversation to reply. Google wave eliminates the need to wait for others in IM conversations, bridging the gap between IM and actual, audible conversations.
- You can share pictures and videos through wave.
Through this nifty feature, users can create photo albums and share funny Youtube videos together. The best thing about this feature is the lack of difficulty it takes to post the pictures and videos. To share the photos, all you have to do is drag and drop onto the wave, or search a desired photo online through the wave. To share videos, a user only has to copy and paste a url of the site, i.e. Youtube, or copy and paste the embed codes.
- You can edit and comment on any text within a wave.
This is one of the components that truly make Google wave the ultimate collaboration tool. Unlike in an email, anyone within a wave can edit text within the wave. So students can critique and edit each other’s papers with ease. Employers can draw out a schedule for the month while the employees comment on when they would like to work. Colleagues can go over the same document and edit what needs to be edited, and comment on what needs to be commented on. There are infinite amounts of ways you can use wave: It all depends on your creativity.
- The playback feature adds the icing on the wave.
You may be asking yourself, “Well, what if I don’t like what others changed in the wave?” The playback feature silences this question. Through playback, one can not only see the progress of the changes made within the wave, but can also see who made these changes.
