One of the hottest news for social communication this month was the beta launch of Google Wave.
Like a lot of people, I’m still waiting for my Beta invite – Google released 100K invites on Sept 30, 2009, and hopefully a 2nd wave of invites will come soon. {Update : Thanks to Gus for sending me a twitter invite soon after this post was published)
Whilst there is no shortage of commentaries on the product, such as this one from PC world, this 2 min video from Epipheo Studios does a great job of explaining the background need for a new way to collaborate, and the major features that Google Wave seeks to address.
Here’s a screenshot of Google Wave, highlighting how Wave extends the inbox to incorporate discussion, attachments, and lists the contributors.
video via FRANkVize
Collaboration efficiency is at the heart of Knowledge Management, and it’s exciting that Google Wave will be run as an “open source” project becoming a valuable building block for a new range of collaboration tools.
Having experienced Google Wave, I can say that it definately delivers on providing efficiences in collaboration, but does remind me of the hope I felt when Lotus Notes came out.
Editing the content nuggets from the things where the content value has a very short shelf-life is one of the key challenges for community administrators.
Google have published one of their presentations on Google Wave from May 2009 (1 hour, 20 mins in length), which covers the product in more detail. Incidentally, Google Wave was developed out of the Google offices in Sydney Australia!
You can sign up for the 2nd wave of Google Wave invites here
Update: For a comprehensive guide to Google wave Gina Trapani and Adam Pash have created this Complete Google Wave Guide
