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(CNN) John D. Sutter
GOOGLE WAVE, a product that promises to revolutionize online communication, will go out to about 100,000 beta testers today.
The web application from GOOGLE combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communications called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave."
Google demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco in May. The closed group of beta testers will help Google fish bugs out of the application before a public release by the end of the year, according to the Google Wave Web site.
The application was created by Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the Australian brothers who developed Google Maps. The Rasmussen brothers said they hope Google Wave will eventually replace e-mail as the main way people converse on the Internet.
"This should be something everybody knows," Jens Rasmussen said.
In Wave, e-mail-like communications can be edited by several users simultaneously. And users can chat about certain sections of Wave documents in real time, where all users see what a person is typing as it is typed. If a person comes to the conversation late, they can replay everything they've missed.
The Rasmussens hope these functions will make online communications more efficient and collaborative. Jens Rasmussen said e-mail is a computer version of snail mail. Wave will be something new, a real-time communication system designed specifically to today's faster-paced, multitasking Internet.
"We have a strong tendency to just take things we know and just adapt them to the digital world," he said.
Tech bloggers have largely cheered the release of the product. But there are some concerns that the application may be too complicated for mainstream Web users.
In a video demonstration, the Rasmussens spend an hour and 20 minutes explaining the Wave.
Initial reviews of Wave also noted a number of glitches in the application. Ben Parr of the social-media blog Mashable writes that Wave still has bugs but that the product is improving over time. "As an initial user of Wave, I have to tell you: things have gotten much more stable. It still has a slow response time in certain situations and it can still crash, but these things can happen far less often than they used to," he writes.
The blog TechCrunch wrote that Wave "drips with ambition" and will be a "new communication platform for a new Web."
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We shall see!
11 comments:
It took an hour and a half to explain it? Yikes!
I was in San Fancisco yesterday and I was a happy girl just having gps on my phone to go all over the city in record time. It's amazing where technology is going isn't it?
Exactly what I thought, MZ! Sounds like bored techies played around, stumbled upon, and now are trying to ram it down our throats! "Current e-mails are equal to snail mail?" I'm very happy with the current system, thank you very much. I may be eating my words in a year or so! "We shall see!" ;)
hahaha, Janeen! I can just picture you with it! I hope you took your camera for the
"memories." ;)
Was the article orignally in those wave colours, or did you add them.
We'll see. Every month someone seems to come out with the product to end all other products. (I suppose in the case of nuclear warheads, that could be true....) We'll see about Google wave.
I wanted to break up all that information, so I waved it, PV! ;)
Couldn't agree with you more! I think most of us are pretty satisfied with technology where it is! When will it stop?!
You bet I took my camera but it was my phone camera. We went to see King Tut Exhibit so no real cameras allowed but I captured other memories of our time there... Post to follow for sure!
Hi - I've popped over from I Beati's blog.
'Sounds like bored techies played around, stumbled upon, and now are trying to ram it down our throats!'
This just makes me groan. Can't they stop?
Am looking forward to your post! Have never been, Janeen! :))
Thank you for stopping by, Julia!
LOL Stop in the name of our pocketbooks and sanity! ;)
Interesting. It sounds as if it might be more use to businesses than for personal use. I don't know if I'd be bothered to sit and learn something so complex just to talk to my friends in a different way.
And I don't trust Google. Not one little bit.
They way one of the creators expressed it, Jay, is that we "all must learn it!" Our new big brother?! ;)
Mmmm, more to learn...
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