Re: [LUG] Google Wave Invites?

[Steven Côté <steven.cote@xxxxxxxxx>]

I didn't sit through their promo, so may have missed some of the finer
details, but I can't see that it offers anything that can't be done
already.  Admittedly, using separate apps, but still possible.

I think the real power is the idea that it is a lot of existing ideas brought under a single umbrella. So you're basically right, it doesn't do anything that couldn't be done before; however I think what they're trying to prove with it is that it's more than the sum of its parts.

At it's most basic usage, it is email and it is instant messaging. It's a natural extension of what they were doing with gmail which is email, with google talk strapped on - it integrates email with instant messaging. Now instead of it being just email which is fundamentally producing a series of read-only documents, it introduces 'write' permissions to the document. From this emerges document collaboration functionality.

The purpose of letting more people in, but not everyone, is to see what other complex behviours emerge from the tool set. The best bits we haven't even seen yet, because they've given us the hooks we need to write our own extensions which will expand it's functionality and allow us to start using it in ways that no one has even thought of yet. Or, that's the plan at least.
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