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Subject:RE: Google Wave--will it be a game changer? From:"Latella, Vincent" <VINCENT -dot- LATELLA -at- saic -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L Writing" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 1 Jun 2009 09:54:42 -0400
Geoff wrote:
"2. That being said, the nature of the medium (or combination of media)
certainly shapes how we communicate, and provides new communication
opportunities. Everything Google Wave is claiming to do has already
been done; in fact, each individual component may have been done
better than Google's initial release. The key difference seems to be
that Wave is likely to integrate everything. Much like Information
Mapping, it will make things easier for people who don't have the
skills to stitch everything together by themselves. Whether this
offers us new tools will depend on how user-friendly the "developer
tools" become: if they're designed by and for rocket scientists, it
won't be much use to most of us.
3. The really interesting opportunities will arise as we combine
points 1 and 2 by applying our existing skills to take advantage of
the integration provided by Wave, and learn new skills (e.g., active
listening) if necessary to take advantage of the new medium."
To that end, Geoff, I am picturing a repository, with active, centrally-located discussion surrounding each document and wiki post, and an inset internal team (or company) chat feature, with the power of Google's indexing/searching capability as the pièce de résistance.
One of the articles on Google Wave made a comparison to SharePoint, and my first thought was, "if SharePoint is the closest competitor, then sign me up for Wave." Seriously.
Of course, there's always the point that most of Google's products are hosted by... *drum roll*... Google, so I was about to write Wave off... until I read this:
"Wave also makes use of the Google Wave Federation Protocol, allowing developers to create self-hosted instances of Wave that can communicate with each other over an open protocol without depending on Google's servers."
As I said, sign me up. This could very well be a game-changer; it just depends on what game you're talking about.
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