The lameness of Google Wave

[digitaldiscipline]

I do fuck-all with mine, and have 19 invites, of which I've used none.

All the criticisms of it you've heard are valid. It seems like... an invite-only chat room with archiving.

In other words, it's a private mIRC channel with logging enabled. Whoop de fucking do.

Comments

[critus.livejournal.com]

It is a collaboration tool, not a communication tool. Understanding the difference is the key to seeing why comparing it to mIRC is an apples to oranges situation.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

My attitude towards it doesn't mitigate the shortcomings of the clunky interface, the poor operation, or the rest of it. Poor implementation of things like leaving/ignoring a conversation, returning to the last posted comment or even the bottom of a thread instead of the top, etc, doesn't make me any more positively disposed towards the tool, no matter what the ostensible purpose of the tool is.

I'm well aware that I am "not a team player" when it comes to shit like this.

Just because an uncomfortable pair of shoes comes from a designer label doesn't make them any more comfortable... it just means people will put up with the discomfort.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I confess I'm left with the impression of:

Why wouldn't I just create a phpbb forum? You can set the phpbb settings to allow people to post files and attachments. How is Wave any better than a phpbb forum?

*shrugs*

Like you, I'm fully aware of what they want Wave to be (a collaboration tool), but they've fallen far, far short of that, I think.

[critus.livejournal.com]

Ugh...I'm gonna find myself being the defender o' the wave here when I actually share some of the criticisms.

Setting up a phBBB forum requires you to have server space and the technical know-how to do so. Wave is browser based and free.

That said - phBBB has not always been the greatest product in the world and has had its own share of problems. Google fully admits that the product has a lot of functionality that is still missing and even has documentation on what it cannot do yet. That's the point of the Beta. They are gathering information.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

That said - phBBB has not always been the greatest product in the world and has had its own share of problems. Google fully admits that the product has a lot of functionality that is still missing and even has documentation on what it cannot do yet. That's the point of the Beta. They are gathering information.

I only chose phpbb as an example - my point was that right now, with Wave, I can't see it performing any function better than a good forum.

Actually, if something still has "a lot of functionality" missing, it should be in Alpha, not Beta, in my opinion. The sorts of non-functionality I'm aggravated by in Wave is basic stuff, stuff that should have already been thought about and implemented in some fashion before a beta-test.

[critus.livejournal.com]

Actually, one of your criticisms actually prove my point - Your desire to have the wave automatically scroll to the bottom of the thread. That would be the clear choice if what you were doing was simply following a conversation. The whole point of a wave is that there are in-line comments that appear where it is relevant in the timeline. The most current content isn't necessarily at the bottom of the wave.

If you've ever had to send an email twice because you forgot to hit "Reply All" you've stumbled across the reason why they created Wave.

Also - mIRC is real time. Wave is not (necessarily).

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Returning to the very top of a long, nested conversation is less-preferable to returning to where someone was when they were last there. The longer and more nested a conversation becomes, the bigger a pain in the ass scrolling through the whole thing to see what's new becomes.

It's like trying to read a newsgroup in flat, rather than threaded, mode, with no clear demarcation of "new comments since you were last here" for added WTFery.

[critus.livejournal.com]

I've done the same "where the hell are the new comments" search that you have, so I get what you're saying. There SHOULD be a better way to see what comments are new (they have a small green bar on the left side, FWIW).

[etcet.livejournal.com]

For nested conversation without any clear notification as to what's new?

There's LiveJournal, for instance. And we don't have to watch each other type like shit in realtime. :-)

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

that there are in-line comments that appear where it is relevant in the timeline. The most current content isn't necessarily at the bottom of the wave.

What it NEEDS to do is:

1. Know where I've been before
2. Know what post/s are new
3. Take me to the first new post, then I should have a button to click that takes me to the next one, etc.

Now, if it actually does that right now - awesome. Except there's nothing anywhere that tells me this, or makes it visibly easy to discern. Wave is NOT user-friendly.

Trust me, having tested this with a Wave of 10 people, once the conversation gets to 200+ responses, having to scroll through the entire conversation every single time is not something you want to do.

[critus.livejournal.com]

If I may ask - What was the point of the Wave with 10 people and 200 comments?

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

You've never collaborated with a team before? We wanted to test and see how well Wave would handle a multi-tiered conversation.

The answer?

Not well.

[critus.livejournal.com]

The reason I ask is that the wave's I am in that are basically "this is everyone I know who is on wave and we are talking about it and what the hell does this do?" fit your description. The ones I'm in that are more focused and specific aren't so bad. Again, it's not a chat client. If you use it like one you're going to be sorely disappointed.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

If it can't be used as a "chat" client (and that's really not what it's being used as, it's being used as a forum) while people are collaborating...then I'm back to "Why use Wave" at all? If I have to have a separate chat program open to have everyone able to talk real-time while collaborating (which leaves anyone who can't be there at the same time screwed), then how is Wave helping me?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I can see what he's trying to say, as far as a narrowly focused collaboration - if everyone stays within the limited scope of that particular wave/thread, it sucks less.

However, as is the case with meetings where there isn't a hard agenda or dictator, shit wanders around and gets convoluted.

As I was just saying to critus IRL, "Wave doesn't do anything I want or feel a compelling need to do." So, yeah, I'm going to be critical.

Jaguar supposedly makes nice cars, but every time I've driven one, it's been a piece of shit that performs nearly everything more poorly than the econobox I owned at the time. If the uncomfortable seats came with a blowjob attachment, maybe I'd have felt differently.

Basically, I see Wave doing a lot of things in one place, poorly, that I currently do in several places relatively well. Maybe it'll suck less in the future, so this kind of convergence of purposes won't be a self-hindrance, but right now, it's a textbook example of "jack of all trades, master of none."

[critus.livejournal.com]

Basically, I see Wave doing a lot of things in one place, poorly, that I currently do in several places relatively well.

Yeah, pretty much. Again, I'm not trying to be the big defender of Wave here, but I do see a great deal of potential in the tool if used properly. I also see first hand how waves that are unfocused turn to utter and complete shit. What I find amusing is that many of the comments I hear about how "x client does y" better don't compare Wave (and the other host of Google tools) to the product that they are actually trying to compete with (Microsoft Sharepoint).

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Nobody uses Sharepoint, either.

Nobody is bitching about Sharepoint because it doesn't have that New App Smell; it's properly relegated to its corner of cubicle hell and left there to rot, not being touted as something cool and awesome.

Office apps are not cool, they are not sexy. They are a necessary evil, and the less they impede users from actually accomplishing tasks, the better they are.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to continue writing my blog entries in HTML 1.1, without a WYSIWYG editor, uphill, both ways, in the snow.

[critus.livejournal.com]

You heard my audible guffaw when I read your first statement.

Check out the stats mid-page on this article.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=280

According to that survey 55% of businesses have implemented (or are considering an implementation of) MOSS. There is a reason why MOSS is Microsoft's fastest growing product in terms of sales and why Google is spending all this money trying to develop a suite of products to compete with it.

[geekers.livejournal.com]

it's properly relegated to its corner of cubicle hell and left there to rot
Srsly.
not being touted as something cool and awesome.
That's Google for you. The Goog touts the Goog. What else would you expect? The appearance of exclusivity, aka invites, always adds to that among the masses, no matter what the crap that requires the invite actually is.

[kest]

I *believe*, according to the video, that the spacebar should take you from new comment to next new comment. I haven't actually tried this yet, however, because we mostly haven't been using the in line commenting feature, preferring to use inline edits, which show up in a highlighted color and so are very easy to pick out.

[gothdiva1.livejournal.com]

it works like a charm - open up the wave and hit the spacebar and it will take you directly to the 1st new comment that you have. In other words, it starts again where you left off.

[gothdiva1.livejournal.com]

It does know where you've been before. if you are returning to a previous wave, once it's open, just hit the spacebar to get to the 1st new comment on the wave. keep hitting the spacebar to the next comment.

Want to see how the wave was created in order? open the wave and hit the playback button. Th forward button will take you through it the way it was created/edited in the order it was edited.

Search the public waves to find tons of info on how to use it more efficiently. next to the new wave button, type in with:public to see all the public waves.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

It doesn't quite work as well in practice. I'd read through a bunch of posts, but because I hadn't interacted with them in any way, I had to spacebar through all of them again. Not good.

Also - If I go back and click on a Wave that I've read everything in, hitting the spacebar won't take me to the bottom of the wave.

[gothdiva1.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a problem, even though I hadn't interacted with them in any way. Well, it is still in testing phase.

And the spacebar is not going to take you to the bottom of the wave, it takes you to the most recent post, which may appear anywhere in the wave, just not necessarily the bottom.

[geekers.livejournal.com]

I honestly haven't spent much time playing around with Wave, but it does seem more about the asynchronous collaboration than purely communication or networking. It reminds me of an improved Blackboard (http://www.blackboard.com/), which is (at least when I used it in '99 - 2004ish) a rather terrible combination of forum and document sharing (ala Scribd these days) - more here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc.). (It sounds like it has evolved some since, and probably has a shinier interface, but still probably rather the same.)

Anywho, I agree with you in that I think the other comparisons here (chat clients, forums, etc.) are not the best...

[geekers.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and at least with my short look, I like it more than SharePoint, which is what was latched on to as the collaboration tool at work.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

That's the thing of it: as far as I can tell, it's Lotus Notes, as written by someone that had it described to them once. At least Notes discussion databases, at their most primitive, flag new and changed things, and let someone skim all of those.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

A vital part of collaboration IS communication. If it can't even handle the communication part easily and fluidly, I don't even want to try the other supposed features.

[y2kdragon.livejournal.com]

Do

Not


WANT!

[kest]

I've actually found it pretty useful so far, but in situations where I would normally use a wiki, rather than situations where I would normally use email or chat.

[sloot.livejournal.com]

I can see it as a less formal wiki.

The end result/decisions of the conversation should probably be put on a wiki somewhere though.

[sloot.livejournal.com]

It keeps seeming like it's a useful idea, and then it falls short.

Travel planning with someone who is awake the other 12 hours? didn't work for some reason (browser incompatibility I think)

chatting with friends? no notifications killed that

I'm trying it with work colleagues. We'll see what it does. I know we're going to have to keep the conversations rather atomic, and that could be difficult for some of us.

[meiow.livejournal.com]

I've found it somewhat useful for technical document collaboration - though Google Docs works pretty well for that, Wave gives you a better highlighting method to track changes.

[felisdemens.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it fails to serve any need I currently have or can imagine having that is not already served.