Normally, a program tells you what you can do; sets up boundaries; restricts functionality. Well, not Google Wave! It lets you do whatever you want. The doors have been swung open, and anything you can imagine is possible…Which is one reason my friends do not understand Google Wave.
At face value, it is for communication; except it is not your average communication client: it is sooo much more.Google Wave is a robust, Open Source (Apache Licensed) communication framework, providing a platform, protocol, and client/product — delivered in HTML5.
Many people are excited about using Wave; mainly because of the limited access, and its monstrous waiting list which more or less, converts into curious fanboys.
So far only certain groups of developers and people with connections have been given access to it through invitations issued to current users by Google.
Advancements and Adoption of Google Wave
Right now most of us are learning how to make Extensions for the wave client, called Robots and Gadgets. I am ecstatic about what could be done with the Wave Protocol, and I will go into that more later.From what I observed so far, Google Wave has had mixed reviews. One fairly well known developer from the Boston area even acted like he thought it was a joke when talking with me about it.
Overall, the biggest complaints seem to be issues they are currently working on, like the lack of the Remove Participant feature. Other huge complaints involve the lack of people using it during the day, which is silly because not many people are even on it yet, and the speed of the system’s responses.
These are all issues that will work themselves out, and it blows my mind that people are making such a big deal over them. Right now, I am pretty happy wit the way the system operates, and I think it has a ton of potenial. (See Below.)
Federated Servers
The Google Wave Protocol does not have to run on the Google Wave Client. You can make your own web applications that can communicate over the Wave Protocol (XMPP – http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3920).
This allows for completely unstructured distribution and access of whatever the form of communication is.
For example, you can make your own web service on the wave platform with a custom client to suit the need of the application, and integrating it with a Wave is as simple as making a gadget and/or robot to interface with it. You could also embed the waves on your application, site, or service — so there could be constant connectivity between work environments in real time, regardless of where the work is happening from.
This would allow you to make basically anything you wanted, and the two could communicate simultaneously. The future is going to be exciting.
