I recently asked for a Google Wave invite through my Twitter account, and had a surprising number of people send them my way. Thanks to all who responded.
But I have to admit to being disappointed. While I haven’t spent that much time in Wave, from what I’ve seen so far, I’m less than impressed.
Firstly I’m baffled. I really don’t understand how it works. I can stream content from a NAS device to my TV, I can edit basic HTML by hand, and I know my way round the Windows Registry far better than most. But I can’t quite work out how to use Google Wave.
Secondly it’s supposed to be about collaboration. It should be simple to share documents, using Google Docs, but it isn’t. In fact I had to search Google for a hack to do so.
Thirdly, there’s no real control. If I invite someone to my wave, there’s no way of removing their access, no matter how the discussion may proceed. So you need to share with caution. Not exactly conducive to open dialogue.
And finally, it’s really, really buggy. I know it’s in Beta, but there appears to be more bugs than features.
The basis of Google Wave seems to be that email hasn’t changed much in the past twenty years. At risk of sounding older than I want to be, I think the old system worked just fine.
