Google Wave: So Far, Meh

Image by mikemac29 via Flickr

So I managed to get an invite to Google Wave over the weekend (Thanks Kreg!), and started poking around with it last night. Not enough time to have any well-thought out opinions, but enough to have an instant reaction:

I’m optimistically underwhelmed at this point. Do I think there’s some potential here for collaboration, especially among teams? Yes, absolutely. However, in it’s current capacity, I have yet to find any feature that I can’t use a Wiki, or even a private discussion forum, for. I’m optimistic that Google knows this and has features in the pipeline that will blow away anything we can currently do with those sorts of tools. They certainly have the resources to develop it. We shall see if it comes to fruition!

From a professional perspective, of course my mind immediately goes to the e-discovery complications that come from this tool. Yeah, it’s a bit difficult to wrap your head around how you would collect, preserve and produce any of these real-time Web tools. On the other hand, they are here to stay, the industry, and the law, will just have to adjust! It usually does, eventually, and as with every technology advance, the legal world will get adapt to it, slowly. 🙂

In the meantime, if you’re in Google Wave and want to test it out, look me up mike.mcbride at googlewave.com. I don’t have any invites to give out yet, so I can’t help you out there, but I’ll let you know when I do!

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