Using the (Google) Wave to surf the streams

Just when you think you’re getting the hang of things… Google shows you how it should be done.

Like most of my geek/nerdy friends, I have a system that I use share, organize and discover new and interesting things online. I subscribe to a (large!) number of rss feeds, have an account at most of the major social networks, participate in the microblogging world via twitter and tumblr, and just to keep track of most of it all, FriendFeed comes to the rescue to aggregate most of my and my friends streams of content.

Well, this all sounds pretty overwhelming but it’s not. I mean, it is. I can’t read everything that runs across those pipes, but it’s rather easy to manage, to filter and to “save for later”.

Said that, today at Google’s I/O conference, a fancy little thing called Google Wave was presented.

What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web

What is a Wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Although I don’t think that Google Wave will be a substitute for all the services and networks I use online, I am pretty sure that it will become an amazing hub for collaboration, participation and in some way redefine how most of us will communicate online. Just like previous Google products have.

FriendFeed rooms (or whatever they are called nowadays), Twitter and other online networks with real-time activity will have some serious alternatives, unless they too join the wave.

As a biological engineer, the use of Google Wave for scientific discussion, collaboration and dissemination is really important to me. I hope to see science related waves pop up and get developed before the software/service becomes available mainstream. Martin Fenner at Nature Network hopes that Google Wave doesn’t forget the scientists. I hope so too.

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