Google Wave: 5 Ways It Could Change the Web

Google Wave arrives on September 30th. On that day, Google (Google) will start sending out 100,000 invites to non-developers to its much-anticipated real-time communication platform.

It’s not even released and it’s generating more hype than almost any other web product in recent memory. The reason stems from its game-changing features and their potential applications on business, education, customer service, email, social networking, and more.

So with Wave on the way, we wanted to explore some of the potential of Google’s upcoming product. We have a few of our own ideas and included some from Google Wave (Google Wave) developers, but more than anything, we want your ideas, so be sure to leave your great Google Wave invention in the comments! Who knows, maybe we’ll feature them in the future!

1. Wave-Powered Forums

This idea’s actually been in my head before, but it’s articulated with some depth by Andrew Camel in the Google Wave API Google Group:


“So I thought that it would be an awesome feature of google wave to have it power a forum. Each thread, instead of being multiple different posts, it would just be a google wave. So, instead of having to try a discussion by posting and going back to the page and checking for new replies and while you were posting, you missed a new part of the discussion, you can post like you are having an instant-message session and you can also save the posts like forum threads. I really think that this would be a great use of the google wave api.”

Real-time threads? Saving waves like forum threads? Google Wave?! Sign us up!

2. Wave-powered Commenting System

wave photo sharing image

We actually alluded to this possibility in our Google Wave Guide when we discussed Wave Embeds:


“One possibility: Google Wave Embeds may be a real-time replacement to static comments. If Google perfects wave embeds, you could even see YouTube (YouTube).com comments replaced with waves, although it is way too early to make any calls on the potential of this.”

Now that we’ve had some time to play with Wave, we think more than ever that Wave as a commenting system is a real possibility. Each blog post or YouTube video could have a new wave, where users could converse about practically anything in real-time. Anybody who comes in late can just play back the wave and get up to speed. It could be a whole new era for commenting.

3. Wave-Based Content Management System

A thread in the API group discusses the possibility of using Wave as a project management system. I’ll be honest – even I’ve been toying with this idea. Here’s what Jason Salas said in the thread:

I think that maybe many of the major CMS vendors will create extensions (if we don’t do it ourselves) to integrate their products with Wave. That’s what I’m working on now. But that is a neat idea to actually use Wave as its own CMS platform, with assumed features
like document creation/management, scheduling, RSS feeds, (micro) blogging, archival/search, etc.”

Can’t you see it?

4. Wave for Customer Support


This idea actually comes from a thread in the Google Wave development preview titled “What Will You Use it For?” It’s a remarkable discussion and brainstorming session over the potential of wave. One of the most fleshed-out ideas in the thread, though, is Wave for customer support. Here are some of the bullet-points for how Wave could be used in customer support:

- Sending trouble tickets
- Incident tracking can be a wave
- Call center analytics gadget
- Distribution list gadget
- Customer meta-data gadget
- Surveys can be a wave

Real-time customer support? Yeah, someone please build that.

5. Wave for Education

We reported a few days ago that Google is giving some schools and businesses an early look at Google Wave. But why? What could Wave possibly accomplish in the realm of education and business? A lot, we firmly believe.



I refer once again to the “What Will You Use it For?” Wave in the dev preview for some ideas for how Wave can be used in education.

- Building a more interactive / creative learning environment
- Proofreading / writing papers
- Brainstorming potential project ideas
- Interactive tutoring from home
- Collaborative Environment for Cyber Schooling

With more widgets, you could embed streams and communicate with professors in real-time. We’re excited about Wave’s potential to transform education.
What Are Your Ideas?


We’ve highlighted some of our ideas and many ideas from enthusiasts across the web. So now it’s your turn. What is your idea for Google Wave? We want to hear your thoughts and your opinions in the comments.

Oh, and if you need a little inspiration for your idea, be sure to check out our comprehensive Google Wave coverage:

Bing is start...let,s test bing...

Bing, Microsoft’s latest effort to beat Google (Google reviews) at what it does best - search - is now live for everyone. It’s bearing the ubiquitous “beta” tag, and contrary to what many expected from Microsoft, the search is decent. But it’s also strangely familiar. Is it decent enough to compete with Google? Read on.

Anxious to see what Microsoft has in store for us, I’ve fired up a couple of usual examples: “Mashable (Mashable reviews)“, “Stan Schroeder” (the standard vanity searches), “MSI megabook 677” (some random piece of hardware), “Star Trek” (new movie, old series, let’s see which will get prioritized) etc.

The results were solid, too good, perhaps, for a very new search engine, but also oddly familiar. And then it dawned on me: it’s Live.com. The results for any query are exactly the same as on Live.com. And we’re not talking about the first couple of results; we’re talking about all results.

(*note: I was lucky to be able to try it out, because 20 minutes after I started writing this article, Live.com started redirecting to Bing.com. Of course, it’s now the same search engine.)

So, what does Bing do differently? It puts related search on the left side of the screen, instead of the right. It also gives you short preview of the contents of search results as you mouse over them, and autoplays videos. Nice. But there’s no trace of better organization of search results that we were promised, or anything really interesting here. Videos, images? Also pretty much the same as on Live.com. Shopping? Merely a redirect to www.ciao.co.uk.

*edit: the above stands for the UK version of Bing. Manually setting the location to various places in the world, i.e. switching from UK to US changes Bing significantly. There’s at least three very different versions of Bing right now, and depending on where you are, your Bing experience will be very different. It’s a very weird decision from Microsoft, bound to cause a lot of confusion, but hey: it’s the Microsoft way.

So, let’s test the US version. The Shopping is now Bing’s own, instead of a redirect to Ciao, while video and image search is very similar in both versions. The core of the search engine, from what I can see, is still Live.com, but the search results for some queries are indeed organized topically; for example, for “Star Trek” the results will be divided into general results, Star Trek cast, Star Trek Wallpapers, Theme Song, DVD, Episodes, and so forth. It doesn’t always work; for “Wolverine,” I just get the standard list of results; oddly enough, they’re worse on the US version (if you’re looking for the movie, of course) than on the UK version, which brings more results relevant to Wolverine the movie. For the same query (”Wolverine“), Google blows both out of the water.

How useful are Bing’s search subcategories, which are arguably its most important feature? Depends. If you’re used to entering precise queries, such as “Starbucks menu”, you’ll never see them. If you prefer entering a broader query “Starbucks” and then choosing from subcategories such as Recipes, Menu, Franchise, Nutrition and Coupons, Bing will work great. However, these subcategories aren’t all that different from ye olde search suggestions, and although they’re often helpful, I doubt they will revolutionize search.

Most importantly, Bing is currently still changing. I’d like to hear your experiences and thoughts about Bing, but right now, it seems like a half-way transition from Live.com to something new, and it’s very hard to assess its true value until the various versions scattered around the world are consolidated into one.more...