I watched, with rapt fascination, the hour-long intro video¹ back in May. Though video is usually something I consume for entertainment, not information.

So it may be that my hopes were too high. Given that Wave is a ‘preview’ (is that one level below beta?), there’s still hope for the future.

Things I don’t like about wave:

• The new stuff isn’t always at the bottom, and ‘diff’ is a video
• I have to add my own contacts all over again, and they’ve got new “email” addresses
• Closed system–so I can’t communicate with just anybody
• Feels very slow
• Need to click to edit–yet I’m still always creating errant blank notes
• I can’t tell what I can edit and what I can’t
• What’s the etiquette?²
• Doesn’t separate content and discussion
• Waves with lots of people get really long really quickly
• Other maintenance–like, I guess I’m supposed to add a picture for myself?
• The ‘inbox’ is really a list of things I’m paying attention to. ‘inbox’ seems a misnomer.
• I can’t subscribe to wave alerts via email (e.g. if I haven’t logged in in some amount of time, remind me by email that I might want to)
• Those damn arrows! I DON’T WANT TO SCROLL!!!!!
• I want a list of bots, and to add a bot by clicking a button.
• I want a ‘make this public’ button, rather than having to scramble for an email address to add.

For more information about wave, check Google’s About pages, Wikipedia’s overview, or the in-progress wiki aiming to The Complete Guide to Google Wave. At the moment, I’ve still got a few invites to give away, if you’d like to try it out for yourself.

Overall, I’m struck by the length and lack of summarization in Wave. One of the reasons I keep using gmail is that it (often but not always) helps me to keep track of the conversation. Wave doesn’t do that right now: the ‘preview’ or subject line just pulls from the first blip. (Even just pulling from the latest blip would help!)

I have a few active collaborations in Wave (SIOC, the ‘unofficial code4lib conference wave’, and a small advertising/new media conversation we’re testing moving from email). Perhaps as time goes on I’ll have a better understanding of what it’s good for in practice. Meanwhile, I welcome pointers to others’ experiences, especially easy-to-digest tips about how you’re using Wave!

1. oops–make that 1:20!
2. For instance, I *am* going to delete blips and extraneous comments to make things easier to follow. In a wiki this would be expected. In my own inbox it’s up to me. But in a public listserv conversation it’s verboten, except perhaps for spam deletion.