Note: Google Wave is currently in Developer Preview, meaning it’s not yet even beta, and only has a few thousand users. The current user experience is not representative of the stated vision, so for the sake of clarity I’ve taken some liberties in this part by including functions which currently have not yet been implemented or don’t reliably work, and assume a larger userbase than is currently the case.
It’s a beautiful day! I am a modern, well-connected individual with a challenging day job, rewarding hobbies, and hip friends both near and abroad. My bed is comfortable, but the spot beside me is empty. Childless and alone, I weep, briefly, then shake hands with the unemployed and get up to face another fabulous day.
While I was sleeping, my friends overseas were enjoying the best part of the day and no doubt had many interesting adventures and emotions. Shall I sit down at my computer, coffee in hand, and browse to LiveJournal? Facebook? Twitter? Maybe open my RSS reader? Nay. Via clever robots and server-side support from the soc-nets in question, all blogs/notes/articles are neatly arranged in my inbox, awaiting my response. Trifling, short status updates are aggregated in a single wave per service where, too, I can respond to each of them.
Cluttered? Hardly. I made folders into which my friends’ LJ posts and Facebook notes and articles on sites I follow are automatically inserted, so my inbox can be used for actual messages while I can spider through my social web at leisure.
If I were An Award-Winning Graphic Novelist instead of a lonely yet optimistic new media enthusiast I might have a Google search pre-programmed to look for mentions of my wares. Look! There’s my Search Wave in my inbox, with the newest hits highlighted (or highlit, if you like) as unread items.
Of course, there are also actual people who want to talk to me directly. Look, there’s a new wave from my workmate Murgatroyd, who asks me if I’d like to grab some lunch with her and my other colleague Pippin, whom she’s shrewdly also added to the wave. Further down the wave she asks if I’ve seen the new Tarantino movie, and further still whether I think she’ll ever find a husband.
Neither Pippin nor I really like Murgatroyd, but we like free lunches. Ah, I see that Pippin has already replied to the paragraph where she asked us out. Excellent. I’ll add a reply there too, and suggest we go have lobsters stuffed with caviar boiled in champagne into which pearls have been dissolved. A simple meal, by Murgatroyd’s delightfully expensive standards.
Now, I have indeed seen the new Tarantino, but since I know Murgatroyd is a persistent stalker and a creepy paranoiac who will assume I just don’t want to go see it with her I immediately provide her with proof. I pull out my phone and open Wave on its browser. I haven’t pressed ‘save’ in my desktop browser, mind — I just log in on my phone’s browser and select Murgatroyd’s wave, where I reply to her Tarantino question by snapping a photo of my ticket stubs and attaching them. The reply and associated photo has appeared in my desktop browser by the time I’ve pocketed my phone.
Lastly, feeling sympathetic to Murgatroyd’s plight (being horrid, she’s quite unweddable) I reply to her paragraph that I’m sure she’ll find The One, and that her Keanu Reeves is just around the corner.
But Pippin, rotter that he is, is also awake. Irresponsible to the core, he’s driving while waving, and he’s just witnessed my messages being typed letter by letter. Cackling with snotty glee, he swerves through rush-hour traffic and privately replies to my reply to her marriage question. He writes such foul and unkind things, but I can see it’s in a private reply that Murgatroyd can never have access to despite the fact that it’s a part of her wave. I titter; I know I ought not to but I do anyway.
Off to work. Is my train delayed? I forgot to check before I left home, so out comes my phone. I made a wave with a gadget that calculates the optimum public transport schedule from my home to my place of employment, and opening that wave instantly updates the gadget. No delays, the train leaves at the usual time. Brilliant!
In transit I catch up on my preferred periodicals with my trusty do-everything Cordless Radio Telephone. An RSS reader automatically compiles a daily digest of the latest posts from blogs and sites I follow, and I can handily flick through this list of snippets, all in a single wave. Finding a particularly compelling piece that I simply must argue with I click on the ‘read more’ link. In the olden days that would have opened the article’s webpage in my browser, but these are not those days. These are modern times and any blog or site worth its salt not only offers an RSS feed of their content but also has a Wave version of each article. I’m given access to this article’s wave and added to its participants (there are two dozen others already, in addition to the article’s writer and his editor) and can scroll through all the comments before adding my own bilious opinion.
Titillatingly, my comment garners an immediate response from the writer. Barely able to contain the flattery I feel I don’t even wait for him to finish typing and respond to the letters I’ve seen him complete so far immediately. After all, there’s nothing he can write that can change the fact that he is a big fat booby-head and I’m more than happy to inform him of this, thus providing him with the enlightenment I’d expected him to give me when I read his article.
How time flies! My train has arrived, and it’s time to join the commuting masses in the Kansas City Shuffle toward the platform’s stairs. Once the station’s vomited out this newest batch of travelers, myself along with them, I’m more than ready to fire up the ol’ corporate spirit and spend my day working for The Man.
Did I mention my company recently installed a corporate Wave server? Let’s all stay eagerly tuned to see how my workday progresses in a Wavified workplace!
- Alex F. Vance
This article includes examples of functionality that is not available in Google Wave at the time of writing, including planned functionality, and likely (but imaginary) future uses by third parties. Enjoy a pinch of salt with your article.
