Top 10 Uses for Google Wave…Right Now!

I have seen a lot of tweets, posts and comments regarding what you can actually use the preview version of Google Wave™ for…right now! Any posts that I have read on the subject seem to always focus on what you will be able to use Google Wave™ for in the future. These have also concentrated on extensions that are not even released to everyone yet.

I am going to give a list of things you can do with Google Wave™ today that you will find useful. There is some excellent examples out there of some very promising extensions…like Gravity….but it is not available to everyone yet. In fact, most extensions are not very useful and need more developing….as Daniel Graverson wrote in his excellent post Google Wave Gadgets Lack Quality. So, for that reason I am not going to talk too much about the extensions that are available to help you with these use cases. You can decide yourself if you want to bring in some of these extension to make your Wave more productive.

But, Don't Fret Cap'n here is my Top 10 Uses for Google Wave…Right Now!:

10. Inserting a Wave into your Blog. Many folks have done this and it works pretty good. If you want to give this a try you may want to think about a post topic that you want folks to collaborate on and build. Try to think beyond just using it for comments. I think it is best suited for an event post. Take note however, everybody needs to have a Google Wave account to see the post.

9. Public Wave Discussion. Do you have a topic that you are particularly interested in. Start a public Wave on the subject and you will get many others who will join in and start to take part in the conversation. Many may be just as passionate, or more passionate, on the subject as you. Make sure you do a public search first to see if that Wave topic has already been started.

8. Role Playing Game. This has been an area that has turned out to be a lot of fun for folks and has had a pretty good following. Moreover, there is some useful extensions that have been written for RPGs. See the post I wrote titled Google Wave + RPGs = Excellent Experience! on the subject to get involved.

7. Conference Waving. This is usually something that the conference would initiate usually. But if you find they haven’t. Maybe approach them the first day and indicate you want to start one and ask them to announce it so others at the conference would then join in.

6. Waving your own event. Perhaps you may want to set up a Wave to allow on-line users to attend you event. I plan to give this a try for our next hack-a-thon we will be having on Google Chrome Extensions. I am going to play with streaming video via wave or recording and then up-loading to the Wave.

5. Meetings. Google Wave is an excellent way to get folks together for a meeting that they can’t get together in person for. There are some telecom extension you can try. But they won’t work with everyone, so you may want to test them out before relying on them. I have had two Wave meetings  and both times we had a telecom going to support the on-line portion. We used Google Wave to work on something that we could change while talking via telecom. It was great and those involved thought it was a great, time-saving, efficient way to work on a something together…in our slippers.

4. Small Document Collaboration. Although Google Wave does not have document collaboration…right now. You can do some small collaboration efforts which you can cut and paste into your document application of choice. I would not recommend doing anything greater than 10-15 pages. Once you try this you find that you become very impatient for some real document collaboration ability to be added…because you will very much enjoy the experience.

3. Minutes. I have used it twice now in a meeting where I and three others collaborated on the minutes. It was a great experience. If you missed something, somebody else picked it up and we had some real kick-#%@ minutes that did not need anymore work once the meeting was finished.

2. Event Planning. For any of you involved in groups that have events you hold. Planning your agenda with your group on Google Wave is a great, great use of the application. I have done it now for 4 different groups & events I am involved with and it has been a great experience. You will find it quick. One word of advice is that you give the Wave a time-limit. I.E. no more comments/revisions accepted after (insert your date), for folks that maybe don’t check their Wave on a regular basis. I will talk about a way to help eliminate this below. Moreover, from this same Wave you do all the coordination for the event with folks. It really is a great way to do all the agenda and co-ordination planning for an event.

1. Coding. This is my number one use case for Google Wave right now. You have got to try it. You do not need to be ocean’s apart, in fact…being in the same room right next to each other works best. Try it…you will agree with me that this is the number one…by far…best use case of Google Wave right now! Also, there are some pretty good extensions out there you might want to try. Take at look at the extension list if you want to try one or two.

Once you start using Google Wave™ for these types of uses you will find that it is kind of annoying if you don’t have some kind of notifier to let you know when your Wave got updated. I recommend the Google Wave Notifier for PC and WaveBoard for Mac to give you notification of an update to your Wave.

Are you using Google Wave™ for something that is not on the list…right now! Let us know about how your using it below. Or, simply comment on the on the list if you are using it in some of what is listed. Or, god forbid, you don’t agree with the list.

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Tagged as: Business, Developer, extension, Gadgets, Google, google docs, google wave, Google Wave Blog, google wave blogger, google wave gadgets, Hackathon, industry, ms office

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