In May 2009 at I/O 09, was launched to much deserved fanfare. A lot of the initial prognostications declaring  to be a replacement for just about everything and as an important an invention comparable to “the wheel” have, thank god, died down. In fact, because of much of the initial nonsense calling it a Twitter, Facebook and e-mail replacement (Google did that one) have turned many off of the pre-Alpha Preview version.

Of course, readers of this blog know that while  may not be ready to replace anything just yet, it still holds unbelievable promise for transforming how we currently collaborate on everything from projects and documents to meetings and online shopping. If we take the current definition of Web 2.0 to be associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Then,  is the first true web 2.0 application for business.

That being said, the current preview version (pre-Alpha) of , although functional and gives folks an understanding of the product, is starting to do more harm than good. I understand the reason for the early preview: trying to understand server load problems, uncover shaky code and desperately searching for use cases. But the time has come to show that this application/protocol is much, much more than a glorified chat program with a few neat extensions. I think 2010 will be that time.

Thus, my TOP 10 IMPROVEMENTS for GOOGLE WAVE in 2010:

10. Developmental Timeline. I blogged about this extensively in another post recently titled: Where is Google Wave Going? In that post I laid out the following:

• Develop your Google Wave strategy for the way ahead.
• Release your vision of Google Wave and your vision for what you will be further developing for the product.
• Release some milestones that you have for the product.
• Talk about document support and how it will evolve and when you think it will be available.
• More info about a robot/gadget store would be wonderful.
• Outline a clear business support model. – Accreditation and/or certification credentials, building an appliance, etc, etc

9. Delete a Wave Permanently. The closest thing that you can now do is send your Wave to the trash. However, when you click on “All” you still see that Wave. It lives. Moreover, regardless of being the owner I cannot permanently delete a Wave, everybody else still has that Wave. I am only putting it in my trash. There is currently no delete. The owner should be allowed to delete the Wave. In business I don’t necessarily want to have collaboration work live forever. That would be another post by itself as to why that is a bad idea, but suffice to say the reasons are not nefarious….just good business practice.

8. Integration of Moderation Features. This was a topic of another post titled: Google Wave Etiquette – Moderating Your Wave. This post talked about the good work done by those currently using Google Wave to put in place a set of rules that help ensure we have a civil real-time collaborative discussion or workgroup, that obeys certain rules or customs. These ideas are good ones and Google needs to take a hard look at what so many are adopting for their Waves and make it a functional part of the Google Wave client.

7. Google Wave Client Code Released. Ok Google, thanks for the Federation protocol being open-source and all. Great, wonderful! But without a really slick client…federating is kind of worthless. The client is the great part. Now, one could develop a client but that would take great effort (for a good one) and with nothing released regarding Google strategy (see number 10) I could be wasting my time and money. Thus, if they want more people to actually federate with a meaningful Wave server they need to release the client code.

6. Google Groups Integration. Well, they claim to have integration with Google Groups. But,…have you tried it. I dare you. Come back and let me know how long it took and how it worked out for you. Enough said. Fix this!

5. Inbox Management. I spent a quite a bit of time thinking about this before deciding to add it to the list, let alone make it in the top 5 improvements. There is a lot of Waves out there that describe hints of  inbox management with Google Wave. My problem is that it is way to similar to the email inbox. I think some real thought needs to given to this problem to make it work for Wave. I don’t think just replicating an email inbox management solution works. One simple example to highlight this point would be the problem with finding a reply to Wave. Somehow that should be evident from your Inbox. This needs work and a new approach to looking at this problem, I think.

4. Draft Typing. The box is there but the functionality is still not available. I expect this will be an easy one for 2010, but it is a big one. Depending on how sensitive something is, this becomes critical…as in, I won’t use Google Wave for this correspondence because I don’t want anybody seeing what I’m writing until I am finished.

3. Owner Only Remove. The owner of a Wave must be able to remove participants from that Wave. Let’s say someone inadvertently gets added to a sensitive Wave they were not intended to be part of. The owner needs to have the ability to control his Wave and remove folks as he see fit.

2. Owner Only Invite. Keeping with same theme as the above improvement. There needs to be a function where the only person who can add a person to a Wave is the owner. It doesn’t need to be a default setting but its needs to available otherwise real business will not take place on Google Wave. If anybody can be invited into any Wave by anybody…I will share nothing of relevance with anyone.

1. Document Collaboration. The Holy Grail for Google Wave. I have written many posts, the latest titled: Google Wave Preparing to add Document Collaboration. This improvement is a must and needs to happen sooner rather than later. The problem with Google Wave right now is that nothing really serious is happening on it. Folks go looking for a Twitter like experience and find it lacking. Folks go to do collaboration and find that it is extremely limited because no office suite is integrated. Google Wave’s real power will lie in document collaboration and they must introduce it in the early part of 2010.

I, for one, will be at I/O 10 this year and hope to see Google unveil all of the improvements I mentioned above. So, ““

Did I miss something that is tops on your list? Leave a comment on what you think should have made the list, or just leave a comment on the current list. We love hearing your feedback.
Happy New Year!

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It is no secret that without some type of document collaboration ability Google Wave™ is…well…useless, really. Moreover, given that 92% of all businesses use Micorsoft Office™ as their document productivity tool, being able to collaborate using your Microsoft Office™ files is also really important.

Let’s look at what is available for collaboration right now, a top 6 list say (I know there will be a lot left off this list, but this list is not the point of the post):

• BaseCamp ™ – Share files and project collaboration (not done in real-time) – Cloud Computing
• SharePoint™ – Share files and project collaboration (not done in real-time) – Local Hosted Server
• E-mail – Share files – Local Hosted Server
• Google Docs – Share files and project collaboration (not done in real-time) – Cloud Computing
• NetDocuments™ – Share files and project collaboration (not done in real-time) – Cloud Computing
• Google Wave™ - Real-time collaboration (promise of file sharing and project management). – Cloud Computing

The products above are all very good stand-alone products as they are, click the link above to find out more about what they offer. However, the point of that list is to show that nothing (including Google Wave™) offers a product that allows businesses to host a local server appliance, which allows users to collaborate in real-time with files they are sharing for a project…being managed collaboratively, also.

Google Wave™ comes the closest, having cracked the real-time collaboration nut, it now just needs a document suite that can be used with the product. Once they get the document suite (if they get the document suite) they should then seriously look at offering a local server solution. As cloud computing makes many businesses a little concerned….see this post for an example of what I mean.

But, we are ahead of ourselves. Google Wave™ needs a document suite!

To that end, it seems like Google™ is trying very hard to make that happen. Case in point:

• Google Groups Launches for Google Apps™ Enterprise Users (users they gave Google Wave invites too in September)
• Google Groups Launches for Google Wave™ (just one big link missing)
• Google Acquires EtherPad™ (a web-based real-time collaborative web processor)
• Google to Acquire DocVerse™ ( a web-based real-time collaborative sharing of Word, Excel, Powerpoint documents)
• Google to Acquire Yelp™ (Business database – great for an office contact app)
• Google to Acquire Trulia™ (A real-estate search engine, that I will assume will offer some serious photo capabilities , I’m stretching it here, but I’m sure it has some tie in that may not be readily evident)

What becomes very clear is that Google is working very hard to bring a document collaboration capability to Google Wave™. I certainly hope that they get there soon, as folks are really starting to lose interest in what is basically becoming a glorified chat program with a lot less users or connections you would have with a regular chat. Real-time document collaboration and robots and gadgets that enhance that capability is really where Google Wave has power and promise.

Just today, as I discussed collaborating on a book with a colleague, we choose not to use Google Wave, but rather send documents back and forth via e-mail. As it is better to be able to use a full text editor when dealing with a larger project then use the limited editing currently available in Google Wave™.

I, for one, hope that they are able to announce this either at, or prior too, Google I/O 10. I think this date (19-20 May 10) is extremely important to reinvigorate development of extensions for Google Wave™. Not to mention they could launch a whole series of workshops at I/O 10. Moreover, and most importantly , I will be in attendance and am hoping for big Google Wave™ news.

How have you used the current version of Google Wave to collaborate? Have you done any major collaboration projects with this version?

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For those that are unfamiliar with Posterous, it is a extremely simple to use blog creation site. You send them the content you want in the blog via e-mail. You can attach what you want: photos, videos, mp3′s etc. The Posterous engine then goes and creates a blog page for you with your e-mail that you send as the current blog entry. You can then adjust settings, look etc as you wish.

The Posterous robot for Google Wave allows you to simply add the Posterous domain address to your wave. Create your post. Click done and it goes off to Posterous and creates your blog page and entry.

The Posterous webpage describes it as such:

What is Posterous-Robot?

Posterous-Robot is first a Google Wave robot. It is built by lookon with Google Wave Python Library and Posterous API. The posterous bot helps you to post blog to posterous.com in Google Wave.

How to use Posterous-Robot

It’s easy to use Poterous-Robot in Google Wave. You just need to add posterous-robot@appspot to your contact and start a new wave with the robot. After logining to Posterous, you can post blog to Posterous by editing the title and body of the foot wavelet.

A detailed guide: How to write a blog using Google Wave Robot for Posterous.

The how to guide comes complete with photos and shows just how simple using this robot is.

You can get the source code for the robot here.

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Welcome to to the Google Wave Blogger! This site will be dedicated to all things Google Wave. It will provide news about Google Wave, review developers extensions and embeds, provide technical how-to’s and be a one-stop link resource for everything interesting about Google Wave.

We are extremely excited about the many possible implementations of Google Wave, it’s promise as an e-mail replacement and social media hub. We will track and participate in Google Wave’s development and bring all the information to you right here in one handy blog.

So, if you are a fan of Google Wave…or, very interested in keeping track of how Google Wave progresses, then please make sure you subscribe to this blog to be kept up-to-date on all the latest developments.

If you are a developer, please contact us to showcase your extension or embed.

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