Here comes the 'G Wave' let's surf!

Sitting in my Gmail inbox today was the above invite from our friends at Google with the message:

Once you've signed in:

Check out the videos and example waves Invite others to join you

Happy waving!

The Google Wave Team I presume that others amongst 'The Cloud Gang' will also have received their invites. My plan is to fully test out how useful this is in our workplace where we are running meeting and collaborations in a global setting. It will also be good to see how the IM and file sharing elements of 'Wave' begin to make inroads into sites such as Twitter and Edmodo.

I am personally quite excited in seeing how this works in tandom with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, also to see if this finally gives the joined up thinking that so many of us have been calling for over the past few years. Personally I am looking forward at last to having joint discussion where you are able to look back at a discussion threads using the history to give you a run down of activity within a thread over time ( Yay!). I still have my concerns over the complexity of the environment however I believe the 'GoogleGang' will have looked particularly closely at user interface and the ease of operability - however this is what we have to fully test out in the 'real world'

If you are still in the dark about 'Wave'...... where have you been? Go get your 'board and get into the surf. As you wax up your 'board catch up with the introduction of 'Wave' at IO09 in May of this year - intro and under the hood.

As you can see in the screenshot from my wave the surf is relatively low at the moment let's churn the water up and see how 'Wave' shapes up for educators globally. I am looking also to see how the community now grows up around the new product.

On a Google related day I also have to say that my G1 received its latest 1.6 update yesterday ( unfortunately when I was in the middle of a good tweet discussion regarding teachers use of their pupils social networking space.... more on this later. The G1 update unfortunately it killed my battery and I found that at 11.30am following an overnight charge I was out! Once I had returned home from Leeds ( I was at Leeds Trinity Uni College at the time of the update...bad timing!) I got a chance to try out some of the updates - they have certainly worked on the camera which now has good auto focus and even a new range of effects ( Warhol, fisheye, polaroid, pixel, sepia print etc) The User interface on many products looks great. I presume that the new Donut upgrade for Andorid platforms such as HTC Hero also came through yesterday to coincide with this latest and possibly last G1 update ( we cannot get Donut as the processor is not up to the task....... 6 months of my £40 per month contract to go!!!!)

I beg forgiveness for this apparently entirely Google focused post, however hopefully it is no less relevant for that.

I am about to dip my toe into the surf with my 'board and very much look forward to shooting the waves with many of my contacts in work and beyond.

[cue The Beachboys]

** Having just signed into Twitter mentioned earlier in the post I see that they are beginning the fight back with Twitter Team Lists ( see below)