Working in a team environment can be an inspiring experience. However, an efficient team workflow doesn’t just form itself. An organized system and rich toolset are often a few ingredients in a well-oiled team workflow machine.
One of those ingredients may be named Google Wave.
Google this week is rolling out a developer preview of it’s new product called Google Wave. Google’s Wave is touted as “an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration”. We are used to using the traditional email method; a one way, non real time, “send and wait” approach to sending electronic messages. This method has been left relatively unchanged for 40 years since its invention.
What does this mean for you? Google says it depends on how you use it.
Google Wave shines in communication and collaboration – in real time with an audience of your choosing. For instance, say your team needs to come up with a script for a new 30 second spot for a client. One person initiates the document creation and invites team members to add their feedback or changes. The document can be edited by multiple people at the same time and you can watch the changes in real time. You even have the option to see the changes chronologically and play them back in the order they were created. Another feature worth pointing out is the realtime language translation that is possible in Google Wave. For example, this enables real time communication with a French customer who does not speak English through a chat-like interface.
The extensibility of Google Wave was clearly a priority from the beginning. What this means is developers can write extensions for Google Wave to take advantage of the Wave technology, and use it with your team workflow.
What has me excited about this new technology is the possibilities that are presented for a team to streamline its workflow. With new Wave extensions, open usage for businesses to use in their unique workflow, integration with other technologies, I am very excited for the very near future and can’t wait to find our own usage for Google Wave, right here at Force 5.
