Hypnotic Waves by Tearsandrain

Wave essentially brings together all the forms of online communication we already use — email, chat, wikis, blogs, and so on — and combines them into a single (mostly?) open architecture.

I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around what this will mean. As a software developer, I can see some tremendous ways that this can help me. For example, when I release a new version of one of my software programs, I need to pull in information from several different sources — bug tracker, build information, screen shots, updates to documentation — and push this information out in many different formats — blog announcement, update docs, update download page, "what's new" list, etc.

Right now, I have a kind of hodgepodge of scripts that automate some of this for me, but there's still a lot of manual work. It seems that Wave would make it possible for me to manage all this information centrally, and push it all out in the proper formats/places with a single operation. That would make publishing software updates a lot easier!

In addition to making this process easier, Wave could also let me improve things. For example, it would make it easier to keep docs up to date and complete. Users could comment on the docs, ask questions, or ask for more information on a certain subject. Features listed in a blog post could include links to the relevant sections of the documentation. In short, it seems like Wave could make the work of creating good documentation a lot easier, and with more powerful results.

On the other hand, it seems like the real power of Wave will depend on adoption. Obviously, the more people using Wave, the more useful it will be. And since a lot of people are still using IE6, the requirement for html5 support is going to be a pretty big hurdle. Also, how many people are going to give up their beloved Facebook/Instant Messenger/whatever for this new, slightly strange platform? Google's record for putting out kind of cool-looking betas and letting them wither on the vine is not too hot.

So while I'm excited about the potential of Wave, I'm also going to wait and see before uninstalling my email client.