On the official scale of awesome, which is internationally agreed upon to range from 1-29,277 (total points scored by Michael Jordan as a Bull), Google comes in at roughly one googol.
It’s been a while since I’ve kissed some Google butt. This post is long over due.
September 30th will mark the first annual holiday of “Nerdtopia” as the release of the much anticipated Google Wave is set to be available to a semi-general public. Right now it’s only available to a small number of web developers, but later this month will be extending its reach to an additional 100,000 people. Great, but what is Google Wave? Should it be described as social media, e-mail, instant messaging, collaborative document editor, a multimedia content exchange….? Yes. It’s all of these things, and because it has the capability to combine them all, it’s greater than the sum of its parts. It has the potential to be the future of online communication. It has the potential to be the future of intra and inter office information exchange. And it has the potential to uproot Star Wars as the all time nerd obsession. Okay, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.
It’s possible I’m overstating these claims, it’s also possible I’m not (as compelling of a statement as that might be). But even if the above paragraph isn’t enough to spark your curiosity, consider the possibility that this could be the technology you choose not to adopt that cascades into all other future technologies passing you by. Nobody wants to be the old guy who still only buys VHS tapes, doesn’t own a cell phone, and who goes to the bathroom in a giant hole in a hut out back. That’s right, I’m comparing the adoption of Google Wave to excreting human waste in a shack.
Google, earlier in the year, gave an 80 minute demonstration on the capabilities of Wave. Asking for 80 minutes of your attention without offering you money is a bad bet. Below is the presentation “highlights” edited down to 10 minutes. I will admit the edited version is a bit strange, and some of the pieces are lacking proper context. At times it feels like you’re watching Wonder Showzen. With that said, you can get enough out of this video to make sense of what Wave is all about. Here’s the full Google Wave presentation. The full presentation will make more sense but eat more of your day.
If you want to get in on this action ASAP, Google asks you to fill out this form for a future invitation.