Amid a mass of hype and hooplah around so-called Unified Communcications (UC), Google has launched a pre-beta program for developers to build new applications around Google Wave. The originators of Wave are the same folks who built the Google Maps application, Lars and Jens Rasmussen. Lars, the talkative one, characterizes Google Wave as a “communications object” that enables better communications and collaboration by eliminating the barriers and distinctions between such “applications” as email, instant messaging, social networking, blogging, Twittering and even posting to Wikipedia.

Breathe a sigh of relief because the hype surrounding UC and its close cousin “communications-enabled business processes” is coming to an end. Google Wave is poised to replace them with an emerging model for communications that, the founders promise, will largely be offered to the developer community under the rules of “open source” software.

Commercialization and mass deployments are a couple of years away because Google Wave is redefining the nature of Internet-based conversations. Users can expect to experience a certain “shock of the new” because launching a “wave” is fundamentally different from sending an email, IM-ing, blogging or any of the other activities that Google Wave rightfully conflates. Contrary to popular belief, unifiying communications is not a completely natural process. Based on common experience, we all have a tendency to “check email,” “look at our Tweet Stream,” “open Facebook,” “participate in a conference call” or “send a text message.” We have to ask ourselves, what it means to “launch a wave” that involves any or all of the above.

“Playback” is the Catalyst
In the near term a feature called “playback” is destined to be the difference maker. It is a feature that enables Wave users to tap into conversations at any point in time – past or present. While it is tempting to think of such a conversation as a “thread” in a email trail or discussion group, tapping into (and reviewing the entries to) a Wave is tangibly different. Most dramatically, entries are displayed on the screens of all participants in real time (or close to it). So there are times when participants, literally, work on the same documents at the same time. To paraphrase Gene Kelly: “That’s Collaboration.”

Playback is also the doctor’s prescription for social media-driven attention deficit disorder. It is the mechanism that enables people to search and tap into an ongoing “thread,” review it from the beginning and work up to real time. But, as the infomercial goes “that’s not all.” Wave enables picture sharing and the addition of any media feed for that matter.

Google Wave will probably move to “beta” status, a la Gmail or Google Voice, by the end of the year. In the meantime, the company has provided access to a “sandbox” that includes the Wave run-time software as well as a growing number of APIs, so that a community of creative developers have a chance to define and deliver Wave-based applications. There’s a dearth of voice applications, but there is definitely a promise to make the applications mobile, which inevitably leads to some creative work around a voice applications. But, like I said, it will be a couple of years down the road.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Recombinant Telephony, Unified Communications, Google