[LINK] Google Waves Goodbye

[Tom Worthington]

Roger Clarke wrote:
> Update on Google Wave 8/04/2010 02:00:00 PM
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html
> 
> ... jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we 
> weren't quite sure how users would respond ...

The problem with Wave was that it had a poor user interface and the 
developers tried to sell it on advanced technical features. Both the 
interface and the explanation tended to give me a headache. ;-)

I have attended hours of Google presentations about Wave, as late as
last week and still could not quite fathom what it was about. Google 
people visited ANU:
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/07/google-talk-on-wave-and-go-in-canberra.html>.

I set one of my Masters students the project of working out what Wave
was. The test was if he could explain it to me in terms I could
understand. ;-)

> ... don't plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product ...

I didn't think Wave was intended as a standalone product. The developers
did not worry about the user interface much and assumed others would 
build their own interface:
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2009/08/google-wave-interface.html>.

However, there are still some powerful ideas in Wave. It is likely to 
re-emerge as the back end of an Android unified communications App.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/