[Pointrel-discuss] "Save Google Wave!" website comments

[Paul D. F. <pdf...@ku...>]

Interesting comments by people (generalizing :-) seeing significant value in 
new collaboration platforms:
   http://www.savegooglewave.com/
"""
Listen to the People!

"I am a Theoretical Physicist and I use google wave for collaborating with 
my colleagues who are in different places around the world. Google wave has 
to be saved ... it is such a brilliant tool ... unfortunately, badly 
advertised (not at all ...). A lot of people would quickly realize its 
potential and the way it can really change collaborative working in a 
positive way."

"Google should just integrate Google Wave's features directly into GMail and 
it will take off big time! "

"I use the wave as a way of communicating with my friends and officers of an 
association that I am in. It has been a lot easier than email to keep up 
with and helps other people working together more."

"I convinced my advisor to use GWave to collaborate on my master's thesis, 
papers, and so on. I also made a Google Docs Apresentation showing how grad 
students could use GWave for papers. I'm very very devastated! please, SAVE 
GOOGLE WAVE"

"I am a technology student and have been working on a fiction novel for past 
few months. I collaborate with my girlfriend for the story who lives across 
the world. Google wave gives us a great way to Add, edit, argue, change, 
disagree and elaborate on the story all at once in real time. I see no other 
tool can provide that in present date. I love it. It's a bit ahead of time 
product for sure, I think it should be worth waiting for people to come up 
with ways to use it in time. "

"I'm a software developer and I use Wave to co-ordinate my team and talk to 
my clients. It's given us much faster feedback than we ever had before, and 
a permanent, shared log of all our discussions. I don't know how I'd be able 
to work without it, as no other tool offers the same combination of features 
(IM, email, wiki)." - Ashley Moran

"I am a teacher in an online school (http://bit.ly/ckjyMy) and use wave as 
part of my class for discussion (led by my questions). The students 
discussions in wave is 40% of their grade. If wave shuts down, I will have 
to find some other online program that does what wave does (don't know of 
one right now)."

"I was very excited when I heard about Wave as it struck me as a 
"fundametally right" approach to collaboration. Due to other personal 
projects I have not yet explored it and it saddens me that it may disappear 
before I even have the chance. I am sure there are millions of other 
not-so-early-adopters like me who will join the party if it is allowed to 
continue. It's probably a slow burner and just needs a bit more time to gain 
traction - not unlike many other truly disuptive technologies."

"Google wave was going to revolutionise the way students, lecturers and 
researchers interacted at university. The extensible nature of wave allowed 
it to be the glue that brought many aspects of day to day tasks together in 
one place. There is nothing else that allows you to collaborate so easily, 
with an ever changing group of people, while embedding a variety of content 
such as links, videos, equations, documents and images. Wave may not have 
been suited to the average Joe, but it was just starting to appear useful to 
'for-profit' organisations. Google have missed out big time by cancelling 
wave before such businesses could asses, test and implement Google wave on 
their Google apps domain. 2 months of public release was not long enough!"

"We use Google Wave to WORK in our little organization. There is NO other 
product that can be compared to Google Wave, thats the very problem. Please 
don't close it! And yes, it should be integrated to gmail, at least with 
labs. Thanks from Chile!"

"Nothing is more cumbersome in an organization than sifting through 
countless email chains with everyone's thoughts and comments. We've found 
Google Wave to be invaluable at my company for providing us a single 
location where we can comment and discuss issues in real-time. If Google 
Wave goes away, then I guess it's back to old-fashioned email..."

"Because I believe in this project and I can see the real possibilities of 
this tool. Wave should be integrated in Gmail and then we would choose the 
tool that suit better for each case of communication."

"My girlfriend was injured in the army, currently almost completely 
quadriplegic, she is also an honor student and has appeared in the dean list 
for 4 years straight. we use google wave for almost all her work as the key 
by key synchronization saves us tons to of time as I help her type her 
assignments and we can enter notes in between etc. save the wave!!!"

"I run a corporate consulting business, providing financial and corporate 
advisory services to a number of small to medium-sized clients. I have 
convinced a number of my corporate clients to adopt Google Wave (indeed, the 
entire Google Apps for Domain Premium suite). Google Wave is incredibly 
useful for project management for our clients. I have found that the Google 
Wave environment offers the perfect balance of structure and free-form. I am 
able to manage agendas, allocate tasks and maintain communication and 
accountability, all within a single, intuitive environment."

I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to use the Wave, just to 
find that it's already going obsolete????? That's crazy, the use of this 
application should be in sci fi series to get it more attention. This 
application isn't perfect, but neither was Email when it first came out. 
Everybody thought that was crazy, even old grannies had a hard time learning 
to use it. We are the "old grannies" of the Wave age, this application is 
meant for our grandchildren to abuse. They'll get it. It's the way of the 
future!!!!!!

"Dear Google, First off I want to THANK you for the creation of the 
ultra-useful utility that is Google Wave. I cannot even describe how 
wonderful it has been for my band to post discussions and important topics 
in real time messages. When we used to just email each other honestly, I 
NEVER read the emails and was often left out of anything important. Not to 
mention the many other uses for Wave with the gadgets and add-ons and 
whatnot. I don't know what it would take, but I would be truly disappointed 
as an avid Google user if Google Wave was taken down for good. I hope that 
countless emails just like this keep pouring in and your Google Mind will 
change. Thank you for your time, Hoping I made a difference, "

"I've recently begun project managing my new startup with Wave - would be a 
massive loss. The very least we deserve is the ability to preserve/export 
Waves so the work and effort we've piled in won't go to loss."

"GW is just GREAT for academics... we usually work in small but 
international teams, often have long-term projects that we need to return to 
after short, medium or long-term absences and often accumulate a lot of 
ideas, references etc that need to be organized into threads but are not 
structured enough to make a document.
Perhaps GW could be re-focussed as an academic tool - then when it is 
refined and improved, re-release to the general public.."

"Wave is so perfect for writers and filmmakers! I'm developing a sketch 
comedy show and we conduct all business through Wave; we use it as a message 
board, IM client, Wiki of new sketch ideas, and just as Wave to do the more 
intense side of collaboration; things like brainstorming, even in person. 
The realtime text means that with one person typing, and everyone else with 
their own screen, we can get all of our ideas down. I was really 
disappointed to hear they were shutting it down, I've gotten such immense 
value out of it, I was looking forward to watching it grow."

"I am a computer systems engineer and I do lots of voluntary work with lots 
of my colleagues. We use Google Wave as our basic communication tool and 
collaboration. It's just too amazing! I check my wave before checking my 
email. I was shocked when I heard that Google is shutting it down. Such an 
amazing tool! I have no idea how we used to collaborate before Google wave! 
Bring back Google Wave!"

"I am a telecommunications postgraduate and was following Wave's development 
until its release as I was eager to see how it will change the web. And it 
certainly triggered some changes. An integration with Gmail would've been 
logical from my point of view and more people would've used it. I see ways 
of using it for my freelance job as a web technician as Wave provides users 
with extended collaboration tools and I was looking forward to see more from 
3rd parties developers.!"
"""

Anyway, with the reporting plans to discontinue Google Wave (although Google 
says it plans to still use/support some underlying technology), I have a 
little bit more energy to go back to Pointrel.

I also put some comments here:
"The need for open source sensemaking tools (Score:5, Interesting)"
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1746980&cid=33177866

I've started some experimental coding on a "many worlds" approach to 
managing triples.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of 
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.