JISC Access Management Team

OK, so I haven’t written a post for a while due to uber-travelling mode and when I do, it is completely off topic. I finally got around to having a play with Google Wave yesterday. I knew I wouldn’t get very far unless I set myself a task to manage, but luckily @simonmcleish noticed my plea for a use case and suggested we carry out a long over due interview with regard to attribute aggregration. This is something I have been known to have opinions about, so seemed like something that would keep us entertained for a while.

First impressions? Easy enough to use and as we were having a two-way dialogue we were able to give each other hints on what do to. I couldn’t work out how to insert a comment half way through an existing text without prompting (double click on the words before you want to add a comment, not the white space after!). It was also convenient for the task at hand as we both had several other things to do that day and were able to have a fairly in-depth interview whilst popping out and taking phonecalls. Convenience marks - good. A good way to have a discussion online? Probably yes.

We didn’t try to upload files or anything like that so i can’t comment on this experience but again, assume this would be quite a convenient way to collaborate on files. However, I’m not sure it would be any more useful than several other collaboration tools that are out there.

Would I use Wave as a primary communication tool? Probably not. I like the fact that my e-mail address expresses my affiliation and therefore I can speak from it with a certain amount of authority. My Google account (particularly as I don’t use my name in my Google identity) really says nothing about me. Simon brought this up at the beginning of the interview, given that we were talking about verified identities! I also do not want to be limited to finding out what everyone’s Google Wave ID is - I have a nightmare of my e-mail signature getting longer and longer (phone, fax, mobile, twitter, skype, Google Wave, blog….).

As an IM tool? Google Wave has the same drawbacks as all other IM tools in that they are limited to accounts within the same system (with the exception of tools such as Pidgin, where you lose functionality instead). The market is already well covered and again, I have no incentive to really establish my identity in Google Wave other than, say, MSN.

A good collaboration tool? Google Wave is this and I imagine we will see it grow and improve. I already regularly use Google Docs with my team because of the convenience it offers and I guess I will pop in to Wave should it offer us functionality we need at certain points in time. As a communication tool? No thanks, not really ready to ride the Wave as yet.