Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype | Hacker News Reader

Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype

scobleizer.com

36 pointsFlemlord18 comments

First of all, the guys at Google have been padding this landing pretty well. At least for people who are paying attention. They're quick to stress that wave is a protocol and a platform with take-over-the-world potential and that this initial client that we're playing with is just one example of what can be done with it.

That said, I agree with this article completely. The wave client is an absolute nightmare to use. Stuff is blinking and flashing all over the place. People are adding comments up and down waves will-nilly and there's no good way to tell where changes are happening. There's a decent amount of latency with every single character I type, which basically kills my thought process and typing ability. Switching waves is a multi-second proposition that beach-balls FF on my Mac Pro.

Even if all these bugs were ironed out, I don't see why or how I would ever use it. I would have given pretty much exactly the same review a couple of months ago when I started using the wave sandbox, so whatever progress they've made hasn't made much of a difference so far. Maybe they're onto something and wave as a protocol will end up replacing a bunch of old web protocols which people have tried and failed to replace for years, but, at this point, I wouldn't bet on it.

"Google’s Wave will crash hard onto the beach of overhype" coming from the man who said World Wide Telescope made him cry. (WWT is nice, but I can't imagine it making anyone cry). Why does the web always seem to reward those who make the most exaggerated and outlandish statements?

He only seems to addresses the Google wave client in his complaint, when there's much more to it. If he doesn't like their implementation he could implement his own with their federation protocol.

On a side note, why does he say new things can come in at the bottom? From my limited use of the dev preview new stuff is always coming at the top of my wave inbox.

> Why does the web always seem to reward those who make the most exaggerated and outlandish statements?

Because the web is a subset of 'the media' and that's where the same thing happens.

Let's be happy that at least it doesn't make sound (for the most part) or we'd have aggressive voices touting products while you're looking at a page.

I treat Scoble's view of Wave with the same reverence I'd apply to his views on TokyoTyrant. He's not an opinion-leader on this one as far I'm concerned.

I'm not actually sure who Scoble is (apart from being some guy with a blog) but he's some guy who's been using it and has bothered to write a lengthy blog post on what he thinks of it, so that makes his views worth something.

I've been playing with it, and I think I agree with him on most points -- it is awfully difficult to follow a conversation, and I'm not sure whether I'm going to be able to find a use for it once the initial "Hey folks, my wave invite finally came through!" conversations die down.

A view does not intrinsically have worth just because of it's existence. Scoble is a tech-evangelist; someone who uses technology and not someone who builds upon it. As someone who builds things, I value the perspective of folks who will build on Wave.

I've personally found Google Wave to be really useful for communicating and collaborating with others (certainly much more so than any other options: IRC, Email, IM). I've been using it over the past few months in the Wave Sandbox, collaborating with other developers on small projects, and I have to say its features are really useful and nice. It's got even more potential as a platform, and developers are just starting to show some of that with Wave extensions.

I didn't have a chance to try it out yet, but from their demos, it looks like it could easily replace Basecamp for many small teams.

I was thinking the same thing. As a matter of fact, my next project (in few months) will be collaborated on wave. The twitter "bot" also removes the need to rely on a twitter client for updates. With open API the concept of one interface for all clients makes it very interesting to me.

I don't remember the last time I was excited about about a web app, like I am with wave.

My experience has been much the same as yours. Although I have to wonder how many web-apps are going to have their functionality subsumed by wave.

Not sure why the whining. Wave is not for everyone the same way twitter is not for everyone and IM is not for everyone.

I haven't got any invite yet on Wave, but I can see a lot of potential of this platform and I can already see myself using it extensively when it hits "mainstream".

I don't think wave is just "another thing" that will distract you from your work. I think wave already has the potential to get rid of 3-4 external services I depend on and it just started.

Most important. Its free and open source.

Not sure why the whining

Mostly because the hype was huge and the product is, to many people, a bit of a letdown.

Well, I've been using Wave in the sandbox since July, and I think it rocks pretty good. So there.

if you have trouble keeping up with your inbox, let alone all your rss/twitter feeds this is going to be like trying to monitor multiple active irc channels in real time.

i do not deny there is good value here, especially for bot stuff. the information overload is going to be daunting for many.

I'd like to have an actually meaningful conversation in a Wave (one not about Wave itself) before I render judgment. Unfortunately the only people in my Wave contact list are waxy and Joe Gregario because I've emailed them each a while back.

send me an invite, and we can talk about something... drkrool-gmail

Google Wave's chat.

I remember fondly the joy of getting access from a family friend to a Internet-connected VAX account in the early 90's so I could use the 'talk' command to chat in real-time (see characters typed).

So you mean it won't reboot the internet?

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