Google Wave can be pretty complicated to understand at first. My father sister and I are still trying to get the hang of it, but as we start to understand it more, the more I see just how useful it can be in the future.
My dad posted earlier today about how we had our first real 3-way conversation today without all the lag and having to wait for waves to synchronize. It was pretty neat to be able to see my sister and father type at the same time and be able to see exactly what they were writing at the time they were writing it. I think it will also be great to be able to turn off this feature which they say will be able to happen later on. If you're waving with your boss, you dont want them to see some of the mistakes that you make at first with your typing. We've all been there, quickly seen our mistake, and then pressed the backspace key to fix it. Unfortunately with Google Wave now, you can see those mistakes. This is fine for talking with your father and sister in a casual chat room, but not what you want to happen in a business meeting.
In terms of editing someone else's wave, this is still where I get a bit confused. I took a screen shot of our wave so that you could understand what we are talking about. I will also introduce the UI so you can understand it more.
Basics:
As you can see, Google Wave is just another tab on my internet browser, which happens to be Google Chrome. On the left hand side, you can see the navigation tool bar, which is pretty much like most people see on their e-mail. Below that typically is where your contacts are at. I wish there was a way to see if your contact was online, but typically they are just sitting there with their name, and a little hard-to-see picture. With my screenshot, you can see that the contacts toolbar is actually up top for me next to wear it says google wave preview. Any time I want to see my contacts, I can just press the picture of the two little windows and it will pop down for me.
In the center is where all my wave conversations are at. On the left side of that little window you can see pictures. This tells you who is involved in that wave conversation. What I don't like about this is that you can only see their pictures, so if you are like my dad and sister who have not uploaded a photo yet, it has a generic picture for you.
On the right hand side is where you can see the open wave conversation. As you can see, on the left hand side of that window is who wrote that specific message in the wave. If you see multiple pictures, it means that someone edited that message. You can even reply in the middle of a message and break it up according to if you want to respond to one part of that message. You can also flat-out edit it so that the original message gets changed.
So far it looks like when you edit it, you have to highlight what you changed on your own. Sometimes it can get confusing, and I do hope that they change it to make it more obvious as to what has been changed in the message.
I hope you might be a little less confused as to what is going on with Google Wave as this blog keeps going and we ourselves start to figure out a little bit more about what is going on. I'm sure my dad and sister can help to explain what is going on better than I can as they are much better at the technical things especially my father than I am.
Until next time,
Gabrielle
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