Published: 12.Nov.2009, 19:12 | Views: 151

So, I got the Google Wave invite the other day. I've been waiting for it for months. Since I saw it on Google I/O video, I was in love. I've been "using" it for a few days, and I decided to write my first hand experiences with it, and some sort of a review. Since Wave is still a preview, it's sort of a preview review.

My first impressions are good. It's not hard to figure out how to work with Wave, how to make new waves, and all that basic usage. Since configuration is still not available, I'll have to comment it on another occasion. You will be presented with "Welcome to Google Wave", a wave which contains videos from dr. Wave, on how to use this service. If you were invited by Google, like me, you will immediately have the ability to invite others to the service. Invitations are not sent right away, but they do tipically arrive within 48 hours.

What I noticed when joining big waves, with more than 200 messages, is that it's real slow. At work, on a 6Mbit cable link, Firefox froze about 4-5 times until it loaded the entire wave. Typing a message is also slow, and can cause Firefox to freeze for a couple of seconds, until synchronization is complete. On my home 1Mbit ADSL I noticed a unsynced waves (or something similar, I can't remember now) message. I imagine all that real-time collaboration is generating quite a traffic. I believe Google team will do their best to optimize performance, so even us mere mortals with slow internet will be able to use Wave as it was meant to be used. These are my initial impressions, which are, given we are looking at the preview version, quite good.

As the development progresses, and the service gets better, I'll keep on writing my preview review, and later on a full wavey review about Google Wave.

Keep surfin'...