When I first heard rumors of what Wave could be I immediately thought of Basecamp; a leading project management tool. Over a year ago I decided not to bring this app into my development process as client adoption of another communication tool would be hard to swing. Wave made me reconsider; Google has a lot of clout, and with Google accounts being so amazingly handy and ubiquitous, a glimmer of hope built up in my little heart that this could be a game changer.

My Google fandom not withstanding, I was rabbidly anxious to get my invite like everyone else. Finally the day came that the invite graced my inbox. The “now what?” moment was not far behind it.

Building anticipation through an invitation system worked really well for Gmail, and makes lots of other sites (dribbble, fffound, etc.) seem very elite and hip. While the hype and mysteriousness is palpable, the experience is ultimately a let down.

Dare I say it? Did Google make a mistake?

Using Wave

My first experience with the app was probably the same as yours: you (or the person who invited you) created a wave and proceeded to write some inane drivel like “So what is this good for?” and threw in the obligatory Map and Yes/No/ Maybe extension. Did you get any further than this?

I have been trying desperately to get Wave to catch on. In addition to no less than five useless “test” waves with various collegues;

• I have created a wave for an upcoming client site I’m developing
• I am taking part in a wave for a site I help manage
• I recently wrote an entire article for SixRevisions.com solely in Wave.

In the six weeks or so since I’ve had my Wave account I have checked my account every single day. Only the Six Revisions wave has seen any action (because the Editor had no choice but to go to the wave to get his story!) The other two waves sit lonely and unused, gathering dust – they show no sign that they’ve been checked by the shared parties.

What’s wrong?

Polish

Google’s name carries the weight it does because their products have a high degree of polish. I get that tingly Google feeling when I see their brilliant attention to detail in action. Remember the first time you noticed Gmail was autosaving your draft? Or the first time the sidebar recommended you add an event to the calendar?  I feel this love and care is missing from Wave.

Google made it clear that our Wave accounts are previews, and that this is in no way the final product. That said, I think they have taken the “release early, release often” principle too far this time. Here are some must have features I think were needed to make the initial splash more notable (yup, pun intended).

1. The most crucial missing feature is Notifications. The only way to see if your wave has been updated is to go to the Google Wave site. We don’t need new communication tools to monitor, we need them to work with existing tools. Comparable apps like Basecamp at least offer email notifications of updates. I desperately want Wave to be in the upper left navigation of Gmail – before the Calendar. I also need the “unread count” in brackets.Waves are supposed to be email reinvented; but they won’t replace it anytime soon. Email notifications are a no-brainer and are sorely missed from the preview.
2. Project Types – Currently a wave is a blank canvas of opportunity – maybe a little too blank. Blank paper is beautiful and perfect for its limitless potential, but sometimes we need lined paper and graph paper.Templates for different Project-types might be a nice touch.  I love the way Basecamp does this; the project itself is tabbed with areas for Messages, To-Do lists, Milestones, Chats, and Files. I think currently with Wave you’d have to create multiple waves and label them. This is less intuitive, and is a surefire way to alienate less savvy users.
   

   Basecamp's tabbed system is incredibly intuitive

3. Calendar Integration for the aforementioned paradigm of milestones could be an amazing feature to see integrated into the Google Cal. Google has gone out of their way to make the Calendar integrate with other popular calendar clients (This would also act as a handy reminder for people to check their waves more often). Suddenly, Wave becomes a much more dynamic and powerful tool; keeping people organized.The more this new workflow tool can integrate into people’s existing workflow, the better its odds of survival are.
4. Internet Rockstar buy-in – They say that 5% of Internet users make 75% of the noise. I have a feeling a lot of that noise comes from web designers and developers. We are creating content and sites for the Internet, by using the Internet. The medium is the message, and the message is the medium. Currently Wave isn’t trending the best with these users. Win the hearts and minds of the industry’s heroes, and you’ll win in the long run.As bizarre as it seems, there are celebrity web designers out there whose words and blogs carry a lot of weight. I’m not suggesting that Google do anything unsavoury to woo them, but making an app for the people who create amazing apps (albeit on a much smaller scale), takes a little more finess and attention.
5. Settings – Any settings would be better than this “Under Construction” page. It’s an animated gif away from being classic 90′s facepalm worthy. Other Google properties have some incredibly handy settings. I am certain that a sad percentage of users looked at the settings wave, saw there was nothing there, and will never ever check it again.

There is a lot that could be suggested; a more traditional track-changes, wave Export, Android app, easier hide-comments, and letting my clients use their existing email address (I’m not sure I understand the @googlewave.com address). Still, I know this degree of care and attention is the norm with Google, and I expect Wave could be the game changer I’ve been hoping for.

It doesn’t seem like Basecamp has much to worry about yet.

Join the Conversation

I would love to hear your Google Wave suggestions as well as success or horror stories in the comments.

Incidentally, Wave keeps giving me more invites. If anyone else needs one please share your Gmail address in the comments and ask! I will remove this line when I’m out of invites.

Links

Google Wave

Basecamp

Download Issue Three – July 2009 – CMS Nerd PDF 4.3MB

This spring marked the launch of the long awaited Debut Creative website. After three ironic years in business, we finally have a website to call our own! Will it rank well in the 2010 Reboot Contest against Pixel Flex? Stay tuned!

Mobile Web

Kristi and I recently got back from a ten day trip to BC! If all goes according to plan this will be the first vacation of many to all of the provinces and territories in our great country. BC was very friendly, and very plugged-in. In major centers like Vancouver and Victoria I noticed a lot more people using mobile devices to surf the web.

The internet is always evolving, and the leap from the monitor to the handheld is just the next logical step. Is your website accessible by mobile? Should it be?

Many sites don’t warrant special development consideration as many mobile browsers (like Android or the iPhone) can handle regular websites perfectly. Social news site Digg is a perfect distraction for a bored commuter, so m.digg.com is a great example of how a site can be simplified to suit a larger variety of mobile devices without easy scale / zoom ability. One thing is for sure, mobile web is here to stay. Are you surfing mobile? What is your two cents?

More pics at flickr.com/photos/arleym

LINKS

IMG: So what do you do? http://digg.com/d1XTmD
VIDEO: Client / Vendor in Reality http://bit.ly/DCwfL
TXT: Digg takes the time to study the pain of IE 6 http://is.gd/1xeL3

Will You Be Using…

TYPEKIT

Generally all websites use the same handful of fonts – ones common on most OS’s. This is the only way to ensure that the website will look the way the designer intends. Typekit aims to change this. It’s essentially a snappy bit of code that will allow designers to chose any font they choose and render from the server as opposed to the client computer! http://typekit.com

WAVE

Late in May Google announced an open source communication tool that’s in development called Wave. There is so much to this real-time browser app! I’m predicting a paradigm shift in how we communicate with each other. For more check out http://wave.google.com or the more succinct http://bit.ly/gnzlP

BING

Google has been dominating the search engine war since before there was competition. Microsoft’s MSN search has long been ranked in the top 5, but recently they reinvented search with Bing. Early studies find it in close running with Yahoo (a distant second at best), with as much as 16% of search traffic http://www.bing.com

Webby Awards

The internet is a funny thing, it’s hard to stay on top of all the memes, viral and amazing content that is out there. The Webby Awards essentially tries to highlight the best of these with their annual awards – basically the Oscars of web.

The 2009 Webby’s seemed to get more press this year than in previous years. I joined the millions of voters to pick the content I thought most deserving – from a huge array of categories. I consider myself to be very web savvy and was amazed at how few I had heard of!

Now’s the time to catch up. Be sure to check out their site to view the award winning web content that was recognized – and check out the often hilarious famous 5 word speeches. http://www.webbyawards.com/

Facebook Username

Did you snap up your Facebook username URL? On June 12 at midnight the world’s number one social media site Facebook opened up their site to allowing its users to pick their own vanity address. This is largely in response to Twitter’s ever growing popularity, and a way to generate some buzz.

It’s safe to say it worked.

Within 3 minutes over 200,000 users registered. 500,000 in 15 minutes and over 1 million in the first hour. That’s more traffic than my site has ever seen!

I got mine! http://www.facebook.com/arleym

CMSNerd pt 1

Web 2.0 – or highly interactive web, is here to stay. With more and more services empowering the average user to create and maintain their own web presence it only makes sense that they should be able to manage every detail of their own website. So what can we as web producers do to facilitate this?

All but gone are the carefree days of manually sculpting a series of static* pages (these are pages that are set by the code that makes them, changed only by changing the code) and calling it a site. By making use of a Content Management System (CMS) you give the end user the ability to take the reins and control their site content dynamically and without any required knowledge of coding practices.

A CMS is essentially the framework upon which the site is built, – there are literally thousands out there (many great ones are Open Source, thus free). So which is the best for your client? The first considerations are the user’s skill and the primary function of the website. Next you want to consider issues like

• Extendability - are there easy to implement themes, plugins/modules?
• Support - is there an active community around the CMS?
• Adaptability - will the CMS evolve and get better?

It would be impossible to be well versed in all CMS out there, but I try to keep up on a couple that we’ll look at in more detail with the next newsletter; namely WordPress and Drupal.

Open Source CMS – try before you install http://opensourcecms.com
Ten Simple Guidelines for choosing the perfect CMS http://digg.com/d1wUtC
21 Popular Brands that are using WordPress http://digg.com/d1wDQc

In the Next Delightful Issue (maybe)

» Content Management Systems pt 2: Not just for Nerds
» The gory truth about browsers (and IE6)
» And more fun links than you can shake a stick at!

There is a lot of documentation on improving your sites SEO; and it is often broken down into a few key practices:

1. Site accessibility
2. Site Content using keywords
3. Absence of black-hat tactics
4. Relevant links

(You can read about these in detail from many sources, this Boag World article is quite succinct).

It seems a great majority of articles I read, and podcasts I hear on the subject focus on the Accessibility, Content, and Best-practices aspects of SEO, and little is said about the links. 

The very thought of “link backs” for me conjures up a notion of some bake-sale trading game, or worse an expensive ad campaign. I have found personally (as opposed to company SEO) that getting relevant links can be a lot easier and less dreadful. 

In short I think the answer is simple: Enjoy the internet. 

The internet has been like a second home to me for the last fifteen years. I’ve been checking out sites and communities and signing up where I thought some involvement / experimenting / playing were warranted. I almost always have used some variation of usernames like arleymcblain or ArleyM. Sites requiring a username often give you the option to link back to your site, and I happily take that offer every time. 

As a result of these years of exploring the web I rank quite well in Google by my name or username arleym. Admittedly, the uniqueness of my name and choice of username have played a great role in this as well.

These accounts and profiles showing up in search engines could be a curse as well as a blessing – this info may become your first impression.

The internet can be a fun place, so I encourage you to enjoy it and get involved (responsibly of course ;). Sign up, read, watch,  make comments, subscribe, rate, and explore.