Google Wave to be launched soon, for some

BEIJING, September 8 (Xinhuanet) --

Earlier this year, Google announced it was to launch a new product which would

transform the way people communicate on the Internet. Google Wave is now set to

arrive and be tested by 100,000 people who have preregistered to try out the new

offering from the Internet search giant.

On September 30th, the invitions will go out by email. And Google has also announced that it is opening up Google Wave to some schools and businesses that use Google Apps.

Despite the company not having a set date for release, the

excitement and hype surrounding Google wave is growing exponentially. "We don't

have a specific time-frame for public release, but we're planning to continue

working on Google Wave for a number of months more as a developer preview," the

company said in a statement.

This is not just email or a way of sending data to someone

else. Google Wave has been dubbed as "game-changing" by Mashable, a technology

website. The new Google product, for those having a Google account, is likely to

change dramatically upon its launch, especially within business, education,

customer service, email and social networking.

Google describes its new baby as "a new model for

communication and collaboration on the web" which will enable "participants on a

wave to have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in

real-time." In GMail, Google's email system, conversations can be connected in

what is called a thread. But Wave goes a step further enabling editable

conversations to develop. Effectively it's rewriting the rules of email, Google

says.

In Google Wave a user can create a wave and add people to

it. Everyone on the wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and

even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the

wave directly. Instant messaging is virtually instantaneous in Wave with text

appearing as typed on the recipients computer, thus saving time. Several people

can be involved in conversations and in addition private conversations may be

inserted into the thread.

Media can be shared easily with files being simply dragged

from the desktop and dropped into a conversation thread. But there are still

development issues. Designed around the new HTML 5 (Hyper Text Mark-up Language

5) those using older browsers, such as Internet Explorer 6, will be unable to

use it. And as yet even HTML 5 is still lagging behind the development of

Google's latest venture. Thus for some functions to work Google Gears has to be

downloaded. Development of mobile interfaces are also not complete. But to

develop the product better Google is releasing a "lion's share" of the source

code to enabling developers come up with solutions and more applications.

When complete, Wave promises to benefit many in easing

communication. Advances include a contextual spell check, so someone typing "can

I have been soup" would be corrected automatically to "can I have bean soup".

The product can also facilitate simultaneous translation, so that one user may

type in French while it automatically translates into English or any other

appropriate language.

Wave is fully integrated with Google's own social

networking site Orkit but it also enables integration of Twitter and other

social networking sites, as well as the embedding of video from sites such as

YouTube. People can share a rich source of of information; video, maps,

documents and conversation. Maps may not only be inserted into conversation

threads but also edited by those taking part, such as adding tags and labels.

Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add

participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the

wave to see who said what and when, particularly useful if a user has not seen

the development of a conversation whilst being offline.The whole thing adds up

to a powerful business tool.

A collaborative environment could build greater

interactivity between businesses and individuals and create a better learning

environment, Mashable's Ben Parr suggests. In the educational environment

proofreading and the writing of papers would become easier and more coherent. It

could also provide interactive tutoring from home. But it's not all serious.

Some applications enable participants to engage in online games like chess or

sudoku.

It is unclear when all Google account users will have

access. Some technology sites point to as late as 2010 as a general launch date

since Google has much to do in terms of refining the product. It also has to

build consumer confidence given recent failures in its GMail service which

suffered an outage lasting nearly two hours earlier this month. More and more

people are relying on cloud-computing, not only for email but also for the

storage of files, documents and pictures. While data may not be lost from a web

app outage, losing access for an hour or two can be aggravating and in some

cases costly. But then no system is fail safe. In a 2007 study by both Carnegie

Mellon University and Google respectively, anywhere from 2 to 13 percent of all

hard drives will fail in a given year.

(Agencies)