Google introduces new wave of applications

Silicone Vallley internet giant Google announced its latest project in Sydney last week.

Wave combines email, live chat and social networking updates into one, while maintaining a live collaboration platform that enables users to be more efficient and versatile.

Editor of the Tumeke blog Tim Selwyn says Wave will cut down time for bloggers and help drive people toward their blog.

“It has great potential for anyone in communications, it will make it easier to communicate through a range of platforms and that will help drive traffic to create more advertising money.

“You can have an author without the need of staff, so I could be sitting in my spare room and have the power to update at any time.”

According to industry supporters Wave will change the face of the worldwide web when it is launched publicly at the end of the year.

Developers Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the masterminds behind Google Maps, said on the official Google blog that the application is currently in its final stages of development.

Lars describes Wave as “equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more”.

Wave’s groundbreaking features include FriendFeed where collaborators can add text and photos and slide shows in real time.

Other features include Spelly – which intuitively corrects spelling errors (for example ‘Icland is an Icland’ becomes ‘Iceland is an island’) and Rosy which translates a live conversation into nearly any language.

Jeff Jarvis, associate professor and director of the interactive journalism programme at the City University of New York said on his blog Buzzmachine.com: “Wave will change the way people collaborate and create content.

“Imagine a team of reporters – together with witnesses on the scene – able to contribute photos and news to the same Wave(formerly known as a story or a page). One can write up what is known; a witness can add facts from the scene and photos; an editor or reader can ask questions. And it is all contained under a single address – a permalink for the story – that is constantly updated from a collaborative team,” says Jarvis.

Wave will be available for free on Google’s site by the end of the year although an official date has not yet been set.