People have some legitimate concerns about Google Wave, myself included. Google posted a wave asking what people like about Wave, and what they don’t like.

It appears they’re taking the gripes pretty seriously.

My personal gripes:

• It’s not a truly federated system
• What good is collaboration software if you have no one with whom to collaborate?
• Any app, native or web, running it uses tons of resources and is a little slow.

Here’s what Google says regarding poll regards:

With these responses and other data, we’re organizing our team around the core issues that are important to making waving better. We’re working hard to scale our systems so you can invite your friends and colleagues to wave with you. We’re also thinking about how to integrate with existing communication and collaboration tools. And since we all know that fast is better than slow, a large portion of the team is working to make Google Wave faster.

Let us know how we’re going with these things and if you are waving feel free to take the survey again and again — we’re interested in seeing how people use Google Wave differently over time. We’ll start writing about what people are actually doing with waves, so let us know about interesting things you’ve tried.

Happy waving!

Posted by Aaron Cheang, User Experience Researcher, Google Wave

Got a gripe with Wave? Let’s hear it in the comments…

link: Punch a Duck: Wave pool… I mean poll…

If you fall into one of these categories, read on:

1. You don’t know how to explain what Google Wave is,
2. You just got a Wave invite, and don’t know where to start,
3. Someone just asked you what Google Wave is, or
4. You were just asked if you wanted an invite, but don’t know what it is

For new users, there is a learning curve. For tech-savvy users, the curve is much shorter. It combines elements of email, instant messaging, wiki, blog, photo gallery, and chat room all in one.

And, you can always provide a link to the very popular YouTube video “Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction.”

But perhaps the best, most concise, most accurate explanation takes form as a single sentence, easily copied and pasted, and from Tim Walker:

Tim Walker: ‘Google Wave is how email would look, if it were invented yesterday’

So, now you know what to say the next time you’re asked “What’s a Google wave?”

Have a better explanation, or really like/dislike this one? Let me hear your rant/praise in the comments.

link: Tim Walker: ‘Google Wave is how email would look, if it were invented yesterday’ – Features, Gadgets & Tech – The Independent