Wave will allow users to insert comments in in-line conversations, in the same way that you might made edits to an email that you have received in the body of that emails (as opposed to in your reply). The difference with Wave is that it annotates this edit with an image of the person that has commented, the date and time. These conversations are hosted as opposed to an isolated email client. It’s kinda like the Facebook Newsfeed but within selected groups of contacts (whereas the Facebook Newsfeed is exposed to all by default).

Within this shared page, users can also send instant messages to individuals – in addition to the messages that can be sent to groups. With today’s IM clients, the user types the message and then clicks ’send’. With Wave instant messaging characters are transmitted in real-time character by character – so as the recipient you can see the message being typed as it is being typed – errors and backspaces and all (presumably).

Why? Google says that with today’s IM services you spend half your time looking at the box looking at the ‘Daniel is typing’ message. This ‘live transmission’ means that readers are reading and responding at the same time. You can start formulating your reply before the other party has finished theres. A check box allows users to switch off this feature.

The Engineering time that developed Wave is lead by two brothers (who also brought us Google Maps) and the work for Wave was completed in Sydney.

New parties can be added to this ongoing conversation by drag and drop. With email this is done by adding the new entrant to the cc: or to: field, which has a downside. This new participant in the conversation won’t be party to the all of the previous back and forth in the email conversation. Wave conversations are hosted, new participants are added to the hosted conversation and the history of that conversation is exposed to the new entrant – kinda like a wiki, which has been updated by two people and then shared with a third for their involvement.

The new entrant is ‘on the Wave’. A playback feature, allows the new entrant to proceed step by step through the history of the conversation, so that they can see how the conversation has developed.

With three participants in the conversation users have the access to send private messages to individuals.

Attachments can be dragged ‘onto the Wave’ and shared with the other participants. Apparently, html5 can’t yet support the dragging of images from the desktop to the browswer. Google is looking to add this to the standard but Gears can allow this to happen.

Google was keen to show off the contextual spell checker in Wave, which auto corrects. The tool has ‘enough confidence’ to auto correct the following: ‘icland is an icland’ (Iceland is an Island).  These principles are applied to URLs which become hyperlinks when they become complete. Wave includes a real-time language translation engine.

A Google Search extension allows users to perform search and view results in the message field, which can then be inserted (links, images, maps) with a single click.

Waves can be embedded in other forms of online media, such as blogs. And third parties – not involved in the original conversation – can respond by sending a message to the original participants.  Google has been working on this for 1 and a half years.

If successful, this will introduce a wide range of new capabilities that will further strengthen Google’s market position as well as opposing vast amounts of user information to Google.  Google stressed the openess of the system (i.e. allowing for developers extensions and add-ons).

Dealing with the YouthForce

The Millenials and Gen Ys are an increasingly important segment of our workforce. This demographic has had the luxury of a prosperous economy during their teenage years and adult life. They haven’t experienced an economic downturn or heaven forbid – an R!

Accenture coined the term user-determined computing. The relates to the increasingly tech savvy workforce and the dramatic increase in the availability of free, customisable and easy to implement software.

The Accenture argument goes that new technology within the workforce is just as likely to be deployed by users as it is by the IT department, which poses the question: How much control should IT (the business) exert over its users in the Web 2.0 world?

In recent years, we’ve seen social networking applications, instant messenging, RSS readers and so on enter the workforce in a big way. They may or may not be being used for work related activities.

Companies are presented with four options:

Get Back to Work Make a Phone Call!

BLOCK: Prevent access to social networks, sites and services that aren’t obviously related to work.

TRUST: Allow access and leave workers to discover their own professional uses for the technology.

APPLY: Work with employees and third party consultants to identify ways in which the technology can be applied to work. Lay down guidelines for the use of social media and other tools in partnership with staff and communicate these guidelines.

MANAGE: Tap into workers enthusiasm for online communication by rolling out a Facebook-like platform for internal (and external with trusted partners) company communications.

Telstra and Channel 7 are two companies in Australia that have received negative media coverage for blocking access to social networks (Facebook in both cases).

It will be interesting to see how the issue of the tightening economy and the use of social networks in the work place converge during the next twelve months. We’ve seen a rash of retrenchments in Australia and around the world, which looks likely to continue.

Recent research by the people at Wikinomics found that 50% of the Net Generations surveyed spend more than 2 hours every day using work technologies (Internet, IM etc.) to complete non-work tasks. 

My bet would be that corporations will increasingly opt to BLOCK as staff are cut back.

The forward thinking companies will respond to this issue by trying to find ways to use new technology to increase productivity in the workplace rather than adopting the punitive BLOCK mentality.  

Here are the results from Wikinomics:

Disclosure: Accenture is a client.