Seismic Wave
Google's new communication platform will cause a seismic-shift from the status-quo.
David Bailey About the author
"Users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more." Wave.Google.com
In sunny Silicon Valley, the team that invented Google Maps have been searching for a new challenge; one that could top their already impressive string of engineering achievements. They turned their attention to Email - a tool which has survived nearly half a century - and asked "what would it look like if we had invented it today?". 1 Lars Rasmussen, Google I/O, 27 May 2009
Google tackled two fundamental weaknesses in Email which are contrary to our modern way of working. The first was isolation, and the second, duplication - two words which seldom appear in our "Web 2.0" vocabulary.
Email has become so entrenched in our daily workflow that most of us have accepted the status-quo. It's worth considering the process of sharing an email with colleagues to illustrate the problem...
Having composed an Email in isolation, the author hits the 'send' button and each recipient instantly receives a copy of the note. Then, in isolation, each respondent creates further duplications by replying, forwarding and making carbon copies. As the email tree grows and occasionally loops back on itself it's not long before the paper-trail becomes
