Google Wave

Now and then, something comes along, wastes a bit of my time then buggers off again. A kind person on Twitter decided I was worthy of an invite to Google Wave and in due course it arrived. The next day I set about trying to get to grips with it. I had watched Google's "Looooong Video" of a Developer Preview Presentation, but I can't remember much about it other than a lot of developers getting wet over what they were being shown and a Scandinavian bloke making bad jokes.

I logged in, which was fairly easy and straight-forward. Then it went downhill from there. The first thing I noticed was how shit it looked. I wasn't expecting the Mona Lisa in html form but I was expecting something more than one of Facebook's hand-me-downs. That didn't bother me too much as some of the best things in life don't actually look that great, including sex organs, genetic mutation and Tony Hancock.

After that disappointment I went on to the next one which was finding out that it doesn't do anything. It didn't immediately sing and dance and contrary to what I've heard, didn't have any bells and whistles on it. That didn't bother me too much because if anything, bells and whistles can be a bit annoying when you're trying to get things done. Anyway the point of this paragraph is that with my only friend, or 'contact' as Google Wave likes to call him, confirming my belief that 'the Wave' will be more at home in boardrooms and advertising agencies rather than on my laptop whilst I'm chatting bullshit, un-tagging myself in photos and scratching my balls, often simultaneously. Where was I? Oh yeah. With my only contact offline, I was quite limited as to what functions I could test. The first thing I tried to do was to install an app or a 'gadget' as the Wave's Newspeak calls it. I don't know much about apps or gadgets but I know enough to sense Inspector Gadget turning in his grave.

I knew somehow that you can do Twitter in the Wave so I tried to get something going with that. After about 45 minutes trying to get the Wave to do whatever it does to get Twitter coming through and failing in so many ways it's annoying me to think about writing about it so I'm not going to, I deleted all trace of it on my account. Needless to say I decided that the Twitter website actually handles Twitter quite well itself so I'll stick with doing it that way.

I thought there must be more to this stupid thing than having a little profile pic and an embedded Youtube video hanging around like a bad smell so I went about trying to find some new apps, nay gadgets, to try and spice up may page of rectangles and words; a mission in itself as tedious as it was frustrating. At last I discovered something-or-other that made Wikipedia come through on my Wave, in theory.

I copied the url for this gadget and pasted it into my contacts list, a process quite odd and until I found out about on some other website 10 minutes later, quite hidden. Then nothing happened. So I double-clicked around the screen and eventually something popped up suggesting two html codes that will make Wikipedia come through on my Wave. After lengthy attempts and variations on what I thought the instructions could mean I gave up. If I ever do need to bring Wikipedia through on my Wave, which I doubt I ever will, I'll push aside the disappointment with the satisfaction that I already wasted 15 minutes of my life on it and I stopped before it wasted any more of my quality wasting time.

After that, I decided that the only way forward on this son of a biscuit would be to get some contacts. I advertised on Twitter, and one brave soul stepped forward. Five minutes of deciphering yielded the knowledge required to add my contact which I did and we set about communicating. Like we do in chatrooms... and Facebook... and Twitter... and emails... and sometimes real life. You're probably asking 'why's that so great?' Well, in Google Wave, when you type, people can see the letters coming on the page as you type them. You're probably asking 'why's that so great?' Well, it isn't. In fact, it's a little bit embarrassing. We persevered with that for a two or three minutes then went back over to Twitter to finish up.

By this stage I still had a little bit of faith left for the over-hyped old bugger so I thought if I can succeed in getting some games to come through on my Wave everything would be alright; I'd have a bit of fun, let off some steam and take away a little bit of positivity. Did I fuck. The one game I managed to get going was a Sudoku app (I'm not even gonna call them gadgets anymore). Pretty straight-forward you'd think? No. You type a number into a box and it disappears. You try another number. It disappears too. You try all the numbers from 0-9. One stays in there; the correct one. The whole point of Sudoku is that you get half way through the thing then realise you fucked it up 8 moves ago by putting the wrong number in! All the other games looked shit so I decided that my Xbox 360 actually handles games pretty well so I’ll stick with that.

I picked the laptop up and threw it against the opposite wall then walked over to it, repeatedly smashed it up and down on the side of the table then brought it down on my head, adorning myself with a rather dandy cybernetic necklace. Then I snapped out of my fantasy, slowly shut down the my laptop's monitor and went outside for a smoke. I don't even smoke. Or own any cigarettes. My house doesn't even have an outside! That's how stressful it all was.

So if you've made it through to the end of this post, you deserve some advice. If you're still canvassing around for an invite you'd be better off trawling websites for a kind German that will agree to let you come to his house then kill you and eat you, for all the good it will do you. Would I have faired better if I read the instructions? Probably. Is that the sort of thing someone with a 21st Century attention span would've done? No.