Is anyone else using Google Wave as a PIM? I've become increasingly excited about this. I really like the data model... the ability to work with discrete chunks (I know some people are using Outlook as a PIM in a similar way), or the ability to work in connected chunks (like pre-web Evernote), or the ability to work in structured notes (logically constructed like a tree). The ability to collaborate is in some sense a nice bonus.

More than the data model though, I love the idea of being able to assign virtual agents ("robots") to watch and cultivate your notes, for instance to bring forward a note with a deadline date a few days before it is due, like a tickler file. (Note: I'm just speculating about this feature; there is no robot like this currently.)

Also exciting is the prospect of multiple "front-end" applications to edit your note store. There are already a handful of non-Google Wave front ends, and there will be more, in the same way that there are multiple e-mail clients today. Wave is also iPhone/Android accessible now via the web, and custom mobile apps are also on their way. Once the federation component is in place, you won't have to entrust your personal data to Google's servers either.

Is anyone else excited about this? I've been using Wave as a note store for the last couple of weeks and have found it to be usable even at this early stage. Tagging and smart searches for instance work well. (Right now file attachments seem only to work reliably in WebKit-based browsers, but it does support PDF attachments with automatic thumbnail generation, which is nice.)

-- Chris

If you've still got an invite to spare, I could answer that for you

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

If you've still got an invite to spare, I could answer that for you

That's more or less exactly what I was thinking. :)

I saw the potential for using Wave as a PIM almost the minute I finished watching the keynote speech video when they introduced it. It is, alas, a little too early to say what the potential is largely because I haven't been able to get my hands on it.

Tom S.

I have a few invites left to give...

The UI as it is now does not lend itself to using as a PIM (IMHO), but the Wave infrastructure/API could. AFAIK, there is no support for data columns however, so possibly, a 1-pane or 2-pane outliner with robots to do some tricks.

If you can spare one I would like to try Google Wave.

Tom S. wrote:

>If you've still got an invite to spare, I could answer
that for you

That's more or less exactly what I was thinking. :)

Same here! I registered the minute I learnt about it, but still no news. I have restrained myself from giving my mail to the various third party sites that say they can get thousands of invites. (So Pierre, please please please!)

From a theoretical standpoint: as others here have mentioned (I recall Jack Crawford in particular) much of our workflow revolves around email and communications. It would therefore make much sense to organise one's information around that communication as well --as long as it can make sense. The Google Wave team has correctly identified that email / IM and the like lack the consistency and continuity of conversations and have proposed what looks like a very powerful framework to replace them with.

I am uncertain to what extent Google Wave can work as an all-round solution, as it is relies on the ephemerous nature of communication; would it really make sense to get one's long-term digital library on Google Wave? --I think not. However, I am quite certain that it makes much more sense to organise communication through Google Wave, rather than transferring selected items to other PIMS, e.g. from Outlook to Ultra Recall.

My idea is to integrate Google Wave within a broader PIM framework. The alternative would be to have a very powerful PIM that can handle communication as well; the latest Zoot, currently on Beta, integrates everything from e-mail to Twitter.

Hi Alexander,

Invite was sent out. Others can contact me through the InfoQube web site.

http://www.infoqube.biz

And would Alexander care to share with the rest of us? :)

It can take a few hours / days for the invite to be sent...

Quote from Google Wave:

> Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

I'm now out of invites. As 6 of us are regular OutlinerSoftware users, we may start a parallel OutlinerSoftware discussion and report back the pluses and minuses of it as a discussion group framework.

WKYP

I still have a couple of invites. I can be contacted at lastname.firstname at X.com; where lastname is my last name and firstname is my first, and X is gmail.

Also, I think PPL's idea of a Wave thread is a good one.

-- Chris

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

I'm now out of invites. As 6 of us are regular OutlinerSoftware users, we may start a
parallel OutlinerSoftware discussion and report back the pluses and minuses of it as
a discussion group framework.

WKYP

FYI I got an invite from another friend. Haven't gotten any to give out, yet. If you want to include me in discussion: tshanno@gmail.com

Tom S.

Many thanks to Pierre-Paul for the invite. The experience of Google Wave has been very interesting indeed. Here are my initial conclusions:

- As a communication tool, Google Wave is one century ahead of e-mail and instant messaging. I can't wait to get invites so that I can get my collaborators on Wave. It will save innumerable hours of searching through e-mail.

- That said, like with every communication tool, one needs to follow a few rules to facilitate order, structure and flow. I'm sure that people who (in e-mail) respond to an irrelevant message in their inbox because they can't be bothered to look for one's address, will still manage to create disorder. I'm glad that my first Wave experience was with people who care about structure :-)

- As an outliner, Wave has a long way to go before it offers some of the minimum functionality that we are used to in this forum --and I doubt that it even wants to get there. For example, responses within a normally flowing conversation are simply stacked under each other; one must deliberately respond _within_ someone else's 'blip' (message) text for that response and all that follow to become subsidiary to that blip. also, only then does one get a +/- bubble allowing them to hide that branch of the conversation.

To summarise: for communication, Google Wave can replace e-mail and instant messaging tomorrow and no-one will want to go back. But it is not meant to be a PIM, and Google usually gets where its aiming for.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

- As
an outliner, Wave has a long way to go before it offers some of the minimum
functionality that we are used to in this forum --and I doubt that it even wants to get
there. For example, responses within a normally flowing conversation are simply
stacked under each other; one must deliberately respond _within_ someone else's
'blip' (message) text for that response and all that follow to become subsidiary to
that blip. also, only then does one get a +/- bubble allowing them to hide that branch of
the conversation.

I would agree and add that the inability to associate your "reply" with more than one blip is a disadvantage.

Tom S.

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

I'm now out of invites. As 6 of us are regular OutlinerSoftware users, we may start a
parallel OutlinerSoftware discussion and report back the pluses and minuses of it as
a discussion group framework.

I was granted 13 more invites today, so anyone interested can contact me

http://www.infoqube.biz/Contact-Info

I have 18 Wave invites. First come first serve. If you twitter just DM me @lesliesrussell and I'll give ya one or post your email addy here if you are brave.

Google appears to be opening GW to make it much more accessible. Let's hope is scales well...

hi leslie. If you have any wave invites left, I'd appreciate one... thanks in advance.

tcperconti at gmail dot com

Leslie and others, you can contact me via Wave (my username there is sympraxisa at googlewave dot com) so that I can add you to the outliner discussion there.

Hi all,
Many thanks to Pierre for your invitation to Google Wave. It took Google four days to hand the invite over to me.
You can wave me by using this address: dholenstein[at]googlewave.com

I plan create a private wave for daily logging activities.
Don't know yet whether it will be useful or not.

The initial excitement obviously having faded, it's been quite a while since there was any discussion on outliners in Google Wave. I hope that eventually it will be possible to publish a wave on a public website (Google has hinted as much) so that what we did is available as a resource.

In the meantime, the ConceptDraw Mindmap company, CS Odessa, have launched MindWave, "a no-charge gadget that facilitates mind mapping and brainstorming in Google Wave". See this link for a demo http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/mindwave/conceptdraw_mindwave.php

Google Wave users will find there instructions on installing it.