When I got my Google Wave account, it took the invitation about a week to arrive. A few days ago, I got my first own invites, and invited some colleagues (in an attempt to actually find a use for Google Wave beyond "rich media live messaging"). Within a few minutes they were "in". Now I just got my second set of invites. So is Google Wave now getting ready for mass opening, rocketing user numbers?

As you might have already guessed, I'm not convinced by Google Wave. It's technically interesting and well-done. The demos are all nice. It's just that the UI in the browser is a bit fragile and cumbersome, and the big question so far is:

What does Google Wave allow you to do that you couldn't do before?

To me, there has been little actual use so far. Wave can do everything, but isn't optimal in any of them:

• You can use it for mail, but it only works with other users of Wave and lacks good offline operation.
• It beats pretty much any instant messaging in functionality, but the UI isn't well for running in background. Most IM clients have a great UI for "background" operation.
• Collaborative editing - I prefer having a real editor and real files for that. Check out Gobby for that. I've heard Wave is good for remote brainstorming, though.
• Social networking, read "facebook". Wave doesn't have all the filtering stuff that Facebook is still trying hard to get useful. Just wait until someone releases "Mafia Wars" for Wave ...
• Blogs. Sure, I could do a 'Blog Wave' and invite my friends there. Makes sense for small-audience private blogs; not for blogs like mine where I mostly write to people that I do not know.
• Games. This probably is the current killer app on Wave: Sudoku. Although the (widespread) implementation sucks somewhat. Magnetic Poetry is a nice idea, but doesn't even work in Chrome for me properly ...
• All the web 2.0 stuff just gets on my nerves. I'm not going to use it for my blog; I by design do not have comments on my blog, either. Being able to web 2.0 everything doesn't make up for a lack in benefits.

Yes, I'm aware that you should differentiate between the protocol and the ui. Still pretty much everything is currently designed for the web browser with full JavaScript and Flash capabilities.

Of course this isn't the end yet, Google Wave will evolve. Maybe into something cool, maybe it will remain just a niche thing. Maybe some cool apps will just use Wave as protocol. But I figure, I'll mostly wait for these things to happen first before I become a frequent user of Wave.

The biggest thing I see is the "spam" (this especially includes 'Quiz', Mafia Wars and similar Scamville type of 'apps' that surely will show up in no time, once Wave is open to the public). What will Wave provide to me to handle this flood of worthless information that I'm getting more and more?

P.S. Please don't bother to ask for invitations to Wave.

P.P.S. here's how to replace the odd scrollbars with the regular OS scrollbars with a really simple user style (CSS).

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