Update: The contest is now over, and here are a few of the winners.
Want an invitation to Google Wave? Tell us what you’re going to use Google Wave for, and we’ll nominate the folks who describe the best use case.
Google was kind enough to give us a few dozen extra Wave nominations, and we want to give them to people who will put Wave through its paces in real-world situations. We’re not going to ask you to write a haiku, but we are going to ask you to tell us how you’ll use your invite. Here’s how this will work.
To enter the contest, send an email to wave-invite at lifehacker.com, subject line “How I’ll use Google Wave.” In the email, answer these three questions:
1.) What does your workgroup do or make?
2.) What software tools does your workgroup currently use to collaborate?
3.) Why would Wave make that collaboration easier?
The more detailed you can get without getting too lengthy, the better. We’ll pick the entries that illuminate original and world-changing ways to use Wave. If you’ll be saving babies with Wave, we’ll pick you. If you just want in to brag to your friends you got past the velvet rope, we won’t pick you. Developers, if you have coding skills and ambitious and fantabulous ideas for extending Wave, include those in your response.
By sending us the email, you’re giving us permission to publish it or parts of its content on Lifehacker and Smarterware, where we will feature some of the best Wave use cases we receive. As such, don’t mention full names or other private information you wouldn’t be comfortable splashing all over the internet. You do need to enter the contest via email so that we have your email address. We won’t use your address for any other purpose than to nominate you for a Wave invite. We will not publish your email address, and we’ll only use first names when quoting the use cases we publish.
The more creative and interesting your submission is, the more likely we are to pick it. Hint: if you make an awesome video or send us annotated screenshots of your current workflow, your submission will be more likely to stand out.
We’ll take submissions today through Tuesday and start sending out nominations next week. Keep in mind that nominations take some time to turn into invitations, and Google is currently working through a backlog.
Good luck! Most importantly, get creative and have fun telling us how you’ll do great things with Wave!
21 Comments
Nathan Stanford II
I view Wave as not only a collaboration tool but a way to completely change the way people interact with the web. I see a future where people can build API’s that will allow me to completely run a shopping cart website all with Wave as the backend. I plan on using Wave to help me collaborate with like minded people on creating amazing applications and uses for it. I really would want to start building API’s to make this happen. That is what I would use Wave for…to begin to change the way people interact with websites and the internet in general!
weems
I would use it to make notes for college class and as a collaboration tool for group projects. And I would use it as a way to work on programming applications.
Gharik Brown
I would use it for collaborations with a project I and about five others are working on. I have been thinking about Wave as I have to remind people to hit “Reply All”, so simple…..
We have the building, we have people spread around town working of different work schedules. I would love to learn/implement Wave.
Here’s the Elevator speech.
LangLab represents an opportunity to introduce South Bend to a sustainable business model supporting the arts and culture. Our vision is to support a wide variety of opportunities and events that highlight the generosity, joy, determination and creativity that exists within our very own community. We have purchased a space that will allow us to support a number of income-generating opportunities that support this vision including 1) lease of co-working and private office space, 2) A venue which will accommodate various local and regional musicians, host public forums, and small theater productions, 3) rental of working artist studio space, 4) large group meeting space rental.
LangLab is a unique model in a number of ways. First, our business model is built on profitability and sustainability. Although we do not intend to get rich off of LangLab, we decided intentionally that we did not want to be a non-profit; we wanted to bring to South Bend an understanding that the only way to obtain a vibrant and expansive artistic community is to pursue stability. Due to our extremely low overhead and operational costs, we are able to support the financial needs of the business easily, without reliance on donations or grants. Our management team is firmly focused on achieving financial stability so that we can provide a long-term service to the community.
http://langlabsb.wordpress.com/
wvpv
1.) What does your workgroup do or make?
We build database-driven websites for non-profits.
2.) What software tools does your workgroup currently use to collaborate?
We currently use e-mail, Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets.
3.) Why would Wave make that collaboration easier?
Google Docs and Spreadsheets are nice when multiple team members are collaborating, however, when you start dealing with e-mails, there’s a lot of repetitious and often redundant communication that happens outside of the Google Docs. Someone has to tie those streams of communication back to the shared documents. My understanding is that Google Wave would keep a lot of that communication in one place.
Google Wave would also provide some accountability, I think. When everyone is working and collaborating in the same place, using the same tool, where everyone can see what everyone else is working on, it tends motivate the team toward greater participation.
tech-geek
I work for a small K-12 public school district. I’d like to see how Wave will impact education for both the students and the teachers. We’ve done work with blogs, wiki, and moodle – each has their merit – but I think the collaborative power hinted at in Wave could really bring things together. The power and (eventual) polish of Google behind the project should lend credibility to the skeptics.
Gina Trapani
Hi all–I can’t take submissions via comments, pleasepleaseplease follow the directions and email your official submissions into wave-invites at lifehacker.com. Thanks!
fuyuasha
This is more like a ‘invite recommendation’, then sit on your hands for an indeterminate amount of time – very frustrating Mr. Google.
Gina – neat offer but can you fly over to Oz and make the auto-responder mice spin the wheels faster ?!
Cheers
Gharik Brown
Oopa feel free to delete mine..
NilColor
I’d like to try to use it for my team projects collaboration.
We need to discuss future API, current tech things and share ideas.
My team is not international but we have a few miles between us. So its good to have real-time collaborative tools under the hood.
Currently we use jabber as a discussion platform but this have some drawbacks – not so easy to split chat timeline into useful chunks of ideas. Wave is a good sample of that chunk of… You can start discussion about, say “OK… i need some data to fill this dropbox, but its doesn’t supported by current API. Let’s do this this way. Agree?” And Wave start its life! And finally i/smbd else can edit API doc (which is Wave too)…
Isn’t it beautiful?
NilColor
Too fast 😉
E-mail sent. You can del my comment
Alessandro
I use an Invite to wave to close it a second later after what Google did to Cyanogen for the Android roms.
Tymoteusz Masiakowski
I would use it for managing an filmmaking project: a web series development I’ve been working on for some time. It would be amazing to be able to gather the team and be able to work on it throught Wave.
Bryce Platt
I would like to use it and experiment with its value and possible contributions for college students, as I am. I am a CS major and would like to explore how it can add to the college experience.
kchan
I would like to see whether I can live with Wave on my mobile.
huti_421
hi
i really need a google invitation for testing it
i’m a blogger & also web designer
i wanna write a review about it in persian & english language !
i should test it to write a good post
& also maybe me & my friends will create a site like google wave for our persian users
thanks a lot 😡
kvadro
I would like to try an experiment with my friends, in which we will try to write a book. We have group of programmers, art science students and one archeologist so book would have more beginnings of book that would be related with different science or art areas. We will try to give short stories. We will then try to add more ideas to each other stories. We will then try to merge stories. We will rethink process when(if) we get “Wave”.
PS. Main character in our mutated art-piece will have name Gina Trapani.
Now this would be enough lying for one Wave account. 😉
Ben Altieri
Ok, I have submitted my “best use case” audition email. My fingers are crossed. Go Google Wave!! And go Gina!!
geekycomputerteacher
I am like “tech geek” except I work in a large k-12 school district. We are so large that our district can barely keep up with the demands of email. We really need a collaborative tool like Google Wave to streamline communication.
Dallas John Slieker
Our team of agile developers need a google wave invite so that we can pair-program with undo!
Currently, the only open-source, cross-platform pair-programming solution is gobby and sobby, which are almost OK except they don’t support UNDO, which makes the risk of losing work very high.
Additionally, the current solution we’re using does not use native platform shortcuts for things, and we lose project velocity and get distracted by the “gotchas” involved with gobby.
We are really desperate for a better pair-programming solution, and Google wave seems to be exactly what we need.
Truly, every day we don’t have google wave, is another day we’re losing productivity because of the tools we have available.
Torrey
1.) What does your workgroup do or make?
We are 3 people starting a company that promotes artists. We are in the brainstorming phase.
2.) What software tools does your workgroup currently use to collaborate?
Currently just our brains and google apps.
3.) Why would Wave make that collaboration easier?
We constantly email each other, use google chat and share google docs to pass ideas back and forth. It would be great to just wrap that all in to a wave document!
kastnerd
I work at a Manufacture of high end sports products.
We have our website/shopping cart, Product information pages, We also have a blog, flickr, facebook extra.
We also have printed instruction documents.
Wave would be have the power when a change is made for the product info, It could also change the FAQ, Instruction pages, manuals, and other information listed on the site.
Using Wave may also reduce duplication of content like images, The same image file could be used on the site and the blog and even a photo gallery.
Also from emails with customers You can simply drag there question to the FAQ with your answer and have it available to future users.