communication – From the Desk of CJD

I’ve mentioned Google’s newest communication tool, Google Wave here before and wanted to elaborate on it a bit more. Now that the initial thrill of waving has passed for me, it is time to start thinking of practical uses for it. For tips on how to surf these Waves, check out the big kahuna herself, Gina Trapani and her Complete Guide To Google Wave

Find That Killer Wave-

Now that you secured an invite and hit the beach come on in. Perform a search of Waves publically available by typing in with:public . I hope you can swim well because pretty soon, you will be in over your head. I would try to find a few select waves, or discussions of interest by expanding your search, i.e. with:public Texas photography . This will help stem the tide and help you get on the board and ride.

Smooth Ride-

Once you’ve established yourself, grab your contacts & colleagues to join you on your own wave. This is where the benefits are. Share, discuss, collaborate. Think of a Wave as glorified chat room, email and instant messenger barrel-rolled into one. The possibilities are almost as limitless as the tide. Create, edit documents in real time. Hold a meeting, cover a live event, whatever you need.

Make use of the tools available too. Save your desired searches, waves, contacts. It will not be so easy to locate them again due to too many waves. You’ll get lost in the surf.

Wipeout-

Keep in mind that Google Wave is in the early stages of development and trials. It may slow you down, you might experience a gnarly wipeout but you’ll do what everyone else does and hop back on. Google Wave will work on all browsers but those will flatten out too. I’d suggest running it on Google Chrome due to it’s increased stability and speed.

Making Waves-

I am in the process of building and hosting my own wave here on this website. As soon as I get work out the coding, I’ll post it here.

Want to hang 10 with me on Google Wave? Look for me there: chrisdenbow@googlewave.com

I shared with you some of the software tools in my digital toolbox recently and today I will share how you and I can communicate with each other.

I’ll go over some tools that you may or may not ever heard of yet as well as a new twist on some you have been using.

Google Wave is a communications tool that it is being distributed very slowly while being tested. Wave is a way to communicate & collaborate that makes real-time interactions more seamless. You can share waves using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is a conversation with multiple participants added to a wave to discuss and collaborate on its content. Participants can reply any time and anywhere within a wave, and they can edit content and add more participants as a wave develops. It’s also possible to rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when.

However, because of it’s new release, we’re all trying to figure out just how this works effectively. It is very easy to get overwhelmed with waves, and new contacts while attempting to figure out how to respond properly. More to come as I work this out.

Think you can work it out? Add a comment with your best use scenario and I’ll send you an invitation to join the Wave. I only have 5 invites so them good, people!

Google Voice gives you a separate phone number which you can give out as if it is your regular phone number. You can then change your settings to have calls forward to any of your phones. My number is 281.769.2809

You can forward to one group of phones during the day and another at night. You can have calls from certain numbers forward differently than calls to other numbers. You can block spamming callers and send some calls straight to voice mail.

You can send yourself an SMS message or an email whenever you get a voice mail message, and you can check your voice mail from the Web or from your phone. GVoice will even transcribe voice mail into written text in your inbox. Neato. I have two invitations for Google Voice. Again, leave a comment describing your best use scenario!

Instant Messenger clients have been around forever. Which one do you use? Like many of us you have multiple accounts. MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, etc. Like many of us you probably have their software downloaded too. Why not combine them all so you don’t have to have them open at the same time and not miss an IM? I use a desktop application called Pidgin that does just that. I have multiple accounts but only one software to use. Now I have no excuse for missing your IM. Not that I’d want to! The only drawback to this is there is no video chat available like the others use.

Skype has a lot of features like video conferencing, SMS, voicemail, call forwarding, contact list, integration with MS Outlook, public chats, business control panel, sketch pad, desktop sharing and many others. I can even make calls anywhere in the world with the Skype app on my iPod Touch.

E-mail is an obvious one. I’ve been using Gmail for five years because it is flawless, expandable and easy to use. I have it connected to MS Outlook as well. Email me mojodenbow AT gmail.com

Mobile is another obvious tool that has increased it’s functionality over the past two years. Now if only we can stop the wireless carriers from ripping us off and offer more choices!

As always, I’d appreciate your feedback as to what tools work for you and how you use them. Don’t forget to add your comments for those invitations!