Waving

I received an invite to Google Wave this weekend (sorry, but I don't have the ability to invite anyone at the moment) and have been checking it out over the last few days. Our lab uses Google Talk fairly heavily as a (very) limited collaboration/communication tool... everything from "I'm sick!" messages to sharing the latest edits to a manuscript... so I have some high hopes for Wave to up the ante on how we can work together (especially when my boss is in France for 6 months).

A post doc and I have been trying to use it to collaborate on a response to reviewers, as well as for reading and commenting on a manuscript... to varying degrees of success. I can't say I'm super impressed with how Wave handles files at this juncture, but otherwise it has been nice. We have the crutch of being able to yell across the room as we are typing to each other, and though we have been trying to suppress that, I'm not sure we'll really have a good idea of how well it can work until my boss (recovering from knee surgery) joins in. He's been sent an invite, so we'll see if Wave can ease the productivity hitches inherent with a boss working sparingly from home... seems like it could really be helpful, but we'll see.