I’m sure most of the people reading this will, at some point in time, have heard of Google Wave. The subject of discussions I’ve seen surrounding Wave have been…opinionated…to say the least. I’ve spoken to people who love it, and to people who hate it. Personally, I’m one of the people who loved the idea of it rather than Wave itself.
Sure, I clamoured with the rest of us to get my invite and see what wave was all about. Then I checked it daily for about 2, maybe even 3 weeks. After that, I think I did the same as most people – realised I had no real use for it, and ignored it. I might have check it 3 or 4 times since then, but that’s about it. I think I was made part of 1 new wave in all that time. For me, this is a real shame. I’m actually of the opinion that Wave has a potential to be awesome. If you don’t agree, please, hear me out.
Imagine you’re working on a small project with 2 or 3 people, Wave provides a brilliant way to collaborate and share ideas with each other throughout the development of the project. The problem, I imagine, for a lot of people was the fact that the entire thing was hosted on Google, and we all know at least 1 person who is genuinely concerned about using any Google product for privacy reasons (I’ll be honest, for me, this is less of an issue as they have the last 5 years worth of emails I’ve ever received on a personal account) which is fine.
With Google announcing the cessation of Wave development, I was concerned that some of the ideas it brought would simply die out. Luckily, they’ve also announced ‘Wave in a Box‘, which essentially means that Wave will be open-sourced, and people will have the ability to run their own Wave server. I find the idea of this rather exciting, partly because it will be interesting to see what kinds of directions it may take in development from whoever picks up the project, and partly because it means I get to play around with something on the server again.
If possible, I’ll try and actually get some use out of a Wave server, however, I can’t guarantee that’ll be possible. In fact, it’s far more likely that the install would be just that, an install, after which, I’d ignore it 
Either way, I – personally – am looking forward to the release of ‘Wave in a Box’, it might even increase the uptake of the project so more people can use it. Certainly, some of the things Google are putting into it before releasing it mean that it will have a solid base upon which to build.