14 DAY TRIAL // Google Wave has been available to a much greater audience for about a month now and the impressions are mixed. The technology is there and it definitely has potential, but most people don't really get it and even find it useless. Add to this the relative complexity of the app and you can understand why people are put off. Well, now there's an unofficial but pretty thorough Google Wave manual for those wanting to give it a shot but who are overwhelmed by the mechanics of the interface or the service.
There are a few other options for getting acquainted with Google Wave, there's the one-hour-and-a-half video from Google, countless user-made 'how to's' and even a Pulp Fiction-themed demo video. But the manual, put together by Lifehacker's Gina Trapani and Adam Pash, promises to be a straightforward tool to get you ready with all you need to know about the communication revolution Google is trying to pull off.
For now, The Complete Google Wave Guide is available for free online and goes through all of Wave's features. The guide comes in eight chapters long, so it makes for quite a reading, and has apparently proven quite popular as the site hosting it is mostly down or very slow to load. The eight free chapters are just a preview edition and it will also be launched as a PDF file later this month. The full book will be available in January 2010 as both a PDF and as a softcover book and new editions will come throughout the next year.
Wave promises to be the next-generation communication platform and was revealed by Google earlier this year. The dev team had been working on it with a limited trial throughout the summer, but it finally rolled out to a big new audience about a month ago. Google said about 100,000 new users would be allowed in, but the enthusiasm has proven far bigger than the number of invites. The company is still working on making it ready for a wider audience and it should be available for all users sometime next year.