Google Wave’s Quick, New Wave Templates Guide Your Wave Use

As excited as some of us still are about Google Wave (hell, two of us wrote a book), Wave’s biggest problem remains: “What would I use it for?” With the app’s new wave templates, Google wants to guide you toward answers.

Now when you visit Wave, the New Wave panel (and the new wave button) offer options for starting waves using templates for common use cases. Gina and I highlighted some of our favourite, creative Wave use cases over at The Complete Guide to Google Wave, but the new templates offer a really helpful jumping off point for collaborating in Wave for common uses, like discussions, task tracking, meeting notes, document creation and brainstorming. You can still stick with the default blank wave, but it’s seems like a step in the right direction to help new users get familiar with the tool.

Brainstorm – Has space for a topic, a basic Paint gadget and guidelines for the session.

Discussion – Adds a +/-1 poll with a standard title and space for a proposal.

Document – Has a status indicator (draft, final review etc…) with authors and headings with some lorem ipsum mixed in.

Meeting – Includes a basic list of who and what along with notes, things to be addressed and a date for a next meeting.

Task Tracking – Gives you GTD-style space for unsorted tasks and ones sorted based on priority etc…

Thanks Frank and AtomFury!