SAP (known for providing software such as Business Objects) is working on an application called “Constellation”. Constellation uses some of the principles of Wave to bring the real-time environment to business users for collaboration. One of the features being discussed is the ability to publish collaboration efforts to other platforms such as SharePoint, wikis, etc.

Much like Wave’s extensions, SAP is planning on having a marketplace for developers to create and sell their integrations of the application.

They’re planning on launching the app sometime in Q1 of 2010.

It will be interesting to see how it fares in the business arena. The Corporate Cubicle mentions in a recent post,

“The high cost of product upgrades still doesn’t excuse our responsibility as a tech department to be at the forefront of early adoption.⁵ We have to serve our customers and we are failing due to cost, laziness, fear, or some combination thereof.  It is hurting our end product and slowing our ability to respond to problems.”

⁵ It certainly doesn’t explain our lack of openness to new upgrades that are free (ex. Google Chrome)

Being that SAP is the provider of Business Objects, which many companies have adopted, businesses might be more inclined to implement Constellation (over Google Wave) because it will cost money and they would be getting it from a “reliable source”.¹

¹ In general, if a company has to pay for something, they consider the source they buy the product from reliable. Most companies do not take advantage of free applications or software because they perceive the products as risky.

In general, it’s good to have checks and balances in any process. You want to make sure things are done accurately as well as efficiently. Unfortunately, many companies take the checks and balances to the extreme. There is such a thing as “too many cooks in the kitchen”. I’m sure many of you know exactly what I mean.

Consider this – let’s say your department receives a request to change text on the company website from “Click here to learn more about Fresh Squeezed Tech”  to  “Learn more about Fresh Squeezed Tech”. Instead of just sending you the new verbiage, they send it to everyone in their department as well (claiming they want feedback). Suddenly you’re faced with an influx of emails, all with various ways of directing the user to Fresh Squeezed Tech. Then you find yourself being invited to a meeting where the exact verbiage is discussed ad nauseam. Does it really matter what the sentence says? If the ultimate goal is to efficiently direct the user to Fresh Squeezed Tech, why does it take 15 people to weigh in on what the link should read? Someone needs to take ownership (preferably the original requester) and make the call.

This example is just a teeny tiny drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of inefficiencies that are found throughout technology processes. It just so happens the above case would be a perfect opportunity for collaboration in Google Wave. In fact, I believe a lot of the inefficiencies most companies face (technology companies or not) would be greatly reduced with Google Wave technology (technology being the keyword).

Let’s make our processes more efficient by using technology to create technology. Now there’s a genius idea!

Twitter - I check my Twitter account 3-4 times a day. Why is this a go-to tool? Twitter is a fantastic social media platform. The simplicity of the allowed 140 character posts makes reviewing updates quick and easy. I have the opportunity to follow people that I admire, aspire to be like, make me laugh, or deliver relevant newsworthy updates. There’s always something interesting out there to read on Twitter. If you don’t have an account – you should jump on the tweet wagon.  If you’re a twitter newbie, check out Twitter and Your Website for some great tips!

iPhone – If you’ve read any of my other posts you already know I use my iPhone like it’s going out of style. There is literally an app out there for everything. It makes me more productive, more connected, and it keeps me occupied during any free time I might have. I even have a page in my blog dedicated to reviewing an iPhone app each week.

Mashable.com – Mashable is a social media and technology news guide. The information I find from this website is always new, fresh, and accurate. I find myself checking the front page hot topics several times per day (aside from reading @mashable tweets).

Google Wave – I use Wave on a daily basis. More and more of my contacts are getting access to Wave and it’s now much easier to send them a wave instead of an email. Conversations are much easier to follow; documents, images, etc. are much easier to keep track of; and collaboration is more productive and effective. If you’re not sure what Google Wave is, you can learn more or you can watch the “brief” demo from the creators of Wave.

Snagit – If you’ve ever had to grab screenshots of a website it can be such a pain to hit ctrl+Prnt Scrn on your keyboard, paste it into Paint, edit out the things you don’t want to share with the world, save, and send out. Being a website designer and website manager, I discovered Snagit early on and believe me – it has certainly paid for itself.

What makes Snagit so great? For one thing – I can set it to snag a region of a page (that I specify), a particular window, a scrolling webpage, etc. There are so many options. After a screen has been captured, I can edit it right inside the Snagit Editor. No need to save it and edit it elsewhere. I can add other images, point out parts of the capture, and I can even create things from scratch using the the editor.

You can download a 30 day trial or purchase the software for $49.95 (definitely worth it).

These are just a few go-to technology things that I use and love. What’s in your technology toolkit? Send us a comment.

They have a Google Wave Add-on that stores your account information and allows you to set how often you want Firefox to check your inbox. When you have a Firefox window open a little Wave icon will show up in the lower right corner of the screen. If a new wave arrives in your inbox, a number will show up next to the Wave icon indicating the number of new waves in your inbox. Genius! Now I don’t have to have Google Wave minimized all day while I’m working on other things.

I recommend downloading the add-on. You’ll be happy you did.

iPhone users do have the ability to access Wave on their Safari browser–however it seems slow, temperamental, and unreliable (not to mention when you pull up the URL, it gives you the “If you want to continue at your own peril, go ahead” message.) I was hoping that Waveboard would solve the issues I’ve seen with accessing Wave directly from the Safari browser on my iPhone.

I downloaded the Waveboard app for 99 cents, logged in, and… waited. It took a while for Wave to load. In fact, running Waveboard seems slower than “continuing at your own peril” in the regular browser. There seems to be nothing special about this app and I’ve generally been disappointed by it. I had high expectations for something as awesome as a Google Wave iPhone app but I suppose I’ll have to wait until someone else comes out with something better, or until Waveboard makes significant updates.

Here are some things I would like to see  Waveboard do:

• Accommodate push notifications
• Navigate faster through screens
• Translate waves character by character just like you would see when you log in from your computer
• Allow different screen views (for instance – have links to folders set up within Wave)

As I said, I’m a little disappointed with this app because I’d hoped it would have more functionality. Perhaps it was created hastily to get something out there and maybe a future release will incorporate the things I mentioned above. One can only hope.

I woke up in the middle of the night to take my dog outside and I grabbed my phone to check emails (which I usually do). To my surprise – there it was all shiny, bold, and new! A google wave invite just for me! I was ecstatic. Couldn’t wait to get online to check it out. I logged in at 3:30 in the morning (yes some would call that crazy, but I call it excited) and what I found was astonishing.

Google Wave is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The platform is innovative yet easy and logical to use. It has proven to be everything I could ever want in a communication tool. No more sending emails back and forth, missing opportunities to respond to specific parts of conversations, or watching that darn message at the bottom of a chat window that says, ” ’so and so’ is typing a message.”

I can create “waves” very easily, link to other waves, add extensions, even create ways to keep myself organized. Things are so much easier with Wave. If I think about all of the tools I use just to complete daily tasks  at work (Outlook, Word, chat, project tracking systems, photo gallery software, social media, wiki collaboration, and the list goes on), Wave combines all of that into one platform. It makes life so much easier.

Since it’s only been two days that I’ve had a Google Wave account I’m certainly still learning all of its features. There are only a few small things that I wish it had. For one thing, I’d like some kind of indicator that one of my contacts is online (just like with gmail with the green circle next to a contact). It may also be a nice feature to have the ability to set a status (i.e. “MKB is working on a blog post for Fresh Squeezed Tech”) along with the online indicator.

Other than that I’m still learning. I am so looking forward to having more contacts to wave with, but that’s only a matter of time. In another post I mentioned that Google’s idea of Wave replacing email was hard to imagine, but after having access to it for only two days – I’m in agreement with Google. This tool has the potential to completely blow email (and other technologies) out of the water. I, for one, can’t wait to see that day come!