While Google Wave is on the road to either a shut down or a merge with another Google product line, its technology has certainly contributed to the company in valuable ways. It seems that the Wave technologies, as well as feedback received from the unsuccessful project, are being applied to other, related sites or services. One of these is of special note: It’s a Google Labs project called “Shared Space,” and it may give us an inkling of where the Wave technology will be going once the site is retired.
The introduction of Shared Spaces was one of the more quiet releases from Google, slipping quietly amongst the other experimental projects on the Google Labs website. However, a report from Mashable called our attention to it, and the site itself provides some additional details.
The pre-beta stage site allows users to collaborate on projects using any number of visual templates imported from the gadget gallery — or create their own, if they’re savvy with Javascript. These gadgets include items like collaborative map planning, drawing boards, mind maps, and even (less than productive) games. Updates to these gadget spaces can be seen in real time, and users can also communicate via integrated chat. Additionally, once created, Spaces are easy to share, since they come with a static URL.
As mentioned on the Google Wave blog, the Wave site is no longer being developed or supported, but will stay up through at least some portion of 2011. In the meantime, other Wave-related projects, including Wave features inside Google Docs, are being implemented. Whether or not services like Shared Spaces will be seen in either “Wave in a Box” or as an independent feature have yet to be determined.
