Please, someone build a better Wave!

"Wave" isn't just a Google thing, it's an open protocol that anyone can build upon and implement.

Google isn't known for good design (they have little kids draw logos for them). The direct result of that fact is an ugly user interaction on Google Wave:

Click the screenshot to see a bigger version

I challenge developers to take the Wave Protocol and build something useful. The possibilities are endless for this type of real-time collaboration, but Google does a terrible job at designing things, therefore Google Wave is a mess. If you have the patience to learn Wave works, please give it a shot. I'm begging you. People want to use this thing, but right now it's an embarrassment.

I feel bad saying this, but ever since Doug Bowman left Google, the company hasn't been able to put out a beautifully-designed product. In his departing blog post, Bowman rants:

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

The guys over at Devunity, a collaborative coding platform, are re-working their site using Wave. I'm interested to see how they re-design the product.

I think Wikipedia could possibly redesign their architecture to use the Wave Protocol to make editing articles more streamlined.

What Wave-related projects do you know about? Who is doing something really interesting? Let me know!

Bonus: Pulp Fiction in Google Wave