New Discussion Software for Google Wave Goes Live   

Online debating website Debatewise and Google develop Google Wave App to host the Global Youth Panel debates.

London, UK, February 4, 2010 (PRESSbooth.ORG) -- Debatewise (www.debatewise.org), the leading online debating website has launched a new App for Google Wave, the new online collaborative tool. The App is designed to host the Debatewise Global Youth Panel (GYP), where over 1000 young people from 130 different countries are debating climate change issues. It allows participants to vote on and create new debate topics and points, while taking advantage of the interactive and live features of Google Wave.

The new App brings the unique Debatewise format and layout into Wave, allowing debates to evolve in a more organic way. Key features include an easy-to-view summary of a debate’s key points, new voting tools allowing the user to vote on the debate and individual points and a timer counting down the hours, minutes and seconds left before each debate closes.

Debatewise founder David Crane believes Google Wave is ideal for the GYP; "The collaboration aspects are top-notch, the playback feature helps people learn how the arguments were formed, the contextual spellchecker and translation tools help people argue with other people who speak a different language and the extensibility means you can add whatever functionality you need."

Crane also stated that the App developed by Debatewise enhances the whole experience; "Our application fuses the benefits of Wave and Debatewise. The collaboration benefits of Google Wave means crowd-sourcing opinions has never been easier and when Debatewise places the for and against points side-by-side people have the simplest possible way of comparing points and making up their own mind."

The new App was launched on 18th January 2010 as the second phase of the GYP began. The GYP is one of the largest uses of Google Wave and includes members from countries most likely to be most affected by climate change, and who would have otherwise found it difficult to express their views so directly to a worldwide audience.

To view any of the debates so far or for more information, please visit:
http://gyp.debatewise.org/.

For more information about Debatewise and the Global Youth Panel Climate Change Debates:
http://debatewise.org, blog: http://debatewise.info

About Debatewise:
Debatewise is a not-for-profit organisation. It was started by David Crane with the help of funding from Open Society Institute - whose chairman and founder is George Soros (http://www.soros.org/). Debatewise was created to support people who like making informed decisions; for people who would rather not trust one source of information, but instead try to obtain a rounded view - which these days often means visiting forums and blogs. But making sense of different opinions can be time-consuming and imprecise, involving visiting a number of sites, reading what are often long threads, working out who to trust, picking the gold from their posts - then searching again for secondary validation.

Contact:
David Crane
Debatewise
65-71 Scrutton Street
London EC2A 4PJ UK
020 3393 7223
dc @ debatewise.org
http://debatewise.org