Catch the Google Wave

The New Email is Here

Well, not quite yet, but last week Google did invite up to 100,000 users to a beta application called Google Wave.  The previous smaller amount of invitations went mostly to developers in two other waves (pun intended).  Google Wave has been creating a buzz in the tech, social media, and blogging communities ever since the I/O developer conference in San Francisco back in May.  Trying to capitalize on the attention, some who were fortunate enough to get invitations, were  attempting to sell their Google Wave invites on Ebay!

Why all the attention?

This isn’t just another application, the preview of the tool shows how transforming it can be.  According to co creator Lars Rasmussen, It’s “what email would look like if it were created today”.   If Lars sounds familiar, it’s because he along with his brother Jens, co created Google Maps, which actually delayed the concept of the Wave.   This communication tool marries email and instant messaging with some rich functionality added onto it.  Although, there is only a preview available, some of the sleekest features include…

• The ability to see real time typing from your user’s keystrokes, character for character.  No more staring at a small box saying that your party “is typing”.  You can turn this feature off.
• Add other contacts, via a drag and drop fashion into a conversation.  If they are not immediately available, they can pick up on the conversation when they are connected.
• If a contact is added into a conversation in the middle of it, they can go to a play back feature, which will go back and look at the history of the conversation before they were invited.  As a result, they can pick up on the context of the conversation with out having to play catch up verbally or via an independent request.
• Editing document/s on the same screen with multiple users on different computers at the same time.
• Open source platform, allowing developers to provide additional functionality.

Users will dictate the success and usage of the tool.  Will it be limited to a enterprise solution?, or will it disrupt  mediums like facebook or twitter in the social community.

Have you received an invite from Google Wave?  If so, how is your experience thus far?

Either way, the wave is about to hit us.

– @rubenq