What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a new built-in-browser communication and collaboration tool that is already being marked by some as the next evolution of email. So basically, Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been, or share files and exchange notes.

Google Wave is supposed to replace traditional email systems and improve them by using more interactive, live, on-the-fly methods to deliver information. Traditional emails work on a basis of typing a message, potentially styling the message, and hitting “send” and off it goes to the recipient.

Traditional instant messaging systems work by typing message, hitting enter and automatically sending to the recipient for instant delivery. Wave offers a hybrid of the two. If both people are logged on, they can open a conversation (called a wave) and send a message to the recipient who will not only instantly send to the recipient, but the recipient can (optionally) see every letter when you type it and write back instantaneously. This speeds up conversation drastically instead of having to wait for others to reply to press enter to start writing your response. Given that the recipient is offline, they will receive the wave in their inbox in bolded form.

How Google Wave works?

• Wave – A wave is the highest entity in the Google Wave hierarchy. Each wave can be thought of as a separate thread in a forum. They are like topics, each with its own description.
• Wavelet – A wavelet is a sub-entity of a Google Wave. It is like an individual conversation you would have amidst a larger discussion. Kind of like whispering to your best friend in the middle of an heated political discussion, or why did our cricket team did so poorly in the last series.
• Blip – A blip is like a single comment within a wavelet. To go back to our discussion on the cricket team example, it’s like saying to your friend “What do you think is the main reason behind Yousuf’s resignation?” It’s just one comment.

Google Wave Features

1. Real-time functionality: You can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character. It gives the impression of a conversation where everyone is actually in the room with you. This also applies to real-time changes to multimedia such as images, documents and programs.

2. Extensions: An extension is a mini-application within a wave. This is similar to what we have in Facebook or iGoogle. Developers can build their own apps within waves.

3. Open Source: The Google Wave code will be open source, so expect hundreds and thousands of innovative applications using Wave API.

4. Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.

5. Mobile support: Google Wave can be viewed on a mobile device. 

These are just some of the many features of Google Wave and the possibilities are endless. So I think what I said was right, Google isn’t stopping now; it’s just on an innovating streak and it is just warming up.