Google Wave Is Coming to You Today!

What is Google Wave?

It's a plethora of superb features and on the surface, Google Wave looks like a great product.

Google's anticipated real-time communication software launches today. However, you must be invited to Google Wave in order to use it.

The difference with this product is that it is open source. Google wants help completing the development of Google Wave as it's currently in beta and on the Google sandbox platform.

Google Wave functions as a communication and collaboration tool that hosts objects containing conversations between multiple people. Unlike email, it operates in real time with dynamic message storage and transmission. A wave combines conversation with document functionality. Participants can communicate and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Waves are shared spaces where any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit content, and add participants at any point. The playback feature allows users to rewind and see who said what and when.

Waves operate live, with real-time transmission as users type. Participants can have faster conversations, see edits, and interact with extensions in real-time. Features include real-time spell checking and playback capability. Waves can be embedded onto web pages using the Google Wave API, based on the Google Maps API, and can be embedded into blogs with all UI and messages included.

The embed API can interact with other social media sites. Changes are marked in different colours so participants can see each other's edits. By default, everyone can edit waves, though the author is notified of changes and can see who modified what.

Multiple people can transmit messages and edit documents simultaneously in real time, enabling concurrent editing. Waves support document collaboration with the ability to hide and show discussions once completed.