Google Rides the Wave

A few days ago Google announced the upcoming release of its latest application called "Wave". Google Wave is a new communication and collaboration tool. It's meant to answer the question, "What would email look like if it had been invented today?". It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. The result is an offering that may revolutionize how we communicate via the Internet.

According to the company:

"a wave is equal parts conversation and document where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more."

An exciting aspect of Google Wave is that the company is releasing it as an open-source platform with an extremely rich set of APIs that will allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to also build extensions. Individuals and organizations will be able to set-up and run their own Wave servers. This is similar to how email servers are built and managed. Communications can be limited internally or opened up to other Wave servers as communication and work flow dictate.

If you're curious for more view the video below:

Secondly, hit Google Wave a Complete Guide over at Mashable.com. After that ponder the possibilities of unified communication!