Catch the Google Wave!

Is anyone else excited about Google Wave besides me? Unfortunately, I'm not one of the selected few that were chosen to receive an actual demo version of the new product, but I have watched Google's looooong video that provides a demo and I have been reading about it.  Even though the video is long (an hour and 20 minutes), it's still worth watching! I really like the fact that it is open source and I've already thought of some ways we can use Wave to reduce expenses and increase operating efficiency!

For those of you not familiar with Google Wave, it's "an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. A wave is also shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when. A wave is also a live transmission. So as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time." In other words, it combines alot of the different types of social media that we are currently using, i.e. email, blogs, chats, wikis, etc., and they occur all in one place.

Some of the other key technologies that Google Wave incorporates is natural language tools (server-based models provide contextual suggestions and spelling correction) and the ability to add extensions or embed waves in other sites or add live social gadgets.

Take a look at the following video and catch the Wave!