Earleir this month Google announced a new product that will be launched later this year called Wave. Wave is hard to explain but it is defined as a new tool for communication and collaboration. Another description is that if email was invented now it would look like this. Email hasn't really changed much in twelve years so the first view of Wave (which can be seen on http://wave.google.com/) was quite a eye opener!
I would recommend that if you have the time to watch the video on the link above as it explains Wave much better than I can do here. What Google have done is to roll together email, instant messaging, richly foramatted text, photos, videos, maps and more. What's more they have structure it so there can be as many participants as you want and they can reply anywhere in the Wave. You would think that it must be a complete mess! Well somehow Google has used its experience with Gmail and Docs to structure it so that it all seems to make perfect sense.
Google have opened up Wave to developers now so there will be a stream of apps coming out before the actual launch. What it means at its simplest is that you will only need a browser to do anything on a PC. All software and communications will de done in your browser.
As a result of the announcement of Google Wave we have been moving all our software over from Microsoft Office to Google Gmail and Docs. Gmail and Docs we expect to be fully integrated into Wave. If you don't already have a Gmail account I would recommend you open one up.Google Wave a really exciting and revolutionary concept, one that you really do need to see in action. As Wave is so ambitious there is the possibility of it falling on its face but Google sees it as a risk worth taking and so do I. If Wave succeeds it will be a complete transition to the way we use the Web.
