Wave Hello

You might be seeing this logo a lot more as the year progresses.

Last week, Google launched the concept of their new Google Wave product at their I/O conference in San Franscisco.

In many respects, "Wave" is groundbreaking stuff.

Developed by a start-up team in Google Sydney, "Wave" is in its simplest form, an integrated combination of e-mail, instant messaging and other component parts like social networking, blogs, etc.

Up to now, each of these parts run independently in separate programmes and to some extent, it has been, never the twain shall meet.

Google have announced this product exceptionally early because they want other organisations to get involved. Google have already announced that this will be opensource code.

To achieve true integration, they need other developers to play along.

I can see some method in this digital madness. Google are now huge - they even operate the blog upon which I type.

If you are a big user of e-mail, have you ever noticed that if you send an e-mail covering a number of different topics in one mail, the person at the other end, will sometimes reply in red underneath each subject line, within the body of YOUR e-mail.

"Wave" follows through on this and e-mails become threads that are a cross between instant messaging and forum responses. E-mails can now occur in real time, with instant responses, people being added as the theme develops and so on.

If you want to know more, click on the You Tube movie above, but be warned, it runs for over an hour.

Google themselves say a "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. 

To my way of thinking, a "Wave" starts small and then builds up (as people add content) until it culminates in a crash on a beach somewhere.

The Internet never ceases to amaze me - it just keeps on building - whatever next ?