If you’re a bit like me, you’ve heard of Google Wave – but may not be quite sure what it’s supposed to do.  Well, I recently got an invite to preview and play with Google Wave and wanted to share my thoughts so far.  The quick and dirty answer to ‘what is Google Wave’ is this:  if instant messaging, email, and wikis got together and got really drunk were somehow able to make a baby, Google Wave would be the product.

At first appearance, Wave seems to be much like Google Talk, instant messaging with the capability of adding multiple people to the conversation at different points. But there’s more to it than just chatting.  There’s the ability to respond privately to individual posts and the ability to reply to a previous post which would appear directly beneath the post and indented.  Another great feature of Wave is the ability to edit someone else’s post (which is where the wiki feature comes in).   Each wave can also be tagged with keywords to make searching easier and a post can be pulled out to create a whole new wave.

There’s a lot more to Google Wave and I’m sure as time goes by, Wave will have even more features.  In fact, extensions and gadgets have already been implemented, and Wave is open-sourced so developers are encouraged to make Wave even better.  I could go on and delve deeper into Wave, but why not try it for yourself.

If you would like an invite to Google Wave, leave a comment and one will be sent to you.

Thanks for reading!

Update:  8 invites left!