Review: Google Wave

As most of the world knows, Google Wave is a brand new sort of communication that is widely different from what’s currently available. Thanks to my good friend Dave, I am now a “Waver”. My first impressions of the service are that it is something quite different than what most people are used to.

Unlike most instant messengers, a Wave is more like an email, but displayed in a chat form with fun features like the ability to insert videos and much more. Think of it as leaving an offline message for someone and having them get it when they log in at a later time. The same principle applies to a Wave; it is either a live communication process, or one that can be done with the recipients getting the message later.

At the moment Google Wave is pretty empty in the aspect of amount of users. Hopefully that will change in the coming months with Google Wave now offering current users to invite their friends after they themselves are members for a few weeks. One of the things that I really enjoy about Google Wave is the document collaboration. This would come in handy for professionals or even students who may be in different parts of the world (or in a certain school) to successfully and easily work on projects together. Another interesting feature of Google Wave is that it incorporates something called a Ping. Now most IT guys know that a ping is just tool used to see if a particular host is accessible across an IP network, but on Google Wave it’s pretty much the equivalent to an instant messenger with that same offline message capability and an option to add more “Wavers” to the chat.

When Google Wave goes public, I do believe that it will be quite popular among business professionals and regular users alike.

To sign up for a Wave invite, you can visit this link and if you want to learn more about waving and what exactly is a wave you can visit the About Google Wave page here. In the next few weeks when I may(or may not) receive a few friend invites, I will most likely offer one up for grabs in a contest of sorts.

Happy Waving!