Surfing Google's Wave

People have many ways to communicate online these days: Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, MSN Messenger, e-mail: the list goes on. Do we really need anymore?
Google sure thinks so, and they will try to improve on all of these communication tools by releasing Google Wave.
Google Wave, officially announced on May 28, 2009, is a communication tool that aims to bring together e-mail, real-time chat, photo and video sharing and collaborating editing features into one online platform. The main focus of the developers was to visualize what e-mail would look like if it were invented today. The project leaders were the same developers who developed Google Maps, Lars and Jens Rasmussen.
Google Wave, developed in Sydney, Australia, has plenty of features, and since it is open source, it should get a lot more once it is officially released. It will feature Live Transmission, which means every character you type will instantly appear to everyone participating in the live wave thread. Many applications have already been created by outside developers, including multiplayer games, large teleconferencing applications, event planning features and auto-publishing to blog platforms. Outside developers are able to develop these applications using the Wave Application Programming Interface provided by Google.
Google is also leveraging many of their other services to add features to Wave. You are able to easily import from Google Contacts and you can also have a conversation with someone else speaking another language - the text is auto-translated via Google Translate.
Wave is currently in the private beta stage, which means only a limited number of people are allowed to test the service. The current load limit is 100,000 testers. There have been many mixed reviews. Despite all of the features offered by Wave, testers have stipulated that Wave can kill your productivity if, lets say, 20 people are in the wave making additions to the text. It may only be effective for small collaboration.
Google Wave is an impressive piece of technology, but it will have to face the test of time in order to determine its success. If Google can market Wave properly, and convince potential users that its collaboration properties will make their personal and work lives easier, the technology may have a chance to take off.
If you are interested in learning more about Google Wave, visit wave.google.com or search YouTube for their eight-minute video to see the features in action.