Google Wave – The Future of Online Communication?

Contributor: Stephen M. Fells

Personally I have a love hate relationship with instant messenger. While I love that I can talk to someone anywhere in the world and get an answer to a question quickly (and for free) I hate that as soon as the conversation becomes at all, well, conversational the process becomes unbearable. As I sit there waiting on a response I soon reach the point where I realize I am wasting time which leads to me typing three words of frustration: “Just call me”. Using technology for technology’s sake is not smart.

Two years ago Google started a project that involved questioning how email works. Despite the relative newness of the Internet email predates it having been around for more than forty years. The fundamentals of how email works hasn’t changed much over that time period. At a recent Google event they announced their solution, a soon to be released product called “Wave”, a new tool for communication and collaboration on the Web.

But Wave is far more than just another email client. Merging email with instant messenger with Word with SharePoint it seamlessly works across a Website, an email client and a blog.

The following video is absolutely geeky and long but if you want to take advantage of the next ‘wave’ of communication (sorry!) you should at least watch the first twenty minutes.