Google Wave: The New Way to Collaborate Online

A new way to email and collaborate online has been introduced by Google at the Google I/O conference. Imagine a place where you can converse, edit rich text documents, and imbed pictures in real time with your business partner across the country. They call it Google Wave and it is poised to change the way we collaborate both professionally and personally. Users will be able to work together more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.

Google Wave will be similar to Gmail but will more closely resemble a kind of instant messenger, at least at first. Users will then be able to archive messaging sessions into conversations, or waves, and other users can be invited to join in on the conversation. Google Wave also features a function that allows users to "playback" the conversation in order to track progress. Attaching pictures is easily done and users can also embed pictures using the Wave gadgets. Embedded images are then able to be manipulated in real time on their computer as well as those of their collaborators. To a business owner this new site will be invaluable for collaboration and brainstorming sessions.

Once you have a finished wave you have two options available you can either Embed or use the Extensions API. Embed will allow you to place waves onto your personal website using a JavaScript API that is simple to use. You will then be able to use this wave as a discussion board of sorts for visitors to the site. Extensions allow you to write programs, either robots or gadgets that will provide improved functionality inside Google Wave.

Google Waves robots are automated participants that are able to perform tasks on behalf of the user such as syncing with other sites. For example one robot will make it easier to sync your twitter account from inside Google Wave. Google Wave will have many gadgets available to enhance the site. For blog writers there is an application called "Bloggy" that will allow you to post entire waves to your blog. That wave can then be updated and the changes will occur, in real time, on your blog. Other tools include "linky" which allow you to embed links within the document and "searchy" which embeds a real time search engine into the page. They even included an automatic spell checker for the search function.

Google Wave also features a "private feature." In most cases Google will be monitoring all waves in order to add links but by making a wave private you will block it from Google as well as other collaborators.

There is no word yet on when Google Wave will be launched but if you go to the site you are able to sign up for an alert that will let you know when it is open to the public.

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