What is Google Wave?

If you really wanna know what WAVE is all about, this so far is the video to understand it. It's the WAVE team's intro to the concept at the Google Developer's Conference, and it's a long one (1:20), but even for a non-geek like me it was great viewing.

It gave me the understanding of WAVE being an open source web browser real time communications object (the Google guys call it simple; not sure about that that can be used for many different kinds of communication and collaboration. It

• transforms plain vanilla email and instant messaging conversations
  
• allows to share photos and other rich media types
  
• provides a platform to build blogging sites, discussion groups and wikis
  
• allows to collaboratively edit documents
  
• provides a platform to build extensions from games to spell checkers, map gadgets, poll extensions, integration gateways to other communication systems (like Twitter or Facebook) or workflow systems
  
• provides protocols for others to build their own WAVE systems (Google independent) that all can communicate with one another

All of this is based on creating communication threads (waves) within and across platforms that are instantly updated as they are being created. It's like a huge bulletin board, except that you don't leave messages anymore but read the message character by character as it is being created by the person you're communicating with – and you then have the ability to edit that very message at the same time while your partner is still writing it.

In other words: depending on the extensions the open source community will develop, instant communication and collaboration can take place within and across platforms like email, IM, blogs, social networks and other communication media – all in real time and all in a web browser. And since WAVE also allows for the development of tools that support these various communication forms (like instant spelling correction or translation extensions), you'll be able to write an email that is spell-checked and corrected while you type and, if needed, translated, complemented by photos/videos that other participants share in that very moment or instant messages being exchanged at the same time. And all of this group communication will take place in your browser window.