Google Wave - Aimed to Reinvent E-mail, IM and lot more...

The Google I/O conference at San Francisco ended with Google dropping a bomb. Say hello to Google Wave, a unique service from the company that, according to many, has the potential to be the next big thing after e-mail.

So, what exactly is the Google Wave? To simplify things, consider it to be an extension, or rather an evolution of existing e-mail, IM and file-sharing technologies. With Wave, users can share images, videos, converse in what Google terms a collaborative conversation stream.

If that bounced off your head, here we go again. In real world conditions, what you can potentially do is to start a Wave. Now, everyone on your wave will be able to enhance it with rich HTML, pictures, videos even presentations and with possibly anything you can do on the web. You can talk to them (your wave buddies, of course) while this is happening and see in real time how the wave of yours has started to evolve.
 
Cool, Huh? Now, if you sign off and come back the next day and you see that the wave has changed a lot since you last saw it, what do you do? You can actually go back and see how the evolution happened - a sort of rewind and playback thing. Of course, there is a lot more to the Google Wave than this, but that has to be experienced to be talked about.
Another facet of Google Wave is that this happens to be an Open Source project, and more of a platform, less a finished product. So, what we're talking bout here is an entire new API that allows developers to do almost anything they please, like integrating a Twitter client, playing games on to a wave. From gaming or official work to a simple chat, the Google Wave might just change the way we communicate with our buddies, in the near future.

Google Wave is the creation of the same team that was behind Google Maps and the bunch seems to have run into something revolutionary, right from the outset! This five-person startup looks all set to be one of the most talked about Google products ever.
 
Google has not announced a release date for Google Wave as yet, but assures that it will be made available from later this year. If you want a preview, you do have the option to let Google know your interest here at http://wave.google.com.

If you happen to be a developer, you might want to check the Google Blog for more dope.