Were you one of the lucky 100,000 to receive an exclusive invite to try out Google Wave the other week? Nah, me either.
Invites are available for the bidding over on eBay, but I went ahead and requested an invite through Google Wave’s sign-up form and you can too.
So what’s all the hype? Its highly likely that Google Wave will be the new email, IM, social networking, blah, blah, blah, all in one tool that will set the standard for how we communicate in the future – “set the standard” being the key words. It’s revolutionary and from what I’ve gathered, the possibilities look pretty darn cool.
Rather than rambling on and on with an endless list of bullet points offering up hilights on Google Wave’s pretty darn cool key features, check out this little video:
In addition to being excited by the possibilities, I also find equally fascinating the back-story of the Austrailian-based Google team – lead by two brothers, Jens and Lars Rasmussen and lead project manager Stephanie Hannon – who together pondered “What would email look like if it were invented today?”
In a blog post titled Went Walkabout. Brought Back Google Wave, Lars wrote:
We started with a set of tough questions:
- Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
- Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
- What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers’ current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?
From available previews and articles, it looks like the team answered and addressed those questions quite well. Before we’re all in with the in-crowd and get an invite (or cave and bid a buck or two for one on eBay) this post, Google Wave: A Complete Guide via Mashable, offers up a great overview. So get ready – pretty soon it will be surfs up for everyone on Google Wave.
Update: I eventually did get my invite, yay! I’ll be sure to send up a first hand account/review on the Google Wave expereince in a future post.
