The wave has traveled far and wide to unsettle the sphere of web communication. If it is as revolutionary a tool as Google claims it to be then the responsibility to justify the dreams of many for an open source communication and collaboration platform which performs, stays with Google. Let’s see whether the dream is made a reality to the masses. Google wave combines email, instant messaging, wikis, documents, and blogs for real time collaboration. Google wave now looks like an extension of a social networking platform integrating the mentioned applications in real time.

Working of a wave:

When you start a communication with a person in wave, it begins a wave and then to include a third friend, all you have to do is drag and drop his avatar into the wave. Similarly, you can drag and drop documents, images, videos and blogs into the wave. The real time editing feature of waves and then spell check with grammar and semantics is a revelation.

The wave functions as an email feature when offline and as an instant messenger when online. In a wave even before you could complete uploading, the files appear in your friend’s wave. Users can rewind the waves and play back from the instance they would like to view from and edit wherever necessary. The applications that would facilitate real time conferencing, wikis on web pages and many more can function as a value add to enhance the richness of the experience.

Google wave is a product, a platform and a protocol at the same time. The wave has made it debut as a ‘product preview’ supporting real time collaboration. The wave as a platform can integrate thousands of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). The federation protocol on which Google wave is based is completely open source. This means Google will give away the protocol and even competitors can use the federation protocol and compete with wave. For Google, what’s the fun without little competition?

100,000 Google wave invites have been already sent to the subscribers. The developer community amidst users is still fine tuning Google wave, which is now only a preview, of what is expected in the future.

Making of Google wave:

The name was inspired by the firefly TV series in which a wave was an electronic communication mode.

The developers of the famed Google Earth from Google Australia, the two brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen are the brain behind Google wave. Google wave is built with open source codes and its web tool kit leveraging on Google web supremacy.

Google wave redefines communication and takes it to the next level. Even if its initial hype slows down Google wave is here to stay. The advantage of Google wave is access to multiple web applications in the same platform, which makes it highly convenient for the users. This is the major premise which will make it a success and the future of communication. For a company with resources such as Google, building wave further will not be a difficult task, and then not to forget the help it is going to get from the developer community who have always welcomed open source protocols.

Except for the few who received invitations, the rest are in a queue. Can you imagine, some person even auctioned the invite in e-bay for $200, to be banned later by e-bay. Google Wave holds a lot of promises, but still being made accessible only to the elite, will it fulfill the dream of the masses?