Riding the wave

This week Google announced its new communication tool, Wave.

Due out sometime this year, the application imcorporates the elements of conversation and an electronic documents.

With Wave, people can communicate and collaborate with text, photos, videos, and maps in real-time.
Participants can also reply anywhere in a message feed, edit content and add participants to the process. 

The product idea, which originated from the success of email and instant messaging, has been in the works for more than two years.

From the post:

"It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved," said Lars Rasmussen, Google's software engineering manager.