Google Wave – Intro

Google Wave is the new product of Google which is a next generation internet communication tool developed in Java (openJDK).

Google WAVE is announced by Google at the Google I/O conference (which is web developer focused conference held annually by Google) on May 27, 2009.

Wave is the product which helps people to ” communicate and collaborate in real time ” which is still under construction to increase its stability, speed and accuracy, connectivity. Wave is a mixture of  e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, blogs, and social networking. Wave is not only for communication it is also for documentation, that is collaborative communication, which means more than one person can work on a same document.

Some of the wave features describe by Google follows below

Google Wave is designed as the next generation of Internet communication. It is written in Java using OpenJDK; its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user’s inbox for context, objects known as waves contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave’s existence.

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Waves, described by Google as “equal parts conversation and document”, are hosted XML documents that allow seamless and low latency concurrent modifications. Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Users can reply to blips within waves. Recipients are notified of changes/replies in all waves they are active in and then view the changes when they subsequently access a given wave. In addition, waves are live. All replies/edits are seen real-time, letter by letter, as they are typed by the other collaborators. Multiple participants may edit a single wave simultaneously in Google Wave. Thus, waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and instant messaging. It depends only on whether both users are online at the same time or not, allowing a wave to even shift repeatedly between e-mail and instant messaging depending on the user’s needs. The ability to show messages as they are typed can also be disabled, similar to conventional instant messaging.

The ability to modify a wave at any location lets users create collaborative documents, edited in a manner akin to wikis. Waves can easily link to other waves.

The history of each wave is stored within it. Collaborators may use a playback feature in Google Wave to observe the order which a wave was edited, blips were added, and who was responsible for what in the wave. The history may also be searched by a user to view and/or modify specific changes, such as specific kinds of changes or messages from a single user.

Google Wave is still in active development. It is expected to continue to be so until later in 2009, . It was launched to about 100,000 users on 30th September. Google Wave access can be requested. Developers have been given access to Wave proper, and all wave users invited by Google can invite up to 8 others. Those who receive indirect invitations (were invited by someone who was invited by Google) are not able to invite others.

If it is difficult to read and understand above paragraph check out the below video. Its a looooooooooong video of 80 mins

Some of the screenshots of Google Wave

For Developers

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Wave being Protocol and open source project any one can use Wave protocol by hosting Wave on your server.

Google Wave provides federation using an extension of XMPP, the open Wave Federation Protocol. Being an open protocol, anyone can use it to build a custom Wave system and become a wave provider. The use of an open protocol is intended to parallel the openness and ease of adoption of the e-mail protocol and, like e-mail, allow communication regardless of provider. Google hopes that waves may replace e-mail as the dominant form of Internet communication. In this way, Google intends to only be one of many wave providers. It can also be used as a supplement to e-mail, instant messaging, FTP, etc.

A key feature of the protocol is that waves are stored on the service provider’s servers instead of being sent between users. Waves are federated; copies of waves and wavelets are distributed by the wave provider of the originating user to the providers of all other participants in a particular wave or wavelet so all participants have immediate access to up-to-date content. The originating wave server is responsible for hosting, processing, and concurrency control of waves. The protocol allows private reply wavelets within parent waves, where other participants have no access or knowledge of them.

To Know more about Wave Protocol Go ‘here’

Google Promises Wave will be available for every one by end of this year. Lets wait for the fabulous innovation of Google.