Google Introduces Its Wave Of The Future

Google today, annouced their new program Google Wave, that is said to update and bring email and instant messaging up to current standards. Wave allows users to combine all parts of a chat (video, pictures, text, documents) in to one area where few to many people can participate in real time.

Its live aspect comes in how text sends character by character instead of waiting for a response during an instant message, or how a thumbnail of a picture appears instantly before the entire picture is even uploaded. Participants in a wave can join in at any time and reply at any point in message. Wave provides and organized way of viewing everything all at once, whether you are in conversation with one person or a group of 10.

The goal of wave is to make the online chat experience seem as real as possible. It is as if you and all your friends are in one room sharing and discussing everything all at once. Google sees this as the future of all email and chat and wishes that this product be expanded upon and shared by all. Thus, Wave is open source and open protocol meaning people can build their own add-ons and coming up with new uses and environments for it. I think this is a smart move by Google. The program even to me so far (and I am a genius) seems complicated, and it will take a lot to get Wave to become a universal program that everyone uses. Open source and open protocol definitely will help along this process.

Google Wave uses the recently discussed HTML 5, which can be read about here. The new format allows Wave to have a rich text editor and a drag and drop capability for photos. For instance, you are able to drag a photo from your personal collection and add it right onto your wave with a single click and drag. If Wave is a hit and gets the support of outside developers, email and instant messaging might get drowned out.