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Wave-The new product from the Internet giant Google. There had already been an umpteen number of articles on Wave. But Wave is in the development stage and still is not open to the public. For now Wave is only on an invitation basis. Since I had registered long before it was released, I am one of the early birds who got the opportunity to check it out. Let’s get a glimpse of Wave in this article. Click here for a complete video on Google wave.

Technically, Wave is defined as a real time communication platform which combines the aspects of wikis, instant messaging, social networking and lots more. So what can Wave actually do? For now, we got to believe that Wave has a large potential (as claimed by a large number of users), and many of the capabilities of Wave found till now are said to be a small part of it’s full functionality.

For example, if you are want a Love letter to be edited to a perfect form, prepare the rough draft and then “wave” it .Include the people whom you think are capable of helping you to edit the letter with their romantic verses. The people whom you choose can edit the letter any way they like. And the good thing is that you can actually see them typing word by word. Therefore a group of people can work together on the letter at the same time. So a letter of high quality is produced by the combined efforts of a team. (But the result of the letter depends on the people who choose!).

This is just one of the infinite applications of Wave. Some business guys previewed the wave and found it to be an efficient tool in brainstorming and other events which involve a lot of people together, contributing and suggesting. Even documents, videos and other type or files can be shared in Wave, just by drag and drop method. This makes it a wonderful tool for discussions.

Next, Wave has an excellent user interface. But it is also accused of too much complexity. Anyway, the user interface makes waving fun. But when compared to chats, Waves are a bit slower.

The next good thing about Wave is that, it is Open Source. Google seeks developers to innovate and build Wave. And it can be embedded in blogs or websites too .A number of applications and gadgets have already been built for Wave by the open source community. Not just the word “Wave”, there are other terminologies related to this next gen communication tool.

               Wavelet- It is a small part of the Wave, and can be managed separately like Wave.

                Blip- Smaller than a wavelet, a Blip is a single individual message, like a single IM message. Blips can be published or even unpublished.

                     Extensions- These are the small apps which work inside a wave. There are two types of extensions, gadgets and robots.

                 Gadgets- These are like normal apps which are built on Google’s Open social platform.

                  Robots- These are automatic apps which can interact with users and also provide updates from other websites like Twitter and Facebook.

All great products have faced controversies and criticisms. Wave is no exception. It is criticized by a good number of people claiming that Wave is not a safe way to communicate. While another group claims that it is mentally challenging to collaborate with a large number of people at a time in a single Wave. And there are a lot of questions on the stability of Wave when a number of users are involved simultaneously. Click here for more info on why Wave sucks!

The complete potential of Wave is still to be explored.(I heard people even bought Wave invitations from e-bay). This is an indication that there are lots of expectations from the user community. So we can hope for constructive changes and developments in Wave before it is finally released to the public. But it is definitely going to be the next big wave in the field of communication .No doubt.

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