I was lucky enough to get an invitation to Google Wave the other day, so I have been having a bit of a play with it to see what it is like.

My first impressions were that is a glorified chat room. Which is unfair, but that’s how it felt. You can chat in realtime with your contacts, to the point of even seeing their text as they write it.

However, that aside, it does have some great collaboration features. You can edit messages, both your own and other’s, which is useful but at the moment it is hard to know what was edited. The authors details change to include the names of everyone who has edited that message, but there is currently no way of knowing what they edited or what the text was previously.

It does have potential as a collaboration tool. You can attach files and images to messages as well as maps and other gadgets such as a voting tool. There is also a Sudoku gadget you can play if you’re that way inclined!

Personally, I don’t have any use for it at the moment. I wish I had had access back when I was at university, and completing group assignment after group assignment. It might have made communication that much easier.

For now though, I will keep experimenting and watching with interest any changes they make.

Related posts:

1. Google Buzz