Google Wave - coming soon

Google is in the throws of developing what looks set to be a very useful tool for online collaboration and communication. Browser-based “Google Wave” allows people to communicate with each other while working together on documents, incorporating text, photos, videos, maps and more.

Wave is ‘live,’ meaning users will be able to see their conversation (in the style of messenger) while interacting and editing in real-time. As well as being embeddable in websites, allowing sites to become more collaborative, Wave will be open sourced, encouraging developers to contribute to the product’s evolving functionality.

Upon launch later this year, Wave promises to impact greatly on how, for example, we interact with colleagues across markets, or even in the next office. Imagine being able to do away with the endless to-ing and fro-ing of documents, updated using the untidy-looking ’tracked changes.’ This is something that will surely be useful for those working on documents which require a large number of edits and approvals.

However as it is browser-based, Google will perhaps have to work hard to convince users of the tool’s security.

- Sam