Google recently launched a new communication platform which aims to be a replacement for traditional e-mail, instant messaging, blog and bug posting as well as online collaboration tools. The scary thing is not that it’s new and unfamiliar to us here and now, or that it still is really buggy and takes a lot of time getting used to, the scary thing is that with this new concept they might just have stricken gold. Maybe in ten years time this will be what everyone’s using on any platform.. Best thing is, in order to make it so, Google intends to Open Source everything. That’s the way e-mail spread across the globe in the first place. If you want to get in touch with me, or just "send me a wave" here’s me identity:
If you still don’t have an idea what it’s all about you should check out this introduction video (very long): Google Wave developer preview. More information about the protocol can be found at Google Wave Federation Protocol, but the source code for the API itself is yet to be published. If you’re interested in the technology, check out Google Wave: Under the hood also from the Google I/O 2009 conference.
At this moment you need a google account (got gmail?) to login, and I also think you need an invitation but of that I’m not sure. If you do, please contact me and I can send you one. I still have 5 left. You might consider using Chrome for this as its pretty CPU intensive at the moment. Have a nice weekend, and play nice!
EDIT: 18th of January 2010
From the Google Wave Federation Protocol website: "To encourage early experimentation with the federation protocol, we also built a basic open source client/server." This is command-line only at the moment, but allows local testing of Wave without making arbitrary connections to Google’s services. Get the source code here, and check out the documentation.