Google Wave is due to be released at the end of this month…  well to 100,000 invitees first. I’m sure a lot of you have seen the now infamous Google Wave demo at the Google I/O conference. If not, you can see it here, it’s long… but worth watching.

Essentially, Google Wave resulted out of the notion that communication over the internet as we know it ‘is broken’ and has not evolved much since the first email was sent. The premise for the platform is to combine all aspects of communication, whether it be Email, Instant Messaging, Social Networking, Blogs or Wiki-contribution… into one fairly revolutionary platform. Users create a ‘Wave’ much like they would an email thread, which is hosted on Google and viewed in realtime by all users, without needing to proactively ‘Send’ or ‘Update’. I know what you’re thinking… Google Docs already does this.. but to be honest it’s still quite rigid and clunky when it comes to other forms of Media. What Google Wave is setting out to change is to bring together the dichotomy of communication (email, IM…etc.) with the content creation (blogs, wikis…etc.) into one collaborative platform.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a casual talk by Lars Rasmussen, who leads the Google Wave project out of Sydney… and I have a few quick insights to share that resonated with me:
- Through their testing they have found that the tone set by the creator of the Wave filters down to other contributors and impacts the way it flows.
- Wave will connect to email eg. If several users are using Wave and they include someone into the wave who is not registered to use that platform… they will still receive updates from the wave and be able to contribute by email.
- It’s not just Google itself but the Google Wave ecosystem is what is likely to have a lasting impact, and Google have been encouraging developers and entrepreneurs to play with the Google Wave API and develop their own platforms.
- So far Waves are being developed and used in arenas such as collaborative research, academic peer reviews, education, Business Process Modelling, integrating existing software… and evidently just planning a trip with some friends.

This is the first Google Wave application I’ve seen so far.. a cool BPM app developed by SAP. (Have a look at the clip down the bottom of the page).

So what impact will Google Wave have in APAC? will the Asian user-base be quick to ride it? I’m personally very looking forward to it… both as a user and as a potential platform for an app I have in mind. One thing’s for sure… it’s going to be big… are you ready?