Google's latest offering, Google Wave is billed as an online collaberation and communication tool. Described as a combination of email and instant messaging with a healthy dose of collaberative tools, it could be a healthy and robust set of tools for developers or Google's latest flop. The recent developer preview has generate a lot of buzz about what's interesting and what's still needed to make this product successful.

The preview and earlier presentation show a lot of promise. This sleek and easily manageable communication platform makes email look like something out of the stone age. The standard view includes a sidebar with familiar and comforting options such as links to your Inbox and a list of Contacts; open Waves and content are found on your right. Once you start to explore this familiar interface, the flexibility of the platform becomes more apparent.

Google Wave - Opening Screen

Most areas of Wave include a pint-size photo of your friend just in case you've forgotten who you're talking with. Numbers update as your individual wave conversations are changed, but unlike the surety of email, you never know if you've got text, photos or documents waiting. Practically anything can be inserted into a wave, including new friends or colleagues you'd like to have join the discussion.

Unlike other communication tools, a single click lets you start adding content to a wave. Rather than force your content at the end, you can choose to reply at any point, keeping your discussion on track and uncluttered. Updates and changes happen in real time, allowing the wave to take on the feel of instant messaging. Multi-person waves can also accommodate private messages between contributors that stay within the wave for context while remaining hidden to other viewers. The playback feature allows you to step back through updates and currently seems to offer the only way to keep track of who added which material.

Editing a Google Wave

Google's thrown in some crazy ideas in their demonstrations such as a truly live search and spell-checking with context. Real time translation and integration with popular sites like Twitter and Facebook also seem to be on the table. These ideas show a lot of potential, but right now, working out the kinks and bugs in the existing system seems to be the biggest priority. Our developers noted problems with adding images to waves, managing multiple open waves and keeping track of who added what and when into a wave.

As a service in itself, it certainly seems to be an improvement over Gmail, but Google's got even bigger plans. The goal for phase two of the project is to morph the service into a platform where other developers can create their own Waves and services. Google is already courting developers by offering this early preview and input into the process. The third phase, development of the Wave protocol envisions various platform independent "Wave" systems interacting.

Google Wave might be the next best thing, but this ambitious project seems a lot like a solution in search of a problem. With an endless variety of features, the possibilities for communication are immense, but after the first bit of fun wears off, we're left wondering if people really want so much creativity out of their messaging solution.