Yes, sorry - I did just do that.

So this week we have been playing with that over-hyped new toy from Google, Wave. If you aren't familiar with it (and at the moment invites are like gold dust!) then it is basically a combination between email, IM and a wiki. You setup a 'Wave' and pick who is part of the Wave (from just yourself, up to everyone who uses the system) and then just typing... Content is updated in real time so if multiple users are looking at the same wave at the same time you can see the content being changed in front of your eyes - it's a little unnerving knowing all those typos could be being watched! Text and gadgets can be added, meaning you could add videos etc, but the overall flow of Waves, at the moment at least, is fairly basic.

Innevitably people are already asking what, exactly, is the point of all this?

And I'm not going to pretend I have the answer... What I can say however is that whilst it doesn't necessarily do anything wholely new, it does a unique combination of common things. By allowing users to edit text and documents together it provides a neat platform for collaboration, although in reality most businesses would be better off using Google Docs - and quite why more businesses don't is beyond me (it's free and very easy to share and collaborate over documents). But it also provides and easy way to keep a threaded conversation that remains persistent - useful for keeping track of projects for example.

Ultimately it's still early days - it took years for people to stop looking down at Twitter (and many still do) so I wouldn't expect everyone to jump on Wave just yet but it is encouraging to see Google finally bring something potentially revolutionary to the table, rather than simply gently evolving what others have done (see search, paid search, email and even the failed Knol.

So what do people think? Has anyone got on board yet?