Google Oz coders crossbreed email with IM

Google has unveiled a new-age communication and collaboration tool developed by the brother tandem behind the original Google Maps. Available today to a limited number of developers, the tool is called Google Wave, and naturally it's an online application that leans heavily on the still-gestating HTML 5 standard. "This is an unbelievable demonstration of what is possible in the browser," Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra said in announcing the tool this morning at the company's I/O developer conference in downtown San Francisco. "You will forget you are looking at a browser. "The tool crossbreeds email with IM and document-sharing in a way that allows for threaded conversations between multiple users. You can respond to email-like messages with IM-like chatter - and vice versa. You can also include photos, videos, maps, and the like, dropping them into conversation threads in real time. And if you like, you can embedded threads - or "waves," as Google insists on calling them - into blogs, wikis, and other webpages. Lars and Jens Rasmussen joined Google in 2004, after the company gobbled their tiny online mapping startup, Where 2 Tech. But after releasing Google Maps, they left the project to start a new app code-named Walkabout. After more than two years of work in Google's Sydney Chocolate Factory, they've released a preview version of their browser-based thingamajig to the four thousand or so developers attending Google I/O.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/28/google_wave/