Google Wave

Thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, the concept of websites that provide many forms of communication is well known to us, and perhaps even expected. Hotmail provide the service Home which allows you to 'tweet' (or 'have a status') and a 'network', share photos etc., and likewise Google Mail provides an ajax instant messenger like the one on Facebook.
These are, however, rather lacking, and simply cannot complete with Twitter or Facebook. While Windows Live "Home" is expertly ignored by most of us, Google, however, have been thinking of what they can do to offer us something new. Their solution: Wave.
Google Wave is still in its Beta phase of design, and is strictly invite-only, although you can invite your friends, so contact me if you want to give it a try. The service offered by Wave is sort of a hybrid between msn, the traditional web forum, and your wall on Facebook.

The page is divided up into multiple panels. The right-hand panel displays your current conversation. The panel shows the conversation in real-time, so they actually see you typing. You can drag people into and out of the conversation at any time, and each post made by someone in the conversation can be directly replied to, which indents it from the rest of the thread and avoids the classic [quote][/quote] method used in forums, which force test from messages to have to be repeated, and is open to abuse. Videos, images and other media items can also be inserted into conversations.
The central panel holds all conversations that you are currently privy to, and they do not expire unless you leave them. It can also be filtered so you can see conversations only between you and certain users, and old threads can be archived to clear them from the default view.
All the panels are resizeable just like in desktop applications. All in all, the interface has been put together very well using a lot of ajax and javascript trickery, and acts and responds just like a locally installed desktop application - something that was never achievable on the web just a few years ago.
The overall point of of Google Wave is to collaborate on the internet, whether this is for business, entertainment or social networking reasons is up to you. Although it might have limited use to use already ingrained in forums, an instant messenger desktop program, and facebook/twitter, it certainly has potential to provide us all with a great way to communicate, and along with Google Mail and it's built-in ajax-powered messenger, is obviously supposed to be a member Google's Chrome OS feature lineup.
If you want to give Google Wave a go, comment on this post or send me a message on facebook, and i'll happily invite you to the closed beta.