Right lets start off by saying this is an alpha level release and it works pretty much well as you expect one too. It slow, buggy as hell, half the things don’t work properly or at all and it can crash your browser if you look at it wrong. As it stands at the moment their is simply no way you can use it for anything other than trying it out and messing around. For some reason the popular and successful labels feature from Gmail has been abandoned and replaced with a traditional folder metaphor. Ewww. Not that it matters because putting Waves in folders is a bit hit and miss. Sometimes they move immediately, other times after a few minutes, other times they don’t move and sometimes they just vanish. You can add tags to Waves and do searches (that are you can save) but neither work as well as labels. It is pretty clear that Google have gone the ‘get the flashy stuff running first’ route and leave the ‘fundamentals’ till later. But even the really serious error message that you occasionally get is endearing to fans of a certain TV show.

The flashy stuff? Wow it is flashy! But it is flashy with a purpose. Ever wanted to embed a google map in an email? Ever wanted to have an IM discussion that you can continue in a more email like manner without changing apps? Ever wanted everyone to see you dreadful typing as it happens? Want to play soduko against friends? All things you can do with Wave. It takes a while to get used to and you are tempted to use it just like email but eventually you start using it differently. It is so flexible even with what you get out the box but when you start adding in extensions you start to realise this isn’t just a replacement for email or instant messaging but an entirely new communication platform. Even little things like posting in a youtube link will give you a little icon to click that converts into an embedded youtube video and the way you can view all images in a Wave as a slide-show are just brilliant. Now the 4rd party extensions that are currently available are even more ropey than Wave itself but they do give you an incite into the world Wave will open up. Some of the stuff people are working on getting Wave to do is just crazy. Be able to make a Wave into a page on your blog and have the replies as comments. A Twitter client. Methods for importing and exporting email. Nothing seems impossible.

What you have to remember though is that this preview of Google Wave is just the beginning. Google are opening this up to everyone. You will be able to run your own Wave servers and it will interact with other Wave servers just like email does now. It won’t be confined to the web browser either as people will be free to develop stand alone clients just like they do with email.

It is a considerable way off prime time and general use but if Google can keep it going they will have developed an internet technology just as revolutionary as the web browser and email. Give it a few years and we will be saying “Wave Me” rather than “Email Me’ or ‘IM Me’. Remember you can’t stop the signal!