It is expected to be ready for release later this year, and can be accessed at:

Google Wave

This new tool has been developed by the same sibling team, who have developed the immensely popular and useful Google Maps.

Google Wave will be a new model of communication which will have the combined features of various communication methods like email, chat-lines, instant messaging etc.

This new project was initially codenamed ‘Walkabout’. The team started out with a set of questions that they hoped to solve. The questions were:

• Why is it necessary to divide the various forms of communication such as email, documents, instant messaging etc?
• Would it be possible to combine most of the communication methods available into one simple format?
• Could they design a communication model which would take advantage of the current abilities of computers?

The Wave will allow users to communicate and collaborate with each other using various formats such as text, videos, photos, maps etc. all at the same time.

A user first creates a wave and then adds people to it. All the users on the wave can communicate, using the different forms of communication available on the web. Users can insert replies or edit the wave and other users will see this almost instantaneously. Users can also store this communication or use ‘Playback’ to see how the wave developed.

Google wave will be an open source entity, to enable developers to make additions to the Wave before the public launch.

The Google Wave product is an HTML 5 application built on the Google Web Toolkit having a rich text editor and other functions such as ‘drag and drop’.

Google Wave is also a platform with open API’s to allow developers to use waves and other web services and make new extensions in the wave.

The Google Wave protocol is an underlying format to store the communication and as a means of sharing the waves.

Now after working on the Wave for two years the team has set up a prototype and is releasing it on an experimental basis to get feedback from users and developers before the public release.

The demo video seen below shows how Google Wave could become an extremely powerful medium of communication.

The service has been launched primarily on university networks, which was Facebook’s initial target market. The service is geared to keep users logged onto the social network longer, thereby increasing opportunities to sell more advertising on Facebook.

A new chat bar has been introduced at the bottom of the page, which will always be present by default. This bar enables users to access their online friends list, chat settings, current chat window, online status etc. The service is AJAX based and does not require users to install any new software.

Conversations get highlighted in the chat bar with a red bubble whenever a contact comes online and sends the user a message. A user interested in pursuing the conversation can then open up the chat window by clicking on it. To get out of it, one just needs to minimise the window. To reopen a particular conversation, the user can just reopen ‘recent chat history’ with the same contact.

Privacy concerns have been considered by the Facebook development team. The post on the Facebook blog announcing the launch of the chat service explains that recent chats are saved across login sessions but not permanently. Users can instantly delete message history by clicking on the ‘clear chat history’ link in a particular chat.

If several chats are going on simultaneously, the user can pop each chat into its own window. The pop out window has tabs on the right. Users can press the keyboard shortcut Alt+Tab to access the chat service even without being on Facebook.com.

The online friends list mentions which contacts are currently online, or were recently active. All Facebook friends are automatically entered here, but they are allowed only with their real names. No pseudonyms are allowed. Hence everyone is assured of making contact only with known persons.

Keeping the online friends list open will thus make for a very interesting session and people may end up keeping Facebook open all day long, according to Justin Smith at Inside Facebook. Facebook has now moved the access to notifications from the top right of the start page to the chat bar. Some other features from the site such as the mini feeds will also shortly be taken into the chat world. If a person does not wish to chat while on Facebook, they can just mark their status as offline. Similarly one can choose whether or not to keep the online friends list open, and also whether to allow mini feeds or not into their chat window.

Initial reactions to the service announcement have been largely negative, with most bloggers and users complaining about the numerous instant messaging services already available and the lack of need for yet another. Impressions of the chat service itself and its implementation within Facebook have been more positive.