I’ve seen quite a bit of “Google Wave …

I’ve seen quite a bit of “Google Wave is awesome,” and some “Google Wave is going to change the game,” and some of the old “Google Wave is immature and rough technology that won’t amount to much.”

What I haven’t seen is what Google Wave actually is. Here is an excellent roundup of what Google Wave actually is, from Jason Kolb: http://www.jasonkolb.com/weblog/2009/09/why-google-wave-is-the-coolest-thing-since-sliced-bread.html

In short, it’s the next innovation on XMPP, an 11 year old protocol, and in Jason’s words, it reduces social networks down to key components:

There are no longer social networks or any other type of networks required to relay the communication, we are now down to exactly 3 components:
1) Clients
2) Storage
3) Applications

Very interesting and worth reading to keep abreast of what’s coming down the pike (while Google doles out the invites as if they were TED invites).