The aim of this initiative is to create a multi-media thread communication system (in a browser) combining email, social networking, instant messaging, photo sharing and elements from social networking sites.

Those of you who thinks that Google Maps is great (all of you?), will be encouraged by the fact that this is being developed by the same guys who brought us that.

The idea is that open access API will allow developers to build exciting applications with Google Wave as their core.   Google think that we will see:

• applications in Wave like those in Facebook
• enterprise level applications
• unified conversations across several sites

Most of us are going to have to wait until later in the year to get our hands on this but wet your appetite now.

But enough of my rambling - go to YouTube when you have 80 mins to spare and prepare to be enthused by the video. Alternatively, for a quick overview, try this blog post.

Google is not the only company working on these sort of applications - but when this company sets its sights on something we all know what tends to happen.