I’ve only managed to get one other person to “surf” with me on the Google Wave Preview. Its not that I don’t have a lot of friends, just none of my friends have invites. Therefore, I haven’t had a whole lot of chances to really interact, but I can definitely see where it’s going to be a pretty major tool in 2010. That is… if Wave launches in 2010. Robert Scoble booed the launch, calling it overhyped… I just think he’s a fat old overhyped complainer with too many friends and not enough who actually like him. Wave is extremely complex, and the possibilities are nearly endless for what it can achieve when complete.  For now, we just sit and tinker, patiently, hoping for more friends to play with…

And if you are reading this and still have no idea what Google Wave is, watch this most excellent of concise explanations below. And no, I don’t have any more invites. (via Gizmodo)

I consider myself a loyal follower of The Google, so it was an expected surprise to wake up to my Google Wave Preview invitation. I’m still waiting on being able to test Wave locally on buffawhat.com… I’m sure those invites will roll out in time. If you don’t know what Google Wave is, its essentially an open source communication and collaboration tool that I believe will change EVERYTHING. Check out this introduction below, explains it a lot better than I can.

I have a few invitations available for the preview, like 4 left. Comment on this post and I’ll send them as they come. and if I get more, I’ll go down the list. You don’t have to put your email in the actual comment itself, I’ll pull it from the form in the backend. I would suggest giving me your gmail/google acct as you’d probably have a better experience that way. Get ready to “surf” ya’ll!! (I really really want that to be the new term for Google Waving… help me spread it)

And if you already have a Google Wave Preview account, add me to your contacts if you’d like. The email I’m using is buffawhat [at] gmail.com

Update:: Just so you know, Google has this to say about the invitations:

Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

Essentially, that means you may have to wait a bit for an invite to drop in your box.

Today is the day that Google will let loose 100,000 invites to the new and hardly finished communication service that is going to change the world: Google Wave. Like me, everyone is clamoring and refreshing their inbox to see if they get an invite. as of writing this post, it is a quarter to 4pm…

But, in Sydney AU, its only a quarter to 6am. Why does that matter? Well, the Google Wave team is based in Sydney and they just aren’t awake yet. Stephanie Hannon, project manager for Wave says that the invites will be out later in the day for us Stateside folk…

via mashable

How do you know if you’ll get an invite? You don’t. But if you signed up for the waiting list a while back, or use Google Apps, you might have a good chance.

Day two of the Google I/O developer conference unveiled a potential game changer for how we use the web to communicate and socialize. It’s called Google Wave, and it’s an open-source collaboration tool meant to replace our normal methods of sending emails, replying to threads and forums, and sharing information like photos, documents, videos and other media. Day 2 of Google I/O was all about Wave, and right now its a very much unfinished developer preview, but should be ready to launch to the public by the end of the year.

Wave was created by the same team who brought you Google Maps, and they hope that the same amount of developer involvement and community that built up around Maps will follow into Wave. I dare say that the API for Wave is nearly double that of Maps, and the extensibility is tenfold. Wave is your homepage, your main portal. Email has become too multipurpose and its use has become cluttered. Communicating with all your friends via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc, is hard. Sharing photos and videos, collaborating on documents, all of that is fragmented across the web and across dozens of unique userbases. Wave collides all of that into one place, while instantly (and I do mean instantly) routing and pushing all of your socialness to where you want it to go and to whoever you want to see it. Its really an intense new way of thinking, and I urge you to watch the Keynote for Wave that I’ve embedded below. The video is 90 minutes long but absolutely worth every minute.

Right now Google Wave is in a developers sandbox (launch to the public by the end of 2009), and I/O attendees were given early access to test and develop gadgets and extensions for the system. If the launch is timed and publicized correctly, I can see this becoming a major part of life on the web. I’m already sold, and I can see it integrating and replacing at least 40% of my daily social life on the web. And it works with Twitter. Enough said.

wave.google.com

googlewavedev.blogspot.com