Google Wave Preview Launching

Google announced the introduction of Google Wave back in May. Google will be sending out 100,000 preview invites tomorrow. Invites will primarily go to developers who are already in the developers preview. Users who signed up for accounts at wave.google.com on a first-come, first-served basis will also receive invites. Additionally, some Google Apps users will get a sneak peek.

What exactly is Google Wave? ReadWriteWeb describes it as “a real-time chat room as a platform for editing documents collaboratively. It can also be used as a Wiki, to replace email and IM within an organization, or just to organize a pub crawl”. As it stands, Google Wave will import users’ Google contacts (all in the future, but only those using Google Wave for now). ReadWriteWeb explains, “users will also be able to use some of the robots and widgets that the … These range from widgets that allow you to play games with friends to sophisticated teleconferencing apps, with Twitter and blogging apps in between”. Google Wave also encourages the use of Chrome Frame. When going to the Wave homepage with IE, users will be prompted to install Chrome Frame. While still in Beta, Google Wave has great potential.