I've been playing around with a developer preview of Google Wave which is entering the next phase of user rollout at the moment and generating a huge amount of interest in many quarters.

It's certainly a shift in terms of UI - bringing the possibility of live collaboration to all manner of online scenarios.  I've never been a big user of MSN or other chat environments - but this might just win me over.  I can certainly see some usefulness when it comes to real time, online training, discussion and collaboration.

It's a busy environment - so there is a learning curve - but it does have an intuitive feel.  Right now, it's a bit like having the first telephone - so the only users I can interact with are as geeky as I am - not always a good thing. ;-)

My first Wave adventure was to embed a Wave in this Drupal powered site. Before you get too impressed with either my Drupal or Wave expertise, I must admit that it was all very easy. A quick Google of 'Drupal Google Wave' found me Eric Bett's blog entry 'Prototyping a Drupal Module for Google Wave'.  He even wrote the Drupal module - so all I had to do was install it and follow the simple instructions.

At this stage there are obviously more questions than answers: will Wave or something like it make conventional email or chat obsolete?  One of the nice things about email is that it gives you time to compose your thoughts.  My guess is many users will not like this new letter-by-letter immediacy.  Does it make any sense to have a live messaging environment embedded in the comment rich Drupal environment - or in a blog?  Who knows - but it's going to be messy and fun finding out.  I don't think this is Web 3.0 - there's no obvious semantic element involved - that I can see.

While you ponder that, you will find my first fledgling wave at the bottom of this post (if you too are logged in).  If you don't yet have a Wave account find out how to get one here.