Of course there's a lot missing, It's flawed…it's not READY. But I think it will definately replace email. Because it's email, and MORE.

Beyond being a collaborative space…it's also tidy. Neat. Easy. Functional.

My english sucks, therefore I canno't really express what I mean…but I truly belive that you are not seeing the big picture here. I also belive that this will be a major step forward in online communication.

Every person I've showned Google Wave (friends, family, IT colleagues, etc) they were amazed by it and pretty much begged for an invitation.

Google continues to refresh my 30 invites, but even with everyone I know using it now I still find myself bored and without any direction on how to use it in a useful manner.

They lost their innovative Gmail groove with this one.

I am alerady using it for meeting summiries and some documention at my comapany and I am pleased.

Omri

I´ve been og Wave for hmm is it a month or two now I think, just wanted to comment on your post.

Yea Wave is a bit slow, but hell it´s beta, thats allowed.

It´s going to get fixed when it hit v1.0 it´s going to get faster.

And then yes, it has potential for some people who find it cool and useful, like me, and for some they think, what am i going to use that for? but then again, there are still some people without e-mail even though it´s been around for years. Right now we are in beta, and already a lot of applications are out for Wave, for instance I have used Wave for a guestbook on my website, you could have used Wave for commenting here, granted while not very nessesary it´s still a posibility you could take, as I have done it.

Coders in some respect is gods in their own way, if they can imagine it they can create it, and Google Wave it self is a good example of that. Who know what might be possible on Wave in the future. And in regards to the Guestbook way I´ve used Wave then it took me a few secounds to find a site with bots and thirdparty ways of using Wave, it was a snap creating a guestbook from a Wave and integrating it, granted I know nearly all of HTML by heart and a fair amount of PHP, but it was soo easy that as far as I can see, anyone could have done it, i´d say they most certainly can, if they´d got a website, it was pute HTML/JS nothing fansy.

As opposed to find a free guestbook, to your likeing, create an account on the third party site, and costumize it, and copy paste the script codes, like you had to do with Wave, which was the first step and a hell of a lot simpler than any copy past code i´ve seen for guestbooks and the like. Allready you´ve used an enormous amount of time as opposed to integrate Wave. And you would nearly with gaurantee have to live with advertising or link back to the free guestbook service, with Wave you don´t have to do that.You want your visitor to stay on your website.

And now you might say, yea but your visitors would then need a Wave account. Yea so? it was easy finding Google Wave invites for my friends, once I was in Wave myself. and no I diden´t have invites at the time. I found more than I had friends willing to use Wave, there´s a lot of invites floating arround. And on my site, where I use Wave for a guestbook, I myself are giving out invites i´ve still got a few left. Once Wave exits beta it will be like gmail, a 2 minute sign up procedure and your going.

This is just my take on Wave. Nothing for or agains you as a blog publisher just my opinion.

If one of your GMail contacts gets Wave, he/she will automatically be added to your Wave contact list… already happens. It worked for me, at least…

Speed will come as browsers get faster. Try running it on Chrome, it's fastest on that.

GMail will never be combined with Wave, however, there may eventually be a GTalk-Wave bridge, or even an EMail-Wave bridge.

Yes, a client-server protocol is in the works, if that's what you're asking. People will be able to create apps that do notifications, etc.

Wave is designed to give you the base for what you want to do with it, which is:

a. central collaborative communication

b. history tracking

c. easy to use interface

Once you got this covered, this is when you start doing collaborative projects. And so far, if you look for it, you can find gadgets (client side/interface widgets) and robots (server side widgets) that will do some really interesting stuff. You guys obviously know about the Sudoku game widget and the map widget, but you can also add your own widget if it's available on a website. Check out this document I found that lists some available gadgets and robots already created (http://www.docstoc.com/docs/13086406/Google-Wave-Extension-List).
To add a widget, just copy the XML Url from the document and then start a new Wave. In the formatting toolbar, click on the jigsaw puzzle piece (Add Gadget by URL) and paste the URL in the box. This will load the XML into your interface and any user you include in the wave will have access to this. So far, I've played around with an HTML Editor/Previewer, Vector Editor and a few others and although some of them are pretty rough around the edges, it's a beta and I'm impressed with how much is done already.

Just like Natania mentioned, it'll be a bit hard for Waves to catch on, but in a working environment or at any moment where you need multiple user collaboration, this is the way to go.

Oh, and I also have about 17 invites to give away too.