From the official Google Blog:  A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. So the ‘Wave’ sits right on your browser and combines applications like Twitter, Skype, Gmail, social networking and a whole load more in one place.

Conversations on ‘the wave’ will be realtime and you’ll be able to see character by character what people are typing in, once you have created your wave you can add people to it and then they will be able to take part in your conversation. Everyone on your wave can use the information, photos and gadgets that are stored there as well as taking part in real time conversation – you can even use ‘playback’ so you can see how a particular post has evolved.

Google Wave is ‘open-source’ as Google want to encourage developers to add ‘cool stuff’ before it officially launches (no launch date known as yet.)

Google wave could grow into something that we all can’t live without, so we’ll be watching the development very closely… in the interim there is a video you can watch which tells you everything you’ll need to know. Our advice get your self a big cup of tea and one and a half hours of uninterrupted time to take a look.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ]