Riding the Google Wave - Initial Impression

I FINALLY received my Google wave invitation from Google exactly one week ago!  When I first signed in, the interface was very confusing at sight.  It sorta look like an email client with my folders and contacts to the left and my list of emails (I guess it is now call waves) in the middle.  When you click on a wave, the window to the right shows the details of the wave.  I had a handful of waves from Google to help me get started.  I had 3 contacts listed.  I assumed these were my Gmail contacts who also had a wave account.

A couple of days later (at least that's when I noticed), I received 20 invitations.  I immediately gave one to my brother for us to experiment with.  Initially, our wave was no different than email as neither one of us was around when we replied to each other.  Next I also gave invites to my kids.  The behavior changed as it was more like a chat client.  The kids had a blast knowing that as soon as someone typed on one screen, it was showing up on the other.  It is a bit mesmerizing watching someone type and then change their thought and then retype again.

It is easy to see that you can you use Google Wave to collaborate on a document with multiple contributors working on the same document at the same time.

I did find a good resource to learn more about Google Wave.  Currently it is called The Complete Guide to Google Wave and it is available online of Gina Trapani and Adam Pash.