We asked ourselves, "What would email look like if it were invented in 2009?"

Anybody tried it yet? It seems really intriguing but I can't quite get my ahead around everything that it can do.

I've spent some time with GoogleWave. It's interesting in concept and I can see how it could be beneficial for some people. The uphill battle it has is with the mainstream users who probably don't want to spend time learning something new.

Conceptually - for me anyway - I've been thinking of it as sort of a "persistent meeting room in the cloud" where you can drop in and out of, leave messages, links, files (up to 20megs), etc. or communicate in real-time with anyone else who may be in there at the same time. You can have multiple "meeting room" waves - perhaps for various projects or clients. And of course each of these maintains an ongoing transcript of everything that is said or left behind.

Personally I didn't find the real-time "instant-messaging" worked too well from a usability stand point - it was somewhat confusing. And there are some security issues that I think need to be addressed as far as who can edit what.

In any event, I'm sure there will be those who find this type of workflow helpful.

It's kind of halfway between instant messaging and email, with a bunch of other features thrown in. I kind of like it.
I've only had it for a week or so now, though.
The most useful feature (which is under development) is the whiteboard.
More often than not, I'm trying to explain something to someone over MSN and need a visual aid. Having real-time drawing for the person to see would be much easier to do this.

Sounds very similar to what Microsoft are doing with Live Mesh and Office Live. I haven't checked out Google Wave yet but I will have to because I'm sure some of my customers will start asking about it. Sounds interesting.

I have a Google Wave account and I don't find it practical for personal use. For business use it could be a very good tool for collaboration.

I actually just got an invite so I'm going to be checking it out in the next couple days.

I have a couple extra invites. PM me if you want one.

I've been playing around with it for a couple days now. It's definitely neat but it's definitely not replacing personal email/im for a long time yet. My main concern is how would one transition to google wave from their regular email when you can't even send or receive emails using it. Perhaps I got the wrong idea of how this was supposed to work because as of yet I'm disappointed from a personal user standpoint.

Nonetheless though I'll be watching it from the sidelines now to see just where it goes.

I think there can be some creative uses with it. I created one for a trip my wife and I are taking for planning and our itinerary. Set it based on time and included our flight information (with gadgets tracking those flights), our rental car, hotel information (with maps), etc ...

She can add/adjust ideas and plans and such. It's been a lot better than a tonne of emails where things get misread or lost.

I also have some spare invites if anyone wants.