Wow. Google’s upcoming web-based communication/collaboration application is looking very promising. It combines standard email-type communication with real-time instant messaging in an innovative model that mimics — and I think improves on — real conversations. People who join a conversation mid-way through have the ability to replay what they missed (no more trying to rebuild an original email from multiple edited replies!). There’s an excellent video preview of the product from this week’s Google I/O conference, which gives you a good idea of how it could change the way you communicate electronically. (Don’t be put off by the 1h20m length of the video. It’s very interesting, understandable and entertaining — albeit perhaps in a geeky way — and you could always just watch bits of it.)
