For those of you who don't know what Google Wave is - check out this guide to google wave from Mashable.com.

At approximately 8am on the 30th October 2009, I received an invite to Google Wave!

I had been informed that an invite was heading my way from a twitter contact (@BruceElrick), but the invite process is not instant and for me it was 3 days from being put in the invite queue to getting my invite!

ADVICE: If you have been invited to try google wave by someone but not received the link then just be patient, it will come through soon! I'm not sure why the invite process isn't instant, my guess is that Google were slightly overwhelmed by the amount of users signing up and so to limit growth they are restraining the invite process.

On logging in for the first time you are meant to see a "welcome wave" - a welcome message which introduces you to the various functions and general interface of Google Wave. I however, was faced with no such wave! No worries, after searching the net for some solutions I found that it is actually quite a common error, the best advice I found was to simply log out and leave it for an hour or two - log back in and the welcome wave should be sitting there in all its glory. With the absence of the welcome wave I couldn't help feeling like I did when I was younger: receiving a brand new remote controlled car for Christmas and not being able to play with it until the batteries had charged up!

Anyway, once I had the welcome wave everything became much clearer. The welcome wave contains an introduction video to show you the main features of the wave.

The first thing you need to do is to add your friends or associates to your contact list, this will allow you to utilize the main functions of the wave. Whilst I was messing around setting up my profile a friend of mine popped up in a new wave asking how I was to which I replied: fine, the wave then grew with a couple of other mutual friends invited we had a conversation going. Essentially a wave between contacts is an instant messaging service, messages are added and updated immediately. Users can drag photos from the desktop and share them instantly within the wave as well as adding links, video & extensions.

Extensions are basically like applications or gadgets for iGoogle but with the added functionality.
The added functionality comes mainly in the form of connecting with your contacts, take the YES/NO/MAYBE extension as an example: I start a wave to discuss having a meeting with potential clients, I then invite 20 people to this wave, we can then discuss where to meet and what time to do so. I could then add in the yes/no/maybe extension to find out if everyone could meet at 2pm on Friday; the yes/no/maybe box is then placed into the wave and allows each member of the wave to show whether or not they can make that time by placing themselves in the section: yes, no or maybe. Within seconds I can have a rough view of how many people can or cannot make the meeting time and then go on from there.

I had a bit of trouble finding the extensions, there is no set search feature to find extensions through. I wanted to add a twitter extension to a wave so that I could update my twitter feed but I couldn't simply search for extensions within the googlewave environment - I had to do a separate search through google to find out the different extensions. I'm sure as more and more people are invited and more extensions are developed by third parties there may be an integrated search feature but for now you need to search separately.

(NOTE: to add twitter to a Wave - click add new contact from the contacts box and enter the address: tweety-wave@appspot.com then create a new wave with the contact and you should have your twitter stream in a wave!)

Overall Impressions:

My overall impression of Google Wave is generally positive, I was very impressed with the instant messaging and the connections each wave can generate as well as the ease at which extensions can be integrated within a wave (once you find them that is!). This is still a preview stage though and people will often forget that - the whole process of testing is hugely important to any developers, the slight glitches are only minor inconveniences really and with the inevitable growth of the extensions Google Wave is living up to the hype and promises to be a hugely useful online tool.