Over the last few years the web has moved towards more real-time applications and collaboration, with plenty of online communication forms to choose from. Google is now showing off a preview of a new product, framework and protocol called Google Wave.

Over the last few years the web has moved towards more real-time applications and collaboration, with plenty of online communication forms to choose from. Google is now showing off a preview of a new product, framework and protocol called Google Wave. We’ve not seen this in action yet, but judging from the screenshots and descriptions, Google Wave may just be the coolest thing to hit business offices since Messenger. It’s an application running in modern browsers which is part wiki, part chat, part collaborative office and sharing tool, and part email. Maybe it’ll be good enough to replace all of the above...