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Photos: Google shows off Wave's potential

Google on Thursday demonstrated several of the things its new online communication and collaboration tool, Google Wave, can be used for.

CNET Reviews staff
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Stephanie shows off Google Waves

Stephanie Hannon, a product manager on the Google Wave team, shows off some functions of the new online communication and collaboration tool released during Thursday morning's keynote at the Google I/O developer's conference in San Francisco, Calif.

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Take a poll

Inside Wave, users can collaborate on shared data like soliciting polls and opinion from the shared contacts, like this example of the type of thing developers might build using the Google API.

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Lars Rasmussen

Lars Rasmussen, onstage at Google I/O, helped lead the development and demonstration of Google Wave.

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Lars Rasmussen

In the works for years, and spearheaded by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen, who created Where 2 Tech, a company Google bought and which eventually turned into Google Maps, Google Wave blends e-mail and instant messaging into a rich new form of online discussions. It is an attempt to "combine conversation-type communication and collaboration-type communication," said Lars Rasmussen.

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Real-time editing

Multiple users can edit a document simultaneously in real time. Here, Casey and Dan, designated by their colored name tiles, are both typing and editing inside the document at the same time.

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Conversations in Real Time

Part e-mail, part IM, conversations appear in Google Wave as they are being typed, without the standard "Lars is typing..." tagline that appears in most IM clients.

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Document Editing

Documents can be edited collaboratively, and changes can be seen by all. Loop someone new into the Wave, and they can watch all the previous changes made using the timeline feature.

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Rosy the Translator

"Rosy" is a real-time character-by-character translation robot for Google Wave that can translate 40 languages.

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Games built into Wave

Developers will also be able to build widgets inside Wave, like this chess game. Previous changes to documents, conversations, and even games can be viewed in a playback mode. Here, the game has been rewound, and is re-playing the moves of the chess match using the player at the top of the window.

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Twitter integration

Outside communications platforms like Twitter can be integrated into Google Wave. Wave is designed to be open-source code and is built on Google Web Toolkit using HTML 5. Google hopes developers will use the open nature of Wave to build upon and within it, integrating it with other Web content and applications.

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Developer's sandbox

Developers stream down the escalator toward the "Developer's Sandbox" at Moscone West following Thursday's keynote and release of Google Wave.

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