From Cube Of M’s posterous:

It was not always like this. There was a time just a few months ago when I did not have Google Wave. I think of that time with horror – because that epoch was marked with conflicts, total chaos, money was being lost every day, fights were happening between me and my collaborators. Google wave came in, and within a couple of weeks, a heavenly peace had descended on my business.

Read the full article.

Comments like those above are rare. The most common observations I’ve heard about the product were “I didn’t really get it” or “I’m underwhelmed.” But for specific uses, Google Wave – a sort of E-mail 2.0 – can be incredibly useful. Wave turns the concept of e-mail on its head by hosting the conversation centrally, and allowing it to be edited asynchronously (like e-mail or wikis) or in real-time (like twitter or instant messaging).

I’ve found it useful for agile development at work, a sort of online scrum for checking the status of everyone’s tasks. Having tried it, I am convinced that it has huge potential as a new form of communication. Essentially it combines conversation and the document in one place. But I believe it is just a platform, and will only really take off once powerful applications are built on top of it.

If you’re still not sure what Google Wave is, or why you might want to use it, watch this simple explanatory video or the detailed product demo.