Users will be able to create 'waves,' and add documents and collaborators to it. The system will feature concurrent rich-text editing, as well as email and IM-like messaging functions. Lars Rasmussen, one of the co-founders and lead engineers behind this project, especially stressed the real-time nature of Wave, where edits to a wave, be they new messages or edits in a document, appear immediately on the screens of all participants.

From what we have seen, Wave combines aspects of productivity tools, social networks, and micro-blogging. One of the most interesting features is that every change to a wave is captured and users can 'replay' how the specific wave developed over time. Wave will allow users to send private and public messages, and Google is heavily relying on HTML5 to make the product work well in modern browsers. We will have a more detailed look at all the features of Wave once we get access to the product itself.

Developers, Developers, Developers

Google is also making a set of APIs available to developers today. These APIs should give developers the ability to enhance Wave by building extensions for the core product, but also to embed Wave's features on other sites to make them more collaborative. One extension Google offers today, for those lucky enough to have access to Wave already, is a Twitter extension, and Google will also offer the ability to integrate OpenSocial gadgets into Wave.

Interestingly, Google is taking a very open approach with this new product. Not only will it give developers access to Wave's APIs, but the team also plans to open-source the protocols at the core of Wave, which really points at the greater ambition of the Wave team to see Wave and its protocols replace at least some of today's standard communications systems.

In a word, the release allows Microsoft-rooted corporate networks to keep information in a shared, collaborative environment rather than locked in individual PCs' "application silos." The suite includes Aurelia Reporter (for publishing and sharing versioned documents), Desktop Connector (for dragging and dropping files or directories into the MindTouch environment), and Microsoft Word and Outlook Connectors (for one-click publishing of documents, threaded conversations, and attachments). These tools enable working via web browsers and permit collaboration without installed software.

"MindTouch is pretty unique in what we're doing," said MindTouch founder and CEO, Aaron Fulkerson, in a phone conversation last night. "Most people deploy our service behind a firewall and use it as a wiki. You don't have to be a programmer to deploy it, and it lets you connect systems and get real-time data from other systems, applications, and databases."

When considering the scope, scalability, and depth of the features MindTouch offers, Fulkerson noted that there is little comparison between Google Docs or similar offerings, which he feels only work well for small businesses.

This point could be convincingly countered by Google, which has been promoting its premier suite applications as suitable and scalable for large enterprises. As we wrote yesterday, auto supplier company Valeo is now deploying Google Apps to 30,000 of its employees.

Still, Fulkerson by no means considers MindTouch to be dwelling in the shadow of a much larger competitor.

"Because we have a web-oriented architecture, IT and business users can do rapid application development on the platform, which takes weeks instead of months. Also because of the WOA, it makes it easy for MindTouch to develop the productivity tools on the desktop. And it's easy for users to adapt MindTouch to how they work and get more value out of other systems they're using."

"Whatever your workflow is," he continued, "MindTouch allows you to get more out of it. Microsoft Office docs can be published to MindTouch. It's taggable, searchable, editable from the web, sharable through a URL or email or Twitter DMs or chat IMs, and usable in a way it would never be if it was trapped on your desktop."

The Desktop Connector feature allows users to drag and drop any kind of document or even whole directories into MindTouch. All files then become web-based, searchable, etc. For richly formatted documents with images, even the formatting gets imported.

The new Aurelia Reporter in Desktop Suite is particularly impressive. It allows any Windows document to be published as a MindTouch page. That page is then accessible from a web browser and editable even if the user doesn't have the software on their PCs. As with all MindTouch pages, the content is editable, indexed for search, versioned, and able to be permissioned for specific users and groups.

And with Microsoft Word and Outlook Connectors, email threads are publishable and searchable by any involved users and from multiple sources.