Google is preparing a new tool for web communication called Google Wave.It is in essence a combination of Google Mail and Google Docs, letting people collaborate on projects.

For many companies finding a way to combine all the different communication streams in a company into one coherent tool has been the holy grail of information management for a long time.

If you are working on a project, you generate a lot of emails, text files, images, spreadsheets, presentations etc.

What if there was one place where all participants could find all the relevant information and all documents produced, regardless of what format they were made in?

Content management tools

At the moment there are no easy application that can gather all these types of data for you. Lotus Notes may solve some of these tasks, other companies are developing their own mash-ups of emails, blogs, wikis, RSS-feeds etc., but for the time being people are even having trouble explaining what the whole concept is about.

Google (GOOG) is now preparing its response to this dilemma, called Google Wave.

Combining email, chat and document production

Lars Rasmussen of Google puts it this way:

“In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.

“It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave.

“That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave to see how it evolved.”

Conversation wave threads

The tool looks a bit like Gmail, with your contacts in the left column. The centre column is the Wave inbox, where you find a list of threads added to the project, all indicated with a picture of the woman or man having made the relevant thread.

Clicking on any of these so-called wave threads and you will see all the emails and documents included in that thread. You may respond to this conversation, not only by writing a new email, but by adding a new document, picture or other file. If your friend is online you may even chat in real time.

History playback

You can invite a new friend to this “conversation” by dragging their face or icon into the wave area.

If he or she wants to take part, they may playback the whole exchange of information by clicking on the playback button. This tool rewinds the whole process for them, and lets them see who added what information at what time.

If you want to, you can publish the whole wave or conversations as a public web page on the web.

Solving a problem

This is actually a big deal. Today many companies struggle with storing information in a way that makes it easily available for employees taking part in a project. The problem is that some documents are stored in private directories, some in databases and some in personal mail boxes. Finding them all is close to impossible. This kind of tool may be of great help.

But it is not only for companies. Groups of private persons may also make use of Google Wave: families, clubs and online communities.

Here’s a video presentation of the new product, which should be available later this year:

See also: Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web. (TechCrunch)

photo credit: rachel_thecat