The Google waves are a little choppy

So I've had Google Wave to play with for a week now.  Sadly a week when I've been stupid busy and had pretty limited time to play. But as every day goes by and I find that more of the people I invited are receiving their invites and coming out to play the more fun I have with it, and the more I learn about the features.

There's a lot of learning and discovery to do yet, but I love the ease of formatting and editing conversations, the notion of document collaboration, being able to go back to previous "blips" and edit, cross out, amend, highlight, rather than just having to tack stuff on the end which means for better context and flow.

I like the ease with which you can effortlessly (i.e without doing anything at all) toggle between IM and Email in the same conversation depending on which of your conversation participants are online when you are. It's really pushing the notion of time and expectation of response within a new communications context. 

The playback feature comes into it's own when you invite someone else to join a conversation later on, allowing them to easily understand what happened in what order and who said what.

I'm still having a few problems with some of the embedded gadgets as the platform is pretty unstable at times (but that's beta for you) but fair play for having a smart and humorous approach to reporting problems when it does fall over.

There are also nice little design touches like a wavey animated status bar when the Wave syncs.

To be continued, meanwhile watch this, it's a bit techy but it makes sense