If you haven't heard of Google Wave by now, the techy zeitgeist has obviously decided to slip past you. A combination of live chat, messaging and media-sharing interfaces (just watch the video), Google's 'revolutionary' new communications platform is currently being distributed around the world in dribs and drabs by private invitations between users. Back on September 30th, Google picked 100,000 people at random to send initial invitations to and since then, those first users have been inviting others to the world of Wave. So just like with Gmail, Google has decided to launch the service slowly in an effort to test the water (watch out for Wave puns) and catch any bugs that might be floating around (sorry) in the API before it's globally available.

It remains to be seen just how revolutionary Wave will be, but we thought we'd keep tabs on the whole phenomenon since the level of interest in the product has been, in many cases, pretty fanatical. Also, we have to admit that the system does have heaps of potential as a web-development tool and before long we'll be seeing new Google Wave-based applications springing up all over the web. When we write something about Google Wave the posts, like this one, will be identified by the snappy tag 'WaveWatch' - whenever you see that, you'll know we've dredged (ahem) some more Wave news up for you.

As it stands, the spread of Wave has now begun in earnest. The big Google Wave story of the moment is the clamouring for invitations - everyone wants one and some people will go to extra lengths to get one. On eBay you can buy invitations (these are going for around £10 or more each) which smug Wave initiates are selling. There were 50 Wave invitation auctions when we last checked, but it's not entirely clear whether these are all genuine. This website hopes to keep track of Google Wave invitation news, but doesn't seem to be doing much or attracting many visitors. There have been reports of phishing scams targeting Wave-hungry email users, and quite a few people have already been caught out. INVITATION FAIL: One user was a little too cautious, though, and, in asking whether their Google Wave invitation was in fact genuine, ended up losing it to a cheeky spectator of Google's Help forum. Nerdness + tragedy = lulz.

What we're really interested in is the potential for integrating Google Wave with existing websites (like, for example, Facebook) and creating special applications that use the service to creative and exciting ends. After a good few hours of Googling and YouTube searching we couldn't find many overwhelming examples of this yet. But, Google Wave is already in the hands of talented developers and their innovations will surely be appearing before long. Many are likely holding back the release of their apps until Wave is more widely known and available so that their creations receive an adequate response. We did find the following video from a YouTube masher which is fairly entertaining, though. Strong language and violence wrapped in heaps of stylised cool? Yes. A Tarantino classic. It's a Google Wave interpretation of a famous scene from Pulp Fiction.