One of the most interesting experiments in electronic communication I've ever seen is coming from Wave. It's real—time e-mail. What that means is that as you're typing a message in Wave, either a new message or a reply, the person you're writing to can see what you're typing as you type it. Sounds awful, right? You don't have to use Wave in this real—time way. It also works as a standard e-mail. What's really different about Wave is that if you're replying to a message and the person you're replying to happen to be online, they can jump into the conversation at that point, and change what is an email conversation into an instant message conversation or a chat. Wave right now is still closed to most users. And Wave isn't yet connected to other communication systems, like regular e-mail, which means that the only people we can Wave with are other people on Wave as well. So we don't yet know what using Wave will be like once it gets crowded like e-mail. Also, the technology behind Wave is far more demanding on servers and the Internet itself than regular e-mail or chat, so we don't know if the technology will work at scale. But Wave really is a current re-think of e-mail. A lot of people won't like it. A lot of people didn't like e-mail either when it first showed up. But people will find real uses for Wave or whatever it becomes, and it's one of the most interesting new takes on communication. Even if you don't like it, it will make you think differently about e-mail. What is special about Wave?