Google Wave is now for EVERYONE!

GoogleWave is now available to everyone.  It was earlier rolled out by Google by invites but as of May 18, it was freely available.  Honestly, for all these months – of restrictive roll out – I did not see a whole lot of use for it.  I already have folks on gmail and I don’t think I would have as many on GWave with invite only sign ups.  So, despite my initial enthusiasm, I really didn’t bother.

But a widely open Google Wave will be a different animal!  The contacts don’t seem to be fully synced with Gmail although the “Manage Contacts” link goes right away to the Gmail contacts.

What can you do with GWave?  Here are some resources:

1. Complete Guide to Google Wave: The HTML version of the book is completely free.

2. Official Google Wave Blog: Great source of excellent information

3. FAQs on Google Waves

The “out of the box” GWave comes with these tools.. which seem pretty useful.. specially since you can collaborate with friends and family.

Here are some of the extensions that different developers have created:

I am betting that it won’t be very long since the Google Apps will be available for GWave as well.  Overall, a great way to collaborate and move to the next level of communication.