A few (and by "a few" I mean 100,000) lucky beta testers were introduced firsthand to Google Wave this morning. Google’s new communication and collaboration tool, according to their vision, is a take on “what email would look like if it were designed today.” It integrates various aspects of e-mail, social networking, instant messaging and real-time editing.  

The invites were reportedly sent to developers “who have been active in the developer preview” since June, as well as users who signed up early and gave feedback about the project, and a few Google Apps customers. Those who received invitations are also authorized to nominate up to five friends to use the system.

Co-creator Lars Rasmussen explains it like this on the Google Blog:

Here’s how it works: 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 and see how it evolved.

So what is a wave? Can you add apps? Can it play sudoku? Will it allow you to make your creepy YouTube videos more efficiently? To clarify, Google explains it simply on their help page:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Key Google Wave Features

Real-Time Collaboration

Concurrency control technology lets everyone on a particular wave edit and contribute to rich media at the same time.

Natural Language Tools

Server-based assistance models can provide contextual suggestions and spelling correction advice.

Extending Google Wave

You can embed waves in other websites, or add live social-networking gadgets with Google Wave APIs. 

Google plans to roll out other features as soon as they are ready, which should be over the next few months. For a more thorough visual walkthrough, check out Google's tutorial video: