Wave at your colleagues

...or your customers. Or your suppliers.

I've been a user of the superb Basecamp online collaboration tool from 37signals for the past couple of years, and I define a project account for each major new project to facilitate clear communications with clients. However, a presentation I saw this week has convinced me that Basecamp's days are numbered. And Lotus Notes is in trouble, too, not to mention another bunch of big and clumsy applications.

Wave is a new tool and communication metaphor from Google which was presented at the recent Google I/O developers conference. It's a sort of dynamic mix of the best features of e-mail, instant messaging, blogging and online whiteboarding, and it all runs from within a regular browser. It won't be released until later this year, but it already looks extremely promising.