Google Wave trial grows

Google are expanding the trial of their Google Wave communications application, which is a completely new way of blending e-mail, Instant Messaging and social media elements in a single dashboard.

More than 100,000 users joined the service this week as part of a beta trial that is a very similar approach to the way they initially released Gmail, although they had more than a million requests to sign up.

Google say that it should be treated as nothing more than a "preview" at the moment, and it is thought to be about half finished. Plenty of people are buzzing at the opportunities it could open up though.

Google will also be opening up the trial to a limited number of their Google Apps customers to identify what the opportunities are for it in business environments.