Recently, I was lucky enough to get into the preview of Google Wave, the much-hyped new communications platform. In my free moments, I've been trying to read up, use it and learn as much as possible. My initial reaction is - it's pretty great.*

But rather than attempt a tutorial before I know what I'm doing, I thought that, for now, it'd be better to point out two things came I across that might be helpful:

The Complete Wave Guide

The editors of Lifehacker, Gina Trapani and Adam Pash have released any early edition of a book that covers Wave from concept through how to get the most out of it. The book is free on the web, but will also be available in paperback.

Production Workflow

The other interesting thing I've seen recently on Wave is this flowchart on how filmmakers could use Wave to manage the production process. It's from this interesting article about Wave on ReadWriteWeb. While this chart focuses on production, it could really be any work collaboration (although it will makes it's way around to our production team once we're all on Wave).  But you could easily imagine a similar chart for managing the communications for a political campaign or a pitch to a client.

I guess the point is that whether or not Wave lives up to its hype will largely depend on things like the two above: 1. people investing time in how to get the most out of it and; 2. taking the plunge and integrating it into their daily workflow.

*if you're on Wave, too track me down