What's Next for Google Wave

Google Wave is kind of like the Snuggie. You either immediately see its genius or can't figure out why anyone would bother. When Google announced plans last month to shut down development of Wave and open source its code for anyone who wants it, some users were crushed while others just yawned. If you fall into the "I love Wave" camp, then you'll be glad to know the Google Wave team has new plans for the now defunct project.

Software Engineer Alex North announced Wave in a Box, an application that will allow users to run their waves on their own servers and hardware. While the app will work out of the box, so to speak, its usefulness and future features will depend on what developers and enterprising hobbyists want to build out from it.

When Wave in a Box rolls out, it will include:

* an application bundle including a server and web client supporting real-time collaboration using the same structured conversations as the Google Wave system

* a fast and fully-featured wave panel in the web client with complete support for threaded conversations

* a persistent wave store and search implementation for the server (building on contributed patches to implement a MongoDB store)

* refinements to the client-server protocols

* gadget, robot and data API support

* support for importing wave data from wave.google.com

* the ability to federate across other Wave in a Box instances, with some additional configuration

To get the latest technical information and chack the progress of Wave in a Box, keep an eye on the Wave Protocol Forum. To download the current code -- all 200,000+ lines of it -- grab it here.