A day is a loooooong time in online circles. Which is why it's taken me a full 24 hours to get my little brain around Google's latest product announcement which was announced yesterday at the Google's I/O developer conference before a 4,000+ strong audience.

After attempting to digest numerous posts which have tried to summarise the awesomeness that is Google Wave, I bit the bullet and watched the 80 minute product walk-through video (see below) and my knees have been knocking together in excitement ever since.

What Google has managed to build in a year and a bit is nothing short of breathtaking. Google Wave combines familiar web tools (email, IM, document sharing, wiki-based collaboration, language translation tools, spell checking software, rich media distribution, etc) with an uber smart open source multi-browser experience which allows individuals to embed parts of the platform into their native websites. There really is so much detail that has gone into Wave that I couldn't possible list out all of the cool features in one post.

So instead, I urge you to postpone watching whatever B movie you were going to commit time to this weekend in favour of taking in the presentation below. If you're the sort of person who gets excited by the brave new world of social media - this is what you've been waiting for.

I would go as far as to say that Google Wave isn't just an email killer or indeed a whole new way of looking at instant messaging, it is also a very strong contender for the title of future Facebook/Twitter killer as it shows how collaborative communication should work.

The level of detail which has gone into the development of Wave is truly inspirational - particularly from a user experience point of view. Hats of to the development team who have pushed for the system to be distributed using open source APIs and embeddable within third party websites as well as self hosted servers.

What really excites me is the potential that this kind of real-time communication channel opens up for communities and brands alike. I can see people talking about Waves and Wavelets in the same way we currently refer to SMS, emails and phonecalls.

Currently, we don't have a confirmed date on a public release for Google Wave other than 'later this year'. I for one, can't wait to have a play around...

Watch the video (which should be jumped to 7:32 where the actual demo starts off) and then decide on whether like me, you'll be Waving goodbye to the Internet as we know it.

If you cannot view the video above, click here.