It allows you to add files to the wave and any person who is a part of the wave can download and upload files to the wave. This way it facilitates people to share not only their work status bit also their files like documents and so on which allows multiple people to update and access the same files thus creating the ideal environment for data sharing.
I believe it is an extremely useful tool as far as people working in a group are concerned.It allows you to copy messages from one wave to another so if for example you have one team working on a project and they are all on one wave and if the executives and management employees of a company are on another wave it is possible for a person to transfer the project info to the managment wave to keep them updated. Also it allows you to reply to each post sepratly and also allows induviduals to edit previous posts which is a very powerful tool cause it allows you to make changes to the past conversations and also to past files. This way it is way better than chatting. Also it allows direct replies in which case the message is sent only to that person and not to all people on the wave. The major advantage with the wave is that the interface is very similar to the gmail interface to which all of us are already used to. Another feature worth noting is that it has a archive feature similar to that in gmail allowing you to archive old waves removing them from the inbox and decluttering your inbox.
Overall i feel it is a useful tool. Though i do find that it is probably not the best tool yet. Obviously with google's resources its bound to become the best in some time. Right now i find that the web site www.stixy.com is very very useful. Its actually quite amazing. In the sense it has all the basic features of the wave plus a few more. I like their interface too. But i am a die hard google fan and am sure in some time soon the wave will be the best tool out there so i am going to stick to using the wave:)
