Mozilla Labs, the group behind the enormously successful Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client, has a monster of a program in the works named “Raindrop.” Raindrop will be a central hub for online communication. It will integrate e-mail, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging into one downloadable program. Like Firefox and Thunderbird, it will support add-on extensions. This may seem similar to Google Wave — bringing multiple forms of online communication together into a central interface. There is one fundamental difference, however.
Google Wave, which is cloud-based, promotes an entirely new form of communication, a “wave.” A wave is like e-mail, instant messaging and document collaboration all in one. The wave exists on Google’s servers and is editable by everyone invited to the wave in Wiki fashion. A wave can also be publicly readable and editable. It is not e-mail — a communication delivered to multiple recipients who can then reply with a new communication. Quite simply, it is a proposed replacement for e-mail and standalone documents. Ambitious.
Both Raindrop and Google Wave have a common goal, efficient communication and aggregating all of our information. However, Google Wave is really about a the adoption of a new form of communication, the wave. It is a call for revolution.
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