The yellow pins are stations, the red pins trains. The trains move in approximately real time.

Apart from that you can also stalk all trains currently on approach to a particular station via this live train map.

Note that this was done in only a few hours at Science Hackday.

It has been about 6 months since Google launched the anticipated real-time communication platform, Wave. Since then, people have been documenting and using this communication platform in many ways. If you are still looking for the right documentation about Wave, you should have a look at Gina Trapani’s Complete Guide to Google Wave which is one of the most complete guides I ‘ve seen around about Wave.

So, what are these quick start guides about? There are 6 ready-to-go templates that help you use and understand Google Wave even better. These include a blank wave, a discussion wave, a task tracking wave, a meeting wave, a document wave and last but not least, a brainstorm wave. Each one of them starts a corresponding new wave that already includes some data in it including some text/paragraph formatting and some times a Google Wave gadget.

Why don’t you just start a new wave.

It uses Google Accounts

There is so little chance that you don’t have a Google Account these days. What about a Google Profile? With Google Buzz your Google Profile is now getting in action. Featuring followers/following, public Buzz timeline with likes, comments, maps and more. Have you been using OpenID lately? Which account provider do you use the most? I bet Google is your first choice (if applicable).

It’s not a first mover

As Robert (Scoble) has mentioned before “The problem is that first mover rarely wins“. The thing is, Google is not a first mover in this. Google Buzz takes advantage of some of the most intriguing and successful existing features in other web services like FriendFeed and Twitter. It has incuded the Followers/Following feature which has proved its popularity in the latest years (see Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.). It also uses Google Reader’s and FriendFeed’s Like feature. The appearance of Google Buzz is very FriendFeed-like. I am not sure if Google Buzz can succeed where FriendFeed couldn’t, but I bet this time Google’s social fight/attempt will turn out successful.

It is made of PubSubHubbub

It’s real-time. Enough said.

There are also a few other stuff that make Google Buzz stand out. For instance, have you tried editing you comment or removing your “like”? See what happens to that buzz mail in your inbox?

I remember using EtherPad quite a lot of times since the day it launched. I only had the chance to use the free edition and I have to say it was enormously handy, most of the times being a time-saver. There were times when EtherPad was the first thing that crossed my mind while Google Docs was second. Over the last year it also got prettier with more attractive buttons, lists and colors. However it did not have as many features as Google Docs have but the real-time-thing just blew my mind away. Real-time back then was something beyond the web’s status quo. People had in mind that you have to ask for something to get something. It was hard to think you could get something while not having asked for something.

Another interesting aspect of this acquisition is that

the EtherPad team will continue its work on realtime collaboration by joining the Google Wave team

Well, I am guessing Google Wave will change the world after all. Although Google Wave is responsible for a piece of the real-time collaboration today’s status, it definitely needs better user interface/experience and a whole bunch of new features. Probably user experience almost overcoming our current cognition and features that will knock our door even if we are not expecting anyone. The sure thing is that the web is getting more and more real time and I love it!

So, I am hoping to see Google Wave getting serious very soon.