I got a Google Wave Sandbox account a little while back and started a small side project (which, as too many others did, fell wayside). Admittedly, it was rather confusing at the start and you really need to have a real-life network on the same platform for it to deliver on the value it promises.

If you haven’t lived under a rock in the last week, you would have heard about the opening up of Google Wave for limited preview. Those already on the Sandbox got invites, and I decided to pop in for a look. The preview instance feels definitely more stable compared to Sandbox. However, being logged on to both instances at the same time on Firefox 3.5, for some reason really slowed things down.

The word is that Wave runs best on Chrome, so I took the chance to check out Google Chrome on Ubuntu. Chrome is currently officially supported on Windows only but an early access version is available for Ubuntu (32/64-bit) and Debian (32-bit only). This version (my current installed build: 4.0.220.1) is a wee bit rough around the edges but generally worked well for me so far.

Wave, both Sandbox and Preview, felt snappier and more stable on Chrome. If not for the relative lack of extensions for Chrome (compared to Firefox), I would seriously consider switching browsers permanently. This is a seriously speedy browser.

Back to the Wave, if you want to give it spin and prepared for a little beta chaos, request for an invitation here.

Update: Found this nice short video on why you might want to use Wave.