It's probably best to start with what Google Wave isn't rather than what it is.

• It isn't the answer to World Peace

There have been numerous post about Google Wave and how it's going to change the world and so on. It's a cool technology and it's going to have an impact, but it's not going to solve world hunger.

So far we've looked at emails and wikis and decided that while email is helpful, wiki's are integral to any collaboration project. Today we're going to be casting our eyes over something that has a little more of what I like to call the "shiny" factor - Web Conferencing.

Web Conferencing - A Brief History

In the first article in this series we had a look at email as a collaborative tool. This time round we're going to be looking at Wikis.

Wikis - A Brief History

"A Wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified mark-up language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. "

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be examining the various tools available to those who wish to conduct online collaboration. The idea is to introduce you dear reader to the various different technologies, and the best way to use them.

For the first entry, I'm going to be examining the grandfather of all online collaboration tools, Email.

Email - A Brief History: