It does not on n97 right ? Will n900 's browser be able to run it like Chrome can?

Well Google say you can (or will) run Wave in pretty much any browser... I don't see why not.

I don't see a reason why Wave wouldn't work on the N97 (unless the JS is just much fun); and definitley shouldn't be an issue on the N900.

Now, if there's some browser-string detection going on, that's another case; but I've personnally heard nothing of that fact.

Even if it doesn't (which i'm pretty sure it will, and there'll be a lot of other browsers like Fenec or Tear running on the n900 anyway), the GW protocol is open and anyone can build an app for it.

This is just a guess....

It seems as though wave is using a persistant socket connection with their servers to handle real-time updates and a number of other features.

If this is true, and it is also true that it runs in nearly any browser, then all fingers point to Flash and AS3's socket API as the most convenient mechanism to get this done. Currently HTML5 defines 'websockets', but I'm not sure if any of the stable modern browser releases supporting this API, and even if they did, there are so many IE6 users out there, that websockets is not a realistic implementation choice.

It would be more realistic to create a wrapper API based upon websockets, and connect it to Flash. When websockets become more popular, or for the browsers that support them, the connect the wrapper to the native functionality.

Considering that the N900 uses a modern browser and has Flash support, I would bet that the N900 could handle google wave.

Again, this is only a guess, and one based on intuition. I could be, and have been on many occassions, dead wrong.

}:^)~

yes it does -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4B9a9lGiI0

Thats why you need an extra plugin if you're using IE: http://smarterware.org/3380/google-w...ernet-explorer

i tried at the summit, and while Wave would load and you could click around, and type things as expected, the fancy scroll bar did not work (it would not scroll around the window).

It also "bogged down" the device (although that might be as it was a big Wave, and google has noted that big Wave's can cause excessive resource usage), as did many other Flash/Javascript heavy sites. Or more accuratley, with Flash or JS heavy sites i saw the "this site is not responding would you like to force quit" pop-up more often.
*NOTE* single user experience, performed over patchy WiFi, with late beta build, done by a user new to maemo! Also, the browser did not crash even if i said no to closing the window.

I put in three separate invite requests, haven't heard anything, but that was only a week ago.

Anyone get a confirmed invite yet? If so, how long did it take?

I got an invite from a friend (so i am "second wave" and don't have any to give out!), took 4-5 days.
Other people I know about took a few more days