Using Google Wave

I've been playing around with Wave, mostly on my own, trying out different ideas about the nesting of the different blips. Granted all I know about using it is the WYSIWYG nature of the web client and the 80-minute video about it at Google I/O, so perhaps I'm missing something...

It works fine for the obvious use of Wave, which is a multiuser conversation, with nested (and media-rich) responses. As I try to bend Wave to other uses, I'm finding it not so flexible, which might be the client itself, or the Wave system overall. One idea that I'm trying is using Wave as a rich document, using replies as nested blocks under headings, subsections, etc.

One problem I've found is that you cannot reply (as a nested reply) to the most-recent blip; it changes the reply into a "continue this thread" type of blip instead of nested under that specific blip. Additionally, if you want to reply ahead of other replies, you cannot: the "insert reply here" inserts it after all other replies to that blip. I'll admit that, for the sake of a conversational flow, this makes sense -- I shouldn't be able to reply after someone else, yet have it appear before theirs. But is this just a client restriction, or something that just isn't allowed in the Wave protocol? Not being able to insert anywhere takes away a range of potential uses for Wave, which would be too bad.

I'm still waiting for Developer access to Wave, so I can try some Gadget and Robot development. But perhaps until then, I should poke into the protocol a little more to see exactly what I'll be able to do.