By John Bowman, CBCNews.ca.

Today's the day that 100,000 invitations for the preview Google Wave go out to a lucky few. Google has quite clearly stated on its blog who will get beta invites, but that hasn't stopped everyone else from begging for their golden ticket.

Google says that invites will go to:

• Developers who have been active in the developer preview we started back in June
• The first users who signed up and offered to give feedback on wave.google.com
• Select customers of Google Apps

As well, some of these invitees will be able to nominate friends for invitations: "Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too."

Of course, Google Wave is a top trending topic today on Twitter, mostly with people either asking for invitations or linking to stories about the wave of invites.

No one has any invitations yet, though. They're coming out later this evening in North America, when working hours on Thursday start in Australia, where the Wave team is based.

Mashable is reporting that a Wave invite posted on eBay (remember, they aren't out yet) was going for $157 dollars before the auction was pulled. Another Wave invite is going for $100 on eBay.

Meanwhile, development of apps and extensions for Wave continues. On the Wave Developer blog, Stephanie Hannon writes:

Alexander Dreiling flew down to visit the Wave team from [German software developer] SAP's research lab in Brisbane. He showed us a 7 min video of Gravity, a Google Wave extension that facilitates real-time, collaborative development of business processes. I never thought I'd see grown men cry over business process modelling.

Previously:

• Google Wave gives up on Internet Explorer
• Google making waves with new communication tool

Related links:

• Lifehacker: Google Wave First Look
• Smarterware: Its Google Wave Mania Day!
• TechCrunch: Google Wave: There Will Be Backlash