Cybercriminals have a lot in common with the Periplaneta americana, the common household cockroach. They seek out the dark, poking and prodding for ways to get in where they are unwanted. In their case it isn’t food, but the misery of computer users they seek out. And, just like cockroaches, once you think you’ve got them blocked, they find a new way in.

Google Wave is really just a rough pre-beta right now. So any attempts to clean it up and add features are more than welcome. Today the Wave team posted about the newest feature, following waves. This should make the process of managing public waves much less awkward.

The benefits of Google Wave are yet to be seen by the mass public. Google released an internal developer sandbox earlier this year and eventually rolled out a consumer preview to 100k users in September. Now, Google has announced its next step in the rollout process: the federation sandbox.

Word has filtered out of the Google Wave Google Technology User Group’s London meeting that Google Wave will be opening an app store. The move, according to Zee over at The Next Web, signals Google’s commitment to this new technology, and provides encouragement for developers to expand Google Wave’s potential.

Google sent out invitations to the new Google Wave beta yesterday and chaos is ensuing. Patrick Runald, senior manager of security and research at Websense, has been keeping an eye on all of the madness.

He has tracked search queries related to Wave invitations that lead you down the dark dirty alleys of the interwebs. Many searches yield results to malware and virus laden sites where it’s always phishing season.

So I get that Google Wave is an attempt to re-invent a modernized version of email. But its mashup of email, documents, and social networking is kinda hard to get your head around. For me at least, this video helped:

Got a Google Wave invite but don't know anyone else who did? Here's how you can test it out.

Post a comment here to say you got it. Then anyone else who also got one can private message you (click on the guy's profile, then click Messages) their Gmail address. Hook up and Wave away. If you end up developing a relationship and getting married, I want an invite to your wedding.

The NYT just discovered that Google Wave will be rolling out invites to 100,000 users starting today. Google Wave, in case you forgot, is a mix between Google Docs and emailing, and is meant for collaboration. [NYT]