Google Waving

After Google Wave made it's debut amidst much fanfare and media attention in 2009, what does it have in store for 2010?

For a start, I expect that Google Wave would no longer be an 'Invite Only' platform and would open up for public access some time this year. I also believe that Google Wave APIs will see further streamlining and the App Store for Google Wave will eventually see life of the day perhaps towards the middle of the year.

I'm sure that the quality and number of Google Wave Robots and Gadgets would improve by leaps and bounds. I also expect the rather annoying issues which lead to the following error message to be fixed for good by Google.

"Everything's shiny, Cap'n. Not to fret!" Unfortunately, you'll need to refresh. Wanna tell Dr. Wave what happened?"

Happy New Year 2010 Everyone!

While Google Wave can do a lot of things, it does have some limitations and bugs.

• It is NOT possible to Remove Human Participants from a wave. It is ONLY possible to remove Bots.
• It is NOT possible to set a wave to reply-only access
• It is NOT possible to merge waves or blips with each other
• It is NOT possible to set your status to Invisible
• It is NOT possible to delete a private reply from within a wave
• Private Waves with no other paritcipants can disappear from your Inbox and can be hard to find.

I'm sure it's a matter of time before Google fixes these issues. Till then, Happy Waving!

Some users can find it tedious to keep Wave open in a web browser in order to receive notifications on their Waves. To solve this problem, there are plenty of efficient Google Wave Notification Tools and Plug-ins which you can choose from. Some of these are showcased below.

Google Wave Notifier for Windows

Google Wave Notifier is a Windows system tray utility which alerts you about new and modified waves with pop-ups.

Googsystray for Windows and Linux

Googsystray is another system tray utility for Windows and Linux that plays a notification sound and displays a popup for new and modified waves with unread content.

Waveboard with Growl Notifications for Mac OS X

Waveboard is a standalone Wave client for Mac platform that provides pop-up Growl notifications for new or modified Waves with unread content.

Google Wave Add-on for Firefox

Firefox is amongst the most popular web browsers and its Google Wave Add-on adds a Wave icon on the status bar at the bottom of Firefox browser window. It displays alerts when you have new or modified waves with unread content.

XMPP Lite for Google Talk and AIM

the XMPP Lite bot works inside the specific waves you want to receive updates on. Add it to a wave and click the subscribe button in the blip it adds,it ensures that you automatically receive IM updates when that wave changes.

Plenty of tools and more coming to make your life easier with Google Wave

In addition to Google Wave Gadgets, Bots are also a fairly common terminology for Google Wave. A bot is a special participant on any Wave. To users, it will appear like any other Wave participant or contact. It has a Wave ID like bot@googlewaving.net, and using this ID, it can be added to your Google Wave Contacts.

While it does appear similar to a human participant on a Wave, it is specifially programmed to automatically perform a particular function within a wave. Therefore, A bot can be regarded as an automated wave participant that periodically checks the contents of the Wave and then takes appropriate actions on those Waves as required. A very common example of a bot is to delete empty blips on a Wave.

Adding a Bot to a Wave

In order to use a Bot on your Waves, you first need to add it to your Contacts by using its ID. Then create a new Wave or open an existing Wave for editing and add the Bot as a participant similar to the way you would add other human participants.

While you can't remove human participants from a Wave, it is possible to remove Wave bots. Easy as you like !

I'm sure that you've read the term 'Wave Gadgets' several times on a number of Public Waves. In case you are wondering what are Wave Gadgets – I'll explain it in simple words. These are miny applications can be inserted into a Wave to extend the functionality of that wave.

The best part about Wave Gadgets is that its easy to write and deploy them. You are not restricted to the pre-bulit gadgets and every day, a large number of Gadgets are being added by developers from all over the world.

To add a Gadget to a Wave,  click the gadget button on the edit toolbar while you are editing any blip on that Wave. There are 2 ways to add Gadgets to a Wave

1) Insert Gadget by URL

To insert a gadget in a blip, open the Wave, open the Blip for editing and click the Add Gadget by URL button on the toolbar. Enter the gadget URL, click on the 'Add' button and you are all set. The gadget has been added to the blip.

2) Install Gadget Extension

The Doctor Wave has a link to the Extension Gallery. Choose the gadget that you want to add to your Wave and click 'Install'. The extension adds a button to your Wave Edit toolbar so that it's possible to later add this gadget to any of your Waves pretty easily.

Gadgets are fun, don't be afraid to explore them!

When a public Wave has large number of participants, it can often be a harrowing experience to moderate the Wave and control who does what? Since Wave is real time collaboration platform, it was important for Google to lay down guidelines which Wave users must follow.

These are informally known as the Google Wave Etiquette. It includes the Standard Netiquette and Wave specific Netiquette.

Wave Etiquette

All Google Wave users should follow the following Wave Etiquette.

• Avoid linking Non-Public Waves to Public Waves
• Follow the rules (if any) set by the person posting the first blip
• Do not change a Private Wave to Public without its owner's permissions
• Avoid disagreements and foul language on public waves
• Seek Wave owner's approval before adding bots and gadgets to a public wave
• Remove empty blips that you receive

In addition to these, the Standard Netiquette also applies well to Google Wave 

• Avoid ALL CAPS. It is considered rude.
• Use simple and easy to understand language
• Do not spam
• Do not post porn or adult material
• Do not use the Wave as a means for cheap publicity

Once you login to your Google Wave account, you can find the Google Wave Etiquette here

Like your Email Inbox, your Google Wave Inbox can quickly get cluttered if you are participating in a large number of Waves. As the number of Waves in your Inbox increases, the list can quickly become unmangable and you may find it difficult to search for your favorite Wave. What's more – whenever a Wave gets updated, it will show up at the top of your Inbox as an unread item – whether you want it or not

 Therefore, it's exteremely important to manage your Waves judiciously. There are 2 ways to do it.

1) Archive – It is similar to how you archive your email. Arching a Wave does not delete it but it moves it out of your inbox and into a location known as 'All Waves'. The best part is that it shows up in your search results and if someone updates it, it makes it's way back into your inbox so that you stay up to date with the latest activity on that Wave.

If you accidentally archive a Wave, you can always 'Unarchive' it and it will move back to your Inbox.

2) Unfollow – If you are a participant on a Wave which does not interest you any longer, just use the 'Unfollow' option. It will ensure tat you do not get any needless notifications about any updates to that Wave. Mind you, the Wave is still there and will get updated in your Inbox, it's just that those irritating notifications will go away. Simple, isn't it!

If you are an early follower of Google Wave and wondered where has the 'Mute' button disappeared, it's now been replaced by 'Follow' and 'UnFollow' to help users streamline their waves.

Now that we've done quiet a few tutorials on what is Google Wave and the basics of how you can use Google Wave client to collaborate with others, it's time for a quick recap. We found this really good video on YouTube which explains everything that we've covered so far.

It talks about the structure of Google Wave Client, Contacts, Blips and Wavelets. It also talks about G+ (Google Search) which lets you embed Google Search results into your Wave. It demonstrates how you can add images to your Waves and Blips and how to share your photos with others using the Google Wave client.

Although we've not covered a tutorial on Gadgets on googlewaving.net till now, these are pretty simple to use and the video talks about how you can do conferencing by using a relevant gadget for Google Wave.

Happy Waving!

While creating a Wave and inviting others to collaborate on it is pretty cool, many of the people you invite to join your Wave may not be online when you invite them. If you want to send a instant message to someone and just exchange quick information/ greetings, it's better to "ping that contact' rather than going through the process of creating a Wave and adding the contact to your Wave.

Pings are instantaneous and they show up on the recipient's computer if they are signed-in to Google Wave. To ping someone, just click on their name in the Google Wave Contacts Panel and then click on the 'Ping User' button. This will display the Ping Panel where you can type in your message and click on the 'Done' button to send it.

Your recipient will receive your ping instantaneously and it shows up as a green flashing window to notify the recipient of the received ping. If the recipient is offline, they'll see the ping when they login to Google Wave client. Pings are similar to Waves but the Ping conversations are not stored as part of your Wave inbox as long as the ping continues. Once the ping is over, it is saved to your Wave inbox.

There are plenty of other ways in which you can ping people – through your Contacts Panel (as described above), through any Wave and selecting the recipient etc. In-Wave pings are often used to have private conversations within a Wave so that other Wave participants are not aware of these conversations.

Pings are a great way to have a quick chat with someone. Like a regular Wave, it's possible to add multiple recipients to a ping. Google Wave shows a green dot to denote that a person is online. If you do not see the green dot in front of the recipient's icon, it means that the person is currently offline.

Ping and Keep in touch !

The Contacts Panel is the heart of Google Wave client. When you access your Google Wave client for the first time, you'll notice that you already have some contacts in the Wave Contacts Panel. These are your Google contacts (Gmail/ GTalk) who've already joined Google Wave. Whenever you signup for a new Google Wave account, Google automatically selects the Wave contacts from your Contact list and adds them as your Wave Contacts so that you don't need to do it manually. Pretty neat, I would say!

However, even if you need to add someone manually to a Wave, it's pretty simple. For example, I found a cool link which I wanted to share with my college buddies. I just create a New Wave, type in the URL and then I click on the + button to add my friends to this Wave.

 Just add as many contacts as you like and click on 'Done'. Another cool way of adding Contacts to a Wave is to select them in the Contacts Panel and just drag and drop them into your Wave. If one of your friends has a Google Wave account but you don't see him/ her in your Google Wave Contacts Panel, you can add them manually by clicking the + button in the Contacts Panel.

Alternatively, you can click on the 'Manage Contacts' button and add a Contact from your Google Contacts. Similarly, it's pretty easy to remove a Contact from your Google Wave Contacts using Google Contacts. Select the appropriate contact and click on 'Delete Contact'.

Just keep in mind that removing a contact from your Google Contacts will delete it from all Google applications so it should be used only when you are 100% sure that you do not want to interact with someone through any Google application in future.

Once you add a participant to a Wave, there is no way to remove them so be careful on whom you add. It is also possible to add Google Groups to a Wave though it's a bit more complicated and we'll leave that for later.

Happy Waving!