The Geekorium

Home of Rex Havoc, Space Adventurer and other assorted Geekeries.

  1. Wave This API released. Plus Official Chrome Extension and Bonus Unofficial WordPress Widget

    A few weeks ago, I noticed a new feature of Google Wave that allowed a user to easily send websites and content to a new wave to easily share with others. The feature (called “Wave This”) was not officially announced at the time, and I was asked politely not to say anything more at the time until the team could officially announce it.

    wave-this-buttons.png

    In addition to this, the Wave This function has an official Chrome Extension. Install the extension, and you can send any page to Wave with a click!

    Finally, you can also use an undocumented Wave This feature to add a Wave contact button to your sites. At the top of my page I’ve added a “Wave @ me!” button that starts a new wave with me as a participant so you can easily contact me in Google Wave. To add the button to your own site it’s as easy as filling your details in the code below:

    <a href="https://wave.google.com/wave/wavethis?t=Contact+via+[Your-Site-Name]&r=[fill-in-your-@-wave-address-here]" title="Contact me in Google Wave" class="vt-p"><img src="[your-button-image]" alt="Wave at me!"></a>

    The &r parameter for adding a recipient isn’t listed on the API page and support might be pulled or altered so use at your own risk. Additionally, be aware that the Wave This function currently defaults to the Google Wave Preview account only, so if you use a different client (a Google Wave for Domain Apps account for instance, or Novell Pulse) you’re out of luck for now.

    So there you have it! A new API, an awesome function, and my modest widget. Have at it! Make some buttons!! Start spreading Wave!!!

  2. Emaily Gets Waves Out of Wave

    In yesterday’s open thread, I used Mr-Ray by wave.to to allow non-wavers to access a wave. Mr-Ray’s real purpose is to be an intermediary between Wavers and emailers. It does this by creating a simple wave interface when you add someone to a wave by their email address.

    Well Mr-Ray wasn’t the first attempt to get Wave and Email to interoperate. A couple of Googlers used their “20% time” to create Emaily, a bot that behaves very similarly to Mr-Ray on the Wave side, but tackles the email side of things a little differently. When you add Emaily, it first creates an email address for you on its servers. Then when you add the address of a non-waver, it sends an email to that person with the details of your update and they can reply right from their email. I have to say, it creates a pretty seamless bridge between the two worlds from the email side. In Wave though, you get to see their entire email shoehorned into a wave, with “>” reply markers and signatures left in. For anything more than simple communication back and forth this could get messy.

    Picture 1.png

    The developers of Emaily have said they are planning to integrate Emaily even more into Wave by “rearchitecting Emaily into an application, which uses more of the internal Google services”. Hopefully this could be the beginning of actual built-in email capability in Wave that could speed the transition of more users from old technology to new.

    Try it today. Add “emaily-wave@appspot.com” to a wave and send an email to a non-wave friend! Will extensions like Emaily and Mr-Ray help you transition to Wave any faster?

  3. Google Wave Births “Active Robots”

    An amigurumi robot

    In my post yesterday I noted the increased push by the Wave developers to make it easier for the wave community to build and deploy extensions. It turns out this flurry of activity coincided with the imminent release of Version 2 of the Wave API, announced today.

    The first new feature is the:

    Active API: In v2, robots can now push information into waves (without having to wait to respond to a user action). This replaces the need for our deprecated cron API, as now you can update a wave when the weather changes or the stock price falls below some threshold. You can learn more in the Active API docs.
    Google Wave Developer Blog Announcement.

    More!

  4. Submitty and Gadgitty — Two Bots to Help Wave Developers

    Recently, the Wave Team have made a big push to publicise more bots and extensions. In a post to the Google Wave Help forum, Kylie announced that some users might start seeing a new Extensions link in their navigation panel. Then enterprising Wavers noted that anyone could get access to this Extension information with a search for [group:google-wave-extension-gallery@googlegroups.com].

    Now Google have made it easier than ever to submit an extension to the Wave Extension review team using a simple bot.

    submitty.PNG

    Create a new wave and add the Submitty bot (submitty-bot@appspot.com), and Submitty will create a submission form for you to fill out. At the bottom are a couple of checkboxes. If you check either of these boxes, you’ll be prompted to fill in more information about your bot and/or gadget. Finally, you add the Extension Review Group (google-wave-extensions-review@googlegroups.com) to your wave to submit your extension.

    More!

  5. Google Wave Checker Extension for Chrome

    If like me you find Chrome gives you the most stable, enjoyable experience of Google Wave, you might also be pining for the notifier extension Firefox users get.

    Well now Chrome has a neat little extension that does the same thing. Jeremy Selier has built a neat little plugin that shows you how many unread waves you have in your inbox. It checks every thirty minutes by default (at the request of the Wave team), but you can set it to check more frequently in the extension options.

    googlechromenotifier.PNG

    Something that makes a sound, or pops up a notification box (Growl-style) would be even more useful in some circumstances (Firefox is still my main browser of choice). However, if you need a simple way to see new Wave activity without checking the window every couple of minutes, this might just be the thing.

    Chrome Extension — Google Wave Checker

  6. Four reasons Wave has a real chance to replace email.

    The Next Web attended the Google Wave GTUG (Google Technology User Group) meetup in London where Lars Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon (the two responsible for Google Wave) gave a presentation on some upcoming Google Wave APIs. James Glick from The Next Web has included a dot-point summary of the most important parts, a few of which I have included below. Read his article for even more juicy inside information.

    To cut a potentially exhausting blog post short, a summary of snippets from their presentation include:

    • Extension gallery to be fully up and running in months with a wider collection and sharing functionality.

    • An extension store is planned where developers would be able to display and charge for apps.

    • [… snipped …]

    • Google Wave will be able to be deployed within networks and intranets for organisations and companies to use internally.

    • Although it has been requested by a substantial amount of preview users, there are no plans to intergrate Gmail or any mail with Google Wave. The API

    Read the article at The Next Web for more

    The rest of the items on Glick’s list show Wave team is obviously committed to improving the experience for everyone. The four items I’ve included above highlight for me the potential for Wave to grow beyond the bounds of what Google can achieve and put it firmly in the hands of developers who can make it a thriving, useful tool. If Wave can ever dethrone email as the default form of communication, it will be because of these for things: The ability for developers to extend it and make money from it, for businesses to deploy their own secure versions, and for Wave to send and receive email. Although it looks like the Google team don’t have plans to bake email support in, I am confident it will not be long before such an extension is built and available.

  7. A Wave Extension Market Place?

    Google Wave to have application store | News | TechRadar UK

    This will be a very important development in the success of Wave. The iPhone has grown enormously by making high quality apps simple to pay for and receive. The key difference for Wave will be that the protocol is open for anyone to extend, and the main client (the Google Wave interface) is web based.

    Keep in mind too, that over time other clients will emerge that will access the Wave protocol, and it will be interesting to see if the marketplace will extend to such clients.