Posts Filed Under ‘Google Wave’
Wave in a Box · So very excited that Google has announced an installable release of Google Wave, "Wave in a box." Of course I'd like to sell a few more books, but post-Wave I'm also ruined to classic, linear group chat. Can't wait to try to get an installation up and running. · 12 hours ago, 3 comments
Yesterday while I was on the air with Jeff and Leo recording TWiG, Google announced that they are halting development on Wave. The webapp will be available till the end of the year--with mechanisms to export your current wave data--and the code will remain open source.
As the author of the first user guide on Wave, I spent this morning doing interviews with tech journalists about what this all means. Here are some questions I got asked, and answers I offered.
What do you think about Google killing Wave?
I'm really disappointed. Wave is a tool I love and use daily, and this announcement makes Adam's and my user guide essentially a history book, an homage to a product that I believe was simply ahead of its time.
What did you love so much about Wave?
I loved Wave's ambition. From a purely technical perspective, Wave pushed the edge of what was possible in a browser; it promised a new federated communication system; it's open source and uses an open protocol; it's a platform that developers could customize and extend with gadgets and robots. From a user perspective, it had the guts to try to introduce a whole new paradigm of communication, one that combined document collaboration and messaging into a single interface. It demonstrated real-time collaboration in a browser the way no other webapp had yet. It made group discussions/brainstorming/decisions much, much easier.
I respect any product that aims as high as Wave did, even if it misses the mark.
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Copies of The Complete Guide to Google Wave have been selling like hotcakes, and unsurprisingly, the ebook has moved a lot faster than the print version. We've still got a stack of full-color, hold-in-your-hand paperback books just dying for a home, so we've got a special deal: if you buy the paperback book for $25, you'll get the ebook free, emailed to you on the spot for instant gratification while you wait for the softcover to arrive at your door.
The electronic version of the book is now available as both a PDF and an ePub file; you'll get both when you buy the paperback. We're also happy to announce that The Complete Guide to Google Wave is now officially available in the Kindle store, no awkward PDF-to-Kindle conversions required.
Best of all, thanks to a partnership with a local charity, when you buy a copy of the paperback book, you're helping to employ developmentally disabled adults here in San Diego. Meet the folks who will fulfill your order when you buy the book, thanks to NBC San Diego:
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Yesterday's live wave coverage of the Google I/O keynote was so much fun we're doing it again today. The Day 2 keynote starts at 8:30am (in less than 20 minutes), and Adam Pash, Kevin Marks and I will be live-waving it. Watch the live video stream on YouTube and follow along in the live wave embedded below.
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Google kicks off its annual two-day developerfest Google I/O today in San Francisco, and no doubt there are goodies in store during the opening keynote this morning from 9 until 10:30am Pacific Time. Google TV? Google Storage? Android 2.2? A better Buzz, Wave, or Chrome? You can watch the live video stream on YouTube as it happens. I'll be in a seat in the audience at the Moscone Center, live-typing commentary in the wave embedded below, along with Adam Pash from Lifehacker, Leo Laporte from TWiT, and former Googler Kevin Marks of Ribbit. Open up a couple of side-by-side windows--one with the video stream, and one with the embedded wave--and come on in to follow along.
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The best use of Google Wave's new anonymous access feature is public group chats on a specific topic that anyone can watch or refer to on a vanilla web page, no Wave login required. Last week, in lieu of IRC, I started holding virtual "office hours" with the ThinkTank community, and it's been super fun and productive. Here's how I set things up.
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Google just released an easy way to embed waves on your web site. The Google Wave web element puts a wave on any web page--with anonymous access. That means even people not signed into Wave can read and watch waves that you've made public and embedded. (Wavers, here's how to make a wave public.) Anonymous users can watch a wave change over time on your site, but they won't be able to edit it.
Let's give it a try. After the jump, check out my first embedded public wave with anonymous, non-signed in access.
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My latest two videos are up at Fast Company: one's on firewalling your attention with time blocking, and the second is on three ways to use Google Wave in your business.
The time blocking piece is actually a personal confession about my hermit tendencies. Sometimes I just shut everything off, fall off the face of the planet, and have some uninterrupted me-time. I've had co-workers say to me, "Um, where did you go today?" and the answer is usually "To my happy place, a distraction-free zone." As you'll hear in the video, at my last office job, I actually used to schedule a meeting with myself complete with a conference room to get away and focus on something for awhile. Here's the 2 minute, 37 second clip.
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A week ago I asked readers to tell me how they're using Google Wave in their daily lives, and despite a bit of "ha! no one's using Wave!" snarking on the Twitter, I got lots of interesting responses. Unsurprisingly, most Wavers use it as a real-time wiki, but some take advantage of features unique to Wave, like inline and private replies, public tags, and gadgets. I featured the most unique use cases I got in a brand new chapter just added to The Complete Guide to Google Wave. The following is the text of the just-published Chapter 10, which describes ways in which a few people who don't work for Google are using Wave to get things done--with screenshots.
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Once you're active in Google Wave, you want to know if something new is happening there--even if you don't have Wave open in your web browser. Several Wave notifier applications and browser add-ons can do the work of checking your Wave inbox for you, and letting you know you've got new and changed waves.
The following is an excerpt from the all-new Chapter 9 of The Complete Guide to Google Wave. Got feedback? Let me know in the comments and help write the first book on Wave!
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Google Wave may be in invite-only preview and still lack important features, but early adopters ARE using it--and we want to hear about it. Tell us about how you use Wave on a day-to-day basis, and your use case just might get included in The Complete Guide to Google Wave, the first book about Wave.
My co-author Adam and I are updating the book to replace theoretical, potential uses for Wave with real-world case studies of actual humans putting Google Wave to good use. We need your help. If you're waving regularly, please tell us about it, and we may include your story in the book.
Update: The brand new chapter 10, called "Wave in Action," has been posted. Check it out!
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One of the most-needed missing features in the Google Wave preview rolls out this week: user access permissions. Now, rather than everyone being able to edit everyone else's blips in a total free-for-all, the creator of a wave can add users and groups and give them either full access to edit everything, or read-only access. The binary choice is still too limiting, but GOOG says that "Reply only" access is on its way.
To limit a contact's access to a blip you created, click on their icon on the top of the wave and choose "Read only" from the drop-down, as shown. You can give both individual users and groups read-only access; though individual access permissions trump that of the groups. (For example, if the public group has read-only access, you can grant a single user full access to edit, even though that person's part of the group.) You can only set permissions for waves you have created.
Along with this first iteration of access permissions, the Wave team also added a "Restore" button to Wave's playback feature. If a wave gets destroyed beyond easy repair, you can use playback to roll it back to a former version of itself.
Even though this means quite a bit of revision to the book, it's great to see Wave evolving into something much more usable. I've also updated the Wave vs. the Rest chart to reflect this new feature.
Got a great response to last week's frequently asked questions about Google Wave, and it's worth expanding further on the differences between Wave and the current crop of web-based collaboration offerings.
Wave combines features from email, instant messenger, Google Docs, wikis, and forums and throws its own spin on things. For a quick visual of its offerings versus similar tools, check out this feature-by-feature comparison.
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The Google Wave Preview has been available to one million+ people for over three months now, but questions about Wave still abound, even by the early adopters who have gotten in and taken it for a test drive.
After publishing a book on everything I know about Wave, I still get many of the same questions I heard back when I started. Even folks usually bullish about new technology still don't understand what they can use Wave for, how to sell it to their friends and co-workers so they have someone to use it with, and how to fit it into their workday.
As much as I'd love it if everyone bought a copy of my book for every person they invite to Wave, reading 102 pages just to "get" a product is ridiculous. So, I've compiled some of the most frequently asked questions I've gotten about Wave and my best (and briefest) answers for them right here in quick-fire format.
Step inside to hear a two-word definition of Wave, what it's useful for, why you'd choose it over similar products, and how to do the things in Wave that most often trip up new users.
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Google Wave 2009 Year-End Screencast ·
It's still not easy to explain what, exactly, Google Wave does and is, but it sure does make for some cool screencasts. Hit play for a Wave-powered trip through 2009. (If you liked this, see also Good Wave Hunting and Pulp Wave Fiction.) · December 22nd, 2009, 2 comments
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