Search articles from thousands of Examiners
Write for us
Phoenix Gadgets and Tech Social Media Examiner
Social Media Examiner

You got your Google Wave invite, now what?

October 14, 1:11 PMSocial Media ExaminerAdam Kochanowicz
3 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe


Get alerts when there is a new article from the Social Media Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.
Email Address


  Include other special offers from Examiner.com
Terms of Use


Google Wave is a real-time communications and collaboration 
web platform

If you're anything like me, you've probably been so anxious to finally get your Google Wave invitation, once you do get it, you don't know what to do.

Step 1. Find friends

Depending on how many friends you have added to your Gmail contacts and how many of those have a Wave account, you may not have anyone with whom to speak.

Understand your contact list is exactly the same as the one you see in Gmail.  However, you only see contacts who have Wave accounts.  If you see few to no people in this list, try a search (the text box next to the button "New Wave") for "with:public" these searches are case-sensitive, so enter this in exactly as you see it here. 

You'll find a lot of the publicly-viewable waves are cluttered with hundreds of people, so you may want to narrow this down as "with:public vegan" to find vegans or "with:public omaha" to find friends waves about Omaha.

Step 2. Play with bots and gadgets

There are two robotic entities to Google Wave: bots and gadgets.  Bots are added to your waves like users.  They have their own profile pics and @ addreses (only "@appspot.com" instead of "@googlewave.com")  Bots can be programmed to search the contents of your waves and perform certain duties.  Here's a few bots you can add right now:

Sweepy

Removes empty blip waves

sweepy-wave@appspot.com

Twitusernames

Turns "@user" syntax into twitter links

twitusernames@appspot.com

Rssybot

Puts feeds into waves

rssybot@appspot.com

Eliza the Robot Shrink

An artificially-intelligent bot with whom to have a conversation

elizabot@appspot.com

Gadgets

Gadgets are very similar to gadgets in iGoogle.  Gadgets are embeddable interactive media for your waves.  These can be games like Chess and Sudoku or utilities like trip planners.  See this link for a generous list of popular gadgets for Google Wave.

Step 3. Send invites

Users who were invited to Google Wave from another user may not yet have the ability to send out invites.  However, if you were signed up for Google Wave all on your own during the signup period, search your inbox for "invite".  You should see a wave there titled "Invite others to Google Wave."  Open this wave where you may invite up to eight people.

Step 4. Make a public wave

Take advantage of Google Wave's collaboration potential, even if you don't have a lot of contacts with whom to collaborate.  To make a wave public, simply add the bot "easypublic@appspot.com" to your wave contacts.

Find Adam Kochanowicz on Twitter Facebook

Comments

Name:


Comments:
characters left

NOTE: Do Not Alter These Fields:

Recent Articles

Friday, November 20, 2009
Okay, I've heard the complaints. Google's new Chrome OS built on their popular Chrome web browser doesn't have drivers, doesn't let you install …
Monday, November 16, 2009
The popular Google Chrome browser has slowly gained its place in the browser market as light, fast, and frankly, heavily advertised browser specially …

Things to see and do

Unexpected Wegman
25 Nov 2009 - 10 am
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
More art »
Alysa Bennett: Horse Drawn
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport