Google Wave From The Start

Wave Polls! Which one do you like best?

2010-01-09T15:29:00.005Z

... Do you see what I did with the title there? :-)

Over the past few months I have experimented with a few different polling bots.

Just wanted to post a link to some info on my current favourite:

http://code.google.com/p/wave-poll/

There are two versions of this gadget. One that allows voting for multiple options and one that allows voting for only one option.

You can also show a list of the people who have voted.

Nice.

Undo / Redo at last!

2009-12-11T15:14:00.004Z

It's been a source of great annoyance and frustration since Wave began...

Undo didn't work. Accidentally delete a gadget that you have spent ages setting up - Hit Ctrl+Z nothing happens.

Google have announced (via Twitter) that they have added basic Undo / Redo for text. They also promise more functionality is coming soon. Great stuff!

Use Ctrl+Z to Undo your recent typing
Use Ctrl+Y to Redo

Weehee!

My Inbox is getting clogged up!

2009-12-01T10:13:00.006Z

Removing a Wave from your Inbox - This used to be problematic but now it works really well. And it seesm to be getting faster every day.

There are a few easy ways to remove a Wave from view (so your Inbox is a bit easier to understand):

Trash by using the Trash Button in the Inbox Toolbar
Trash by using the Trash Button in the Wave Veiw area
Unfollow by using the Unfollow button in either area
Make a new folder in the Navigation area and move your waves there.

(you may have to follow the little dots at the right fo each area to actually see the Trash buttons).

At present there is no way to empty your Trash. In a way this is good as it means you can't delete any waves by mistake.

HTML in a Wave - It's Easy!

2009-11-22T02:37:00.014Z

This may be old news to advanced Wavers but for me it was a new discovery today:

I recently started using the services of box.net to distribute my work (music) files with collaborators and record labels etc. It's a great service. One of the real neat things is the ability to place a widget (in a page of HTML) that allows people to download and upload to your box.net space. You can see my post about that here at my personal blog.

So naturally, I wondered; Is there any way to get that widget to work inside Google Wave? It's a Flash widget so at the moment, only if you can put HTML into a wave.

But you can't do that can you?

Well, after a brief search on the Google Wave help section it seems that YES you can! It involves a Wave HTML gadget and it's actually very simple.

So here is a walk-through. This walk-through includes adding the box.net widget but of course you can add any HTML code you want.

Click the images thumbnails to see more detail.

Start a new wave to use as a test
As per instructions here add a new gadget to your wave
The gadget name is: http://wave-ide.appspot.com/html.xml
Paste that into the gadget box
You will then see an HTML gadget box. Click edit in the top left corner and you will see a place to enter your HTML
For box.net, I simply pasted in the widget code (blanked out some lines obviously)
Click view in the top left corner HTML gadget and there you have it!
You can now finish editing your Wave
You can also go back at any time and edit the HTML

Neat or what?

The only downside that I can see to this method at the moment is that in a public Wave it appears that the HTML can be edited by anyone.

I'm sure it won't be long though, until we can set certain parts of a Wave as read only.

Evernote Gadget Discovered

2009-11-17T03:28:00.005Z

While we're on the subject of neat gadgets...

Anyone who uses Evernote will already know how useful it is. If you don't use Evernote... Why not? You should!

What is Evernote? Put simply its a global note taking system. Available on line, on local machines and on most PDAs and Smart Phones - (including a wicked iPhone app).

Anyhow, there's a gent' called Rene Cum who's made an Evernote gadget that works in Google Wave.

The URL is: http://renecum.com/gadgets/evernote/evernote.xml

Remember how to add gadgets to a Wave: URL/xml Gadgets - How?

Find out more about amazing Evernote here: https://www.evernote.com/

Eeeek!

Twitter Gadget - Updated for Wave

2009-11-16T20:57:00.007Z

Those clever souls over at Twitter Gadget: http://www.twittergadget.com/ have updated their Twitter Client.

I found that this gadget, although intended for iGoogle, actually worked very well with Google Wave right from the start.

However, they announced (via Twitter) that users of Google Wave should use this URL for inserting their gadget into a Wave: http://www.twittergadget.com/wave.xml

I just tested it and it seems to be working perfectly:

If you want to insert this gadget into a Wave.

Start a new Wave (or open an existing Wave).
Click the green jigsaw piece and insert http://www.twittergadget.com/wave.xml into the dialog box, as described here: URL/xml Gadgets - How?
You will then see the gadget and be able to log in to your Twitter account and change settings etc.

After making some changes you may find you have to refresh your Wave for the settings to show up correctly .

Please note: It's probably not a good idea to use this in a Public Wave (obviously).

Wave Bot Wiki

2009-11-16T09:45:00.002Z

Wave Bot Wiki

Some brave souls have started up a Wiki to list and document all the currently extant Google Wave bots and hopefully all those that come in the future.

You can find the Wiki here: GoogleWaveBots.info

Favourite bot description so far?

ComicSans Killer - comic-sans-killer@appspot.com - replaces Comic-sans formated text with a sane font

Funghie's Top 10 Wave-isms

2009-11-15T13:40:00.011Z

Top 10 list of things I find myself answering for people (and wishing they would listen to):

Update your profile as soon as you can. Add a picture. So you don't look like a random web item with no personality.
Use the double click method to get an indented reply within a wave (but be careful not to reply in the wrong place). This gives a nice neat collapsible reply instead of a brand new wavelet.
UNDO (Ctrl+Z) doesn't work. Watch out! (Copy & Paste is also sporadic).
Save your searches. For example onlyto:me is:unread = very handy.
When in a public wave - think before you hit a button - You could potentially destroy the wave. You could also leave a lot of random junk in someone's well maintained Wave. If you do - Clean it up before you leave.
Please don't add bots or gadgets to public waves that you didn't start yourself. Again - You could potentially destroy the wave.
Share you knowledge and don't be a proud-ass if someone shares yours and forgets to credit you - it is all public knowledge after all.
Don't moan and whine about broken features. Remember we are testing new technology here. It isn't going to work properly for a while yet. But you know Google - It will work eventually and when it does - it will rock!
If you're unsure about something, use the help link: http://www.google.com/support/wave You may be surprised how much info you can get from there. Including confirmation that a feature you can't get working doesn't work for anyone yet.
Remember you are dealing with real people - or in my case - a real dolphin. So be cool to each other. :-)

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Why does my text have yellow highlights?

2009-11-13T12:03:00.010Z

This one was intriguing me for a while. I was sure I remembered seeing this in the developer preview video but not 100%. I think partly because sometimes it doesn't seem to work reliably.

I also was under the impression that this was only supposed to be visible when Playing Back a Wave. But I have seen this in a normal Wave that is not in the playback state a few times too.

If you view a Wave and you see yellow highlights it means that someone has edited / added to that text.

Also any deleted areas have a strike out through them and should have a red background.

If you actually select the blip with your mouse (or SPACE BAR) etc. to let Wave know you have read the new edits - the yellow highlight should go away.

New - Follow / Unfollow

2009-11-13T11:58:00.003Z

Kryptyk forwarded this info:

Previously, when you viewed a Wave, you were automatically subscribed to changes to that Wave so it would return to your inbox when the Wave updated. Google have just changed this feature to add Follow and Unfollow buttons. Unless you specifically Follow a new public Wave you're reading, you will not receive updates in your inbox relating to that Wave.

Unfollow replaces the previous Mute functionality.

Imagine each Wave as a person on Twitter.

You can read Google's Blog post on the subject here.

If you have Blog account it's a good one to add to your Blog follow list.

Wave Terminology

2009-11-12T20:40:00.002Z

niezam Sandakan sent this lovely diagram which shows the definitions for various parts of a Wave:

How Do I Edit My Profile?

2009-11-12T20:38:00.000Z

There are two ways I know to do this:

Click on All in the list of Wave Folders (far left of the screen).
You should see a muted Wave called Profile for [Insert Your Name Here]
Click on this Wave. You will see a place to enter your Name, Status (not sure if this status refers to marital status, work status or just life in general - but I guess we can use it for whatever we want).
You can enter your main Website URL.
You can also select a picture for yourself.

This may be the answer to why so many people are showing up with no pictures. Go ahead and try it now. I did it and my picture was immediately updated.

Ron van Rijbroek: Another way is using the Contacts panel on the left side of the screen. Clicking your name displays a small new screen with a 'edit profile' button. Clicking this button displays the wave described in the post by Phil.

Using the G+ (Google Search) Button

2009-11-12T20:37:00.002Z

You may or may not have noticed the little blue G+ button in your toolbar. It is only active when you are actually editing a Blip/Wavelet. So it's easy to miss.

This actually a pretty neat little feature. It can be used to search for just about anything and then the link can be inserted into your Wavelet.

Thanks to chiara.martini@googlewave.com for pointing that one out.

Click the G+ button and perform your search under whatever category you like. When you have found what you were looking for just click Add to wave.

Inserting Images

2009-11-12T20:35:00.002Z

The first time I inserted a photo was using the method shown on the preview video. This requires Gears to be installed (see the section above). It works flawlessly (for me) and I really like the auto thumbnail feature.

Simply drag an image from your computer on to a Wave.
That's it.
Click the thumbnail to view the full size image.

Kryptyk Fysh: A gadget I've found useful, mainly for adding inline images rather than dropping thumbnails in, is http://wave-ide.appspot.com/html.xml. This gadget allows you embed html code in a wave including images hosted on sites like Photobucket.

Terry Cabeen: Another way to insert inline images (instead of thumbnails) is to insert the photos normally, then in the top-right of the thumbnail there is a small gray triangle-arrow-thing (only visible while editing the blip). Click to toggle between thumbnail and inline. I'm looking forward to more options such as right align, wrapping around images, etc (which seems likely, given that hovering the triangle-arrow-thing reveals an "Options" label.

I've Got a Really Good Idea For The Developers...

2009-11-12T20:33:00.000Z

Well great - I would say - Don't be shy about it. I know this, as a software developer myself - New ideas are awesome. No matter how clever you may think the developers are (and they are!) - There will always be something they haven't thought of. Or maybe they had thought of it but didn't realise how important it could be to some users.

How do you get the ideas to the developers?

Just go here.

Sign in and follow the instructions.

Don't be disheartened when you see there are already thousands of suggestions though.

Live Typing... Wow! I think?

2009-11-12T20:32:00.000Z

Oh Dear - Now you can see how much I rely on my spell checker! They call me "Sausage Fingers" in the studio. :-)

Very neat but you have to think neatness when using the system, it isn't foolproof. Especially when three people are typing LIVE all at once as we had earlier. Awesome!

Terry Cabeen: My understanding from the preview is that this functionality has already been created. I presume it's the disabled "Draft" checkbox down there.

I also have a memory of seeing that on the original 1 hour 20 minute preview. Let's hope Terry's right. If so - It would simply be a case of checking the Draft box to disable live typing.

I am finding lately that I use simple text editor if I need to make a large entry. Then copy & paste the result once it is spell checked etc. This also gives the added bonus of keeping a copy of your text, as undo still doesn't seem to work very well.

Using The Wave Reply / Continue (Blue) Bar

2009-11-12T20:30:00.001Z

A few people have noticed that sometimes it seems replies are nicely indented. Sometimes not. Here's what we figured out today (it is quite logical):

The latest Wave update cannot receive an indented reply Insert reply here using the blue bars. You can only continue this thread.
A message that is not the last one can receive an indented reply Insert reply here. It can then also also receive a continue this thread. Which will keep it indented correctly. This is the same as hitting Reply to this message from the drop down list within the message.
An indented reply can be replied to again which will then indent it again.

Matthew Fairtlough: Discovered that a simple double click in a wave will enable an indented reply that can be collapsed.

I had done this before but had no idea how I had done it. Nice one!

Everyone should use this method more often but be aware it is very easy to accidentally reply in the middle of a Wavelet. This does of course have its uses too.

Show me the latest updates!

2009-11-12T20:27:00.003Z

clemson@googlewave.com: Here's something I was wondering about that would improve communication. I find that every time I click a wave, I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see the latest updates. How can we make this easier by not showing read posts?

I have found that when I select a Wave in my Inbox that is showing new new updates. The Wave will automatically scroll to the bottom and land on the latest update. It just did exactly that within this Wave. Maybe the reason some users aren't seeing this behaviour is a matter of timing.

ashleyrobbins3@googlewave.com: Guys, you can do this by simply pressing the SPACE BAR to cycle through unread blips. Hope this helps. Also to get to the bottom you simply need to click on the blip at the top of the wave then press the END key on your keyboard.

In fact ALL navigation keys work in some way or another - PAGE UP / DOWN etc.

Sadly at the moment there seems to be no way to sort Waves from Newest to Oldest but I suspect that would go against the way the whole thing works.

Ruth Rogers: Wave Keyboard Shortcuts

Links to Waves

2009-11-12T20:12:00.003Z

clemson@googlewave.com: Excellent start! Anyone know how to link a Wave in email? I figured out that you can drag and drop a Wave into a reply to another Wave, but outside of there, I don't know how to link to one.

There is a big and complex thread about getting your Wave ID here:

How to Link to a Wave

I have found that simply copying and pasting the URL from the main Browser window is sufficient for now.

Terry Cabeen: You can also drag a wave into a blip / wavelet.

Of course the only caveat there is that, at this time, people without Wave accounts won't be able to actually see the Wave.

I have also requested to the developers that we can have a way to link to individual Wavelets. So that you could post a link to a section of a Wave. For exampleLink = Links to Waves. Like using a #Bookmark in HTML.

As far as I can find out there is no way to do this as yet. This is shame as it would be very handy to make (for example) a TOC (Table of Contents) at the top of the Wave.

Undo... Watch Out!

2009-11-12T20:04:00.001Z

Be very careful editing near the bottom of Blips / Wavelets. Especially if you have just added a gadget.

It may appear that there is some blank space that can be deleted. So you select the space at the bottom of your Blip and then hit BackSpace...

Ooops! Gadget gone!

Sadly Ctrl+Z (Undo) does not (at this time) work in this situation. In fact there are many situations where Undo does not work within Wave.

You have been warned!
Don't expect Undo (Ctrl+Z) to save you!

This one still keeps catching me out. So it warrants an exclamation mark AND a bold highlight.

Basic Undo / Redo functionality has now been added. See here: http://gwfts.blogspot.com/2009/12/undo-redo-at-last.html

What's that green dot at the bottom right of my avatar?

2009-11-12T19:58:00.002Z

It simply means you are on line at this time.

It has only just started working again.

However, the green dot does not seem to show other users on line at this time, unless they are users you have added to your contact list.

In other words, if someone is on your contact list, you should now be able to see if they are on line.

Help Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2009-11-12T19:54:00.000Z

I noticed a lot of people asking why certain things don't work properly within Waves that are not related to the subject.

I have found that the help system works perfectly well and there will usually be an answer to your question or at least confirmation that the problem exists for other users too.

Click the Help link in the top right corner.
You will then be taken to a page with search bar. Enter your problem and see. You can also have an email sent to you if there are any replies to your query.

Why use this system instead of help within a Wave?

What if your Google Wave isn't working at all for some reason? How would you then ask for help or get information?

A Google employee posted this: We wish this was in Wave! It would be super-easy to link answers up to questions, tag them, and so on. Unfortunately, until we've got enough room for everyone to have Wave access, we have to use other tools as well.

Wave on your iPhone

2009-11-12T19:51:00.002Z

It works fine.

Some people have said it is slow. I have a decent internet connection here and an iPhone 3Gs. Apart from the fact that, on entry the whole screen is re-drawn, it seems to work fine for me.

At the moment it is not possible to actually edit a Wave but viewing is OK.

Enter the address https://wave.google.com/ into the iPhone Safari.
You will see warning messages that the browser is not compatible... Ignore this warning and go ahead.
Click the + on your phone and select Add To Homescreen.

You now have Google Wave at the click of a button on your iPhone.

Embedding a YouTube Video?

2009-11-12T19:47:00.002Z

This one was quite easy.

Get the URL of your YouTube video from YouTube itself and paste it into a Blip / Wavelet.
When you paste the URL you will see a little light bulb next to the (now underlined) URL. Click the light-bulb and select "Embed Video".
That's it!

YouTube video performance is a little slow at the moment but I'm sure that will improve.

Here I am doing one of my day jobs, music stuff, playing guitar and singing.

Google Gears

2009-11-12T19:43:00.000Z

You may have seen on the YouTube preview video that some features of Google Wave require Gears to be installed. For example dragging a picture on to a Wave.

http://gears.google.com/

I had some trouble installing Gears. Maybe because I use Windows 7 x64 and Firefox. No matter what I did; Gears simply would not install. There were various error messages, none particularly helpful.

My solution was to install Gears using Explorer which installs it to work Firefox as well.

I think Gears must be an OS-wide tool. I thought it was Browser based. Anyway if you are struggling with Gears it may be worth a try.

Jason Cavett: If you are using Chrome, Gears is installed automatically.

Josh Ourisman: This is, unfortunately, not true on the OS X developer preview, and without Gears Wave is dreadfully slow. If you want to use Wave on OS X you should absolutely be using Safari or Firefox with Gears.

Pictures for Appspot Robots

2009-11-12T19:41:00.001Z

Apparently most bots now have their own pictures but this may still be useful.

I find it very handy to add a picture for these instead of having the generic empty profile picture. Simply treat them as a normal contact. Go to Manage Contacts and find the appspot app you want to identify.

Edit the picture to something appropriate Like so:

A Public index of Public Waves - Wavers Groups.

2009-11-12T19:39:00.000Z

I stumbled upon a neat little index of Waves here: http://www.waverz.com/groups

To add your public Wave to this index the procedure is quite simple:

Create a contact called wavegroupy@appspot.com
Add this contact to your Wave.

You will then see a little menu allowing you to add three categories for your Wave and it will appear at the web site mentioned above.

Bloggy!

2009-11-12T19:38:00.000Z

I tried using the Bloggy robot. It doesn't work.

Luckily I didn't fiddle about too much or waste too much time before a couple of helpful users alerted me to that fact that any Wave that has the Bloggy robot will automatically become Public. Plus there seems no easy way to get a Wave into a Blog.

There is working Wave to WordPress method but that is a little advanced for this Wave.

Kryptyk Fysh: Jayson Ragasa has an excellent script that I've been using to embed waves in my blog. You can see his instructions on how to do so here: http://heresmycode.blogspot.com/

Trash / Delete / Where has my Wave gone?

2009-11-12T19:36:00.000Z

Around this point I noticed that Trash didn't seem to work so well. It does work much better now. Sometimes it's slow. After searching around it seems that (obviously) the developers are aware. So not to worry too much.

Trash still cannot be "emptied" yet either.

Also sometimes new Waves disappear. Again a known issue. I have found that they do appear eventually. In fact at the time of writing this there seems to be a noticed increase in speed and reliability.

Another known issue is that private replies cannot be deleted. This one is rather annoying as you may accidentally privately reply to someone (or yourself) and than have no way to clean up the mess.

:-(

URL/xml Gadgets - How?

2009-11-12T19:34:00.005Z

I then noticed that some users were adding gadgets that I don't have. For example the really neat Twitter Gadget that actually works perfectly within a Wave.

All I was seeing was ton of xml based URLs like this:

http://www.blahgadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml

It took a bit of searching around to find that in order to actually use these URL gadgets there is quite a simple procedure:

Simply open your Wave and edit a Blip.
Click the green jigsaw puzzle shaped icon in the Wave edit tool bar:
Paste the URL into the box that appears:

The gadget will then appear in that Blip / Wavelet.

This same method can be used for any other URL/xml based gadgets.

Be careful not overload your public Waves with gadgets though.

How Do I Make a Public Wave?

2009-11-12T19:30:00.003Z

Public Waves are basically Waves that everyone can see.

Making your Wave public also means that anyone can contribute to your wave and that includes editing your own writing.

Of course the danger of this is that people can also destroy or mess up your work, (either by accident or occasionally and rather sadly - deliberately).

Unfortunately, at the moment there is no way to make your Wave read-only.

Should you decide to take the plunge there are a number of unreliable ways to make a Public Wave.

The easiest way I found is as follows:

Add the Bot: easypublic@appspot.com to your contacts
Make your new Wave
Drag easypublic@appspot.com from your contacts onto your Wave or
Click the + button at the top of your Wave and invite easypublic@appspot.com

Either of the above will work and your Wave should now be public.

How to search for Public Waves

2009-11-12T19:24:00.000Z

My first day was spent getting used to the interface and adding a few of the default gadgets. Things were a little slow and a little boring until I discovered how to search for Public Waves:

Entering with:public as a search brings up lots of nice public Waves.
Also entering: group:public@a.gwave.com as a search does the same job.
Of course these can be saved by clicking the + button next to Searches and entering the search and a description, or by clicking the "Savesearch" button beneath the list of waves.
Adding -with:blog-wave@appspot.com (or any other bot name) will remove any posts with that bot as a member.

This is just scratching the surface of search criteria but this is all I needed at the time.

Why am I starting this blog?

2009-11-12T19:14:00.003Z

I started a Wave with the same title when I first got into Google Wave:

Anyone who has Wave account can see the Wave here: Google Wave From The Start

It was a kind of diary about my learning experience in the first week of getting in to Google Wave.

After some time, the Wave became quite popular and unfortunately, I think partly because of this, the Wave is now broken and impossible to control.

Because there is no way of making a Wave "Read Only" as yet, it has become overrun with random conversation and the actual information is a little difficult to find... The same questions get asked many times because people don't see that it has already been answered a few "Blips" above.

Also, although it is known to be a bad idea at the moment, some poeple added various random bots to that Wave and this also contributed towards it's pear-shaped-ness.

So I am going to compile my information here on this Blog.

As within the original Wave - If there is any information here that I did not come across myself I will credit those who added it to my Wave.