Google Wave is one of the latest applications Google is touting at the moment and it’s got some hype – people are clambering high and low to get invites. But is it the ultimate online collaboration tool? Google Wave incorporates external bots and plugins to aid collaboration, although it isn’t clear just how many people use them.
Many of these bots and gadgets are limited in their use at the moment, mainly because most Wave users aren’t completely clear on how Google Wave will work best for them. In the coming months, we expect there to be some real standout applications that help push the Wave service to new heights.
Only time will tell (collaboration is only as powerful as the people using it) but in the meantime we’ll show you 5 things you can do with Google Wave right now by using bots and gadgets.
Please Note: We are also giving away some Google Wave invites, click here for more information.
1. Integrate your Twitter Feed.
You can create a Twitter wave by adding a Twitter bot to your contacts. The one used here is “tweety-wave@appspot.com”. Simply add to your contacts and click on the initial Wave the bot generates. It will ask you to authenticate with Twitter (remember to allow pop-ups here). Once you have done this, a new wave will pop-up like the one below. This is your twitter feed. You can tweet at the top. It’s that simple.
One word of warning on this one – any participant in a Wave involving Twitter can tweet from your account!
2. Invite your participants to a Phone Call
Sometimes you just can’t express what you’re after in words (or waves?), so the next step is to call the people involved. Ribbit have been quick to add an extension for this very purpose. It’s listed in the Google extensions gallery and so it is easy to find and install.
By installing the Ribbit conference gadget, you can bring all your “wavees” together into a conference call and thrash out your ideas or plans. Simply add a new thread to your wave and insert the Ribbit gadget. All your participants are available to select to join the conference. You and your participants just need to add your phone numbers and hit dial. Each person will be contacted (by a US number). As each person answers, they are joined to the conference call and can speak away. The gadget has the ability to mute lines and end the conference. There is also a handy status indicator to say who is active in the call.
3. Embed Video
Not so cool as the others but one of the easiest things to do. video embedding is well worth a mention as part of effective collaborating. An example of this is providing a how-to YouTube video to try and explain to a participant how to build something that you’re working on (let’s say a school science project). The screenshot below shows how simple it is to do this:
And here is the result:
4. Get Mapping!
One of the most popular integrations around the web today is location-based services. Naturally Google Maps fits into waves quite well. You can also find this gadget from the extensions gallery and add it the same way as a Ribbit conference. This has been included in the list as it will be one of the most extensively-used collaboration tools within wave. Many people organise get-togethers by E-mail or Facebook but if you organised one by Wave you could explain where to go and what to do via a Google Map. The example below shows Google Maps used in the context of finding someone’s missing cat.
OK – a bit over the top, maybe posters around the neighbourhood would suffice…!
5. Amazon MP3 Bot
Saving the best to last, this bot is very impressive. It can be seen as your own personal iTunes store, created in real-time and personalised to you and your participants tastes. Simply add “amazonmp3-withwaves-com@appspot.com” to your contacts and invite the bot into a wave. To activate it, type “music: keywords”, replacing keywords with what you want to search for. For instance, you might wave about your new favourite artist, and let your participants hear them straight away, no links and minimal searching required.
Summary
As you can see, this list is kinda small. There are actually loads of bots and extensions to add that are provided by third parties, but few outside of Google’s own actually work very well at this stage (some have been tested to destruction – you only have so much patience for beta software!) There are bots that allow you to integrate your Facebook content into waves, IM your MSN contacts or even import your RSS feeds to name but a few. Feel free to add your favourites to the comments section – share the wealth :)
It is brave of Google to release a beta of a product in early developement infancy and throw in integration tools too. Hopefully over time extensions and bots will improve as the platform they’re integrating with becomes more stable. What is interesting here is Google Wave effectively removes the need for E-mail, replacing it with a richer, real-time collaboration tool, that you can shape and mould as you see fit. It still will really take some getting used to, it’s a whole new way of communicating!
