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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.

Here’s a neat little gadget/bot combo that could prove very useful for public waves if the system caught on.

Add the Karma Gadget and Bot to your waves and use it to rate your users (out of five stars). If users get consistently low scores, they will be automatically kicked from Waves that choose to turn on this option.

Google has just unveiled their plans for group waves. The Google Wave Blog outlines the steps to set up a Google Group (yes, you have to use another tool) then add the group as a contact in Google Wave.

The service does not yet allow you to add users by their googlewave.com account (gmail.com only), and the permissions can only be handled through the Google Groups interface. It also seems that to avoid spam (being able to send messages to an everyone in a public group at once) users must pro-actively seek out the group wave and follow it to move it to their inbox [currently waiting for confirmation of this].

Like any Wave feature, this is still being developed and its behaviour could change over time. The Wave team have said they will continue to enhance the groups feature to make groups easier to navigate.

Waving with groups – Google Wave Blog.

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.

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

Google fan Lookon has created a Bot to post to his Posterous blog, and written detailed instructions on how to do it.

It’s straight forward enough, add the bot and log in to the form it gives you. The next time you add the bot to a wave, the first wavelet gets posted at Posterous and it returns the URL for you to check.

Posterous seems to have the most diverse posting options of any blogging software available, and the addition of posting from waves puts it again at the forefront.

Now the bot needs to monitor comments and return them to the original wave for even tighter integration.

How to write a blog using Google Wave Robot for Posterous [Western Bridge over Google Wave]

(via Kerrie Anne’s Fridge Magnets)

You can spend ages getting used to Wave and what it can do, and still not learn the best way. Fernando Fonseca has jotted down five things that he recommends you do when you first fire up wave, to help you break in.