Posts Tagged "extensions"

A few weeks ago, I noticed a new feature of Google Wave that allowed a user to easily send websites and content to a new wave to easily share with others. The feature (called “Wave This”) was not officially announced at the time, and I was asked politely not to say anything more at the time until the team could officially announce it.

In addition to this, the Wave This function has an official Chrome Extension. Install the extension, and you can send any page to Wave with a click!

Finally, you can also use an undocumented Wave This feature to add a Wave contact button to your sites. At the top of my page I’ve added a “Wave @ me!” button that starts a new wave with me as a participant so you can easily contact me in Google Wave. To add the button to your own site it’s as easy as filling your details in the code below:

<a href="https://wave.google.com/wave/wavethis?t=Contact+via+[Your-Site-Name]&r=[fill-in-your-@-wave-address-here]" title="Contact me in Google Wave" class="vt-p"><img src="[your-button-image]" alt="Wave at me!"></a>

The &r parameter for adding a recipient isn’t listed on the API page and support might be pulled or altered so use at your own risk. Additionally, be aware that the Wave This function currently defaults to the Google Wave Preview account only, so if you use a different client (a Google Wave for Domain Apps account for instance, or Novell Pulse) you’re out of luck for now.

So there you have it! A new API, an awesome function, and my modest widget. Have at it! Make some buttons!! Start spreading Wave!!!

In yesterday’s open thread, I used Mr-Ray by wave.to to allow non-wavers to access a wave. Mr-Ray’s real purpose is to be an intermediary between Wavers and emailers. It does this by creating a simple wave interface when you add someone to a wave by their email address.

Well Mr-Ray wasn’t the first attempt to get Wave and Email to interoperate. A couple of Googlers used their “20% time” to create Emaily, a bot that behaves very similarly to Mr-Ray on the Wave side, but tackles the email side of things a little differently. When you add Emaily, it first creates an email address for you on its servers. Then when you add the address of a non-waver, it sends an email to that person with the details of your update and they can reply right from their email. I have to say, it creates a pretty seamless bridge between the two worlds from the email side. In Wave though, you get to see their entire email shoehorned into a wave, with “>” reply markers and signatures left in. For anything more than simple communication back and forth this could get messy.

The developers of Emaily have said they are planning to integrate Emaily even more into Wave by “rearchitecting Emaily into an application, which uses more of the internal Google services”. Hopefully this could be the beginning of actual built-in email capability in Wave that could speed the transition of more users from old technology to new.

Try it today. Add “emaily-wave@appspot.com” to a wave and send an email to a non-wave friend! Will extensions like Emaily and Mr-Ray help you transition to Wave any faster?

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.

Recently, the Wave Team have made a big push to publicise more bots and extensions. In a post to the Google Wave Help forum, Kylie announced that some users might start seeing a new Extensions link in their navigation panel. Then enterprising Wavers noted that anyone could get access to this Extension information with a search for [group:google-wave-extension-gallery@googlegroups.com].

Now Google have made it easier than ever to submit an extension to the Wave Extension review team using a simple bot.

Create a new wave and add the Submitty bot (submitty-bot@appspot.com), and Submitty will create a submission form for you to fill out. At the bottom are a couple of checkboxes. If you check either of these boxes, you’ll be prompted to fill in more information about your bot and/or gadget. Finally, you add the Extension Review Group (google-wave-extensions-review@googlegroups.com) to your wave to submit your extension.

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