Posts Tagged ‘new feature’

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Wave This API released. Plus Official Chrome Extension and Bonus Unofficial WordPress Widget

In Post on 2010-05-20 by Joshua Tagged: , , , , ,

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.

wave-this-buttons.png

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!!!

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Remove: Remove Yourself! Remove Others!

In Post on 2010-04-25 by Joshua Tagged: , ,

The most long-awaited feature (besides the seemingly dead “Draft” button) has finally been imlemented by the Google Wave team. That’s right, Remove Participant is here! What this means if you’re not an addicted Wave user, is that wave authors now have total control over who comes and goes from their waves.

remove-participant.png

This is a big deal for Google Wave. The button has been there since the beginning, but grayed out and unusable. It’s taken some of the shine off Wave that until today you were unable to recall waves or remove people added accidentally.

It works in a pretty straight forward way. You decide someone should not be a participant any more and you click remove. The person who is removed sees a big red X on the wave in their inbox and opening the wave shows the last thing they were able to see before you removed them. If you remove them before they even open the wave, they won’t even know it existed!

remove-from-wave-receiver.png

Part of me balks at the idea of removing waves right out from under their noses if they haven’t opened them. It feels somewhat dishonest — but it’s actually just fixing a email shortcoming! I think we’ve gotten so used to the idea that once something is sent, it can’t be unsent that it feels a bit weird to actually be able to do it again. Keep in mind though that this probably isn’t foolproof. If for example someone’s waves become “unsynchronised” while you are removing them from the wave, they might still see it — leaving you thinking that you got to it in time.

Another big issue in the months since launch has been Wave abuse. Waves have been destroyed by malicious (and accidental) addition of bots, or overwhelming the wave with large amounts of spammy text. At the moment, the best way to deal with this has been to reduce the abuser’s participation to “Read-Only” and report them to the abuse team. This remains the best way to halt an ongoing attack, but now it’s also possible to clean up after an abuser by removing the sign they were ever there in the first place.

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New “Wave This!” Function and Buttons

In Post on 2010-04-14 by Joshua Tagged: ,

I was visiting Pamela Fox’s personal website, and noticed she had a Wave This! button attached to her latest post. Interested in what it did, I clicked it and it opened a summary of that post in Wave ready to share with others! I can’t find mention of the feature anywhere, and I’m not sure if it’s permanent, but a specially formatted URL takes a title argument, a content argument and passes it to a special new wavethis function as shown:

https://wave.google.com/wave/wavethis?t=[insert title]&c=[insert content]

Using a bit of PHP in WordPress and a plugin called Samsarin PHP Widget (that allows php in a special widget) I created the Wave This! button over at the side. Feel free to use it!

The PHP I used was as follows:

<?php if ( is_single($post)) { 
$excerpt = urlencode(get_the_excerpt()); 
$posttitle = urlencode(get_the_title());
?>
<a href="https://wave.google.com/wave/wavethis?t=<?php echo $posttitle ?>&c=%22<?php echo $excerpt; ?>%22"><img src="http://turbo.firstwaves.org/wavethis-button-dark.png" alt="Wave This!" /></a>
<?php } ?>

Simply install and activate the plug-in. Add the Samsarin widget to your sidebar and past the code in as you see it. It will only appear on post pages (not the front page).

I created a couple of button images you can feel free to use:

So that’s the new Wave This! button. Go ahead and give it a try. If you’re a developer I’d be interested in seeing other ways to implement this.

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Google Wave Available to 31000 University Students

In Post on 2010-03-20 by Joshua Tagged: , , , ,

liu.gif

In a short and succinct tweet by Joakim Nejdeby, we finally have news of Google Wave in an Apps environment. With almost little to no fanfare.

Google Wave activated for our students, http://wave.student.liu.se #googlewave #Google #GoogleApps #liu
Joakim Nejdeby on Twitter.

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Google Wave Gets Email Notifications

In Post on 2010-03-05 by Joshua Tagged: , , , ,

One of the problems with Google Wave for the non-geek crowd has been how you know you have a new wave?

For dedicated geeks, there are browser extensions, OS specific software, iPhone Push notifications, and more.

But most of these don’t figure in the non-geek arsenal for managing the wash of information from the internet. And for regular folk convincing them to use Wave without these sorts of notifications will be hard simply because they don’t want to bother checking for new waves as well as new emails.

Convincing them may have just gotten easier however with the release of integrated email notifications for your Wave inbox. In a post on the official Google Wave Blog, Ged Ellis explains how to turn on email notifications for new waves. Using the drop down list next to the inbox link (it’s hidden until you hover over it) you can choose an email address to have notifications sent to. The tool even picked my Google Apps email even though it’s not my official Wave address because I’ve set it as primary in my Google profile.

NotificationsMenu.png

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Google Wave Births “Active Robots”

In Link on 2010-03-03 by Joshua Tagged: , , , , ,

An amigurumi robot

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.
Google Wave Developer Blog Announcement.

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Restore a Wave to a former state, or make it Read-Only.

In Post on 2010-01-23 by Joshua Tagged: , , ,

In the first major update to the Google Wave client in what feels like ages, the Wave team have implemented two new features that will make a big difference in managing your waves. The first fixes one of the most shocking things about the first release: that anyone you invited could come along and edit any part of your wave. Of course the point of Wave is collaboration, but sometimes it was conceivable that you might not like anyone to be able to hack away at a wave, particularly once a wave was made public. Many good useful waves were effectively destroyed by granting the public editing rights.

the read-only tool in action
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Group Waves

In Link on 2009-12-09 by Joshua Tagged: , ,

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.

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Follow, Follow, Follow, Follow the Waves You Choose

In Post on 2009-11-12 by Joshua Tagged: , , ,

Probably the most important part of the Wave experience for new user has been the ability to search for public waves to join. Without Public Waves many people would not have enough of a network to really experience Wave in full, and the Wave community may not have grown as quickly as it has. Public Waves have allowed quick access to tips and tricks, unofficial support and general chit chat on a diverse range of topics.

The downside of this was a significant gotcha: just clicking a public wave was enough to add you to the Wave permanently and drag the wave into your inbox. From that point, your only recourse to silence the wave was to mute it (archiving only works as long as no one else contributes), and muting does not remove you from the wave.

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