Posts Tagged "tip"

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

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.

Set suitable expectations. Despite the months of buzz, and blogosphere– and Twitterverse-wide clamoring for Google Wave invites, the product is still in preview and has some rough edges. Therefore, it does all parties good to be realistic, even if everybody is psyched to be the first kid on their block to use it on a live project.

6 Tips For Using Google Wave On Your First Project.

This is the first of six excellent things to keep in mind when using Wave for the first time, let alone on a project. Wave is full of potential, but people seem to forget it’s still just getting off the ground.

I love that people are using it for projects already.

By now if you’ve been using Wave long enough you should know that a search for [with:public] gets you a big long fast updating list of all the Waves that people have shared with the world. If you’ve been reading the Complete Guide to Google Wave you might know to narrow down the search with tags and terms too.

But were you aware that Local Waves have popped up everywhere as well, and you can find users near you just by plugging your city/suburb into the search (with the public wave search) eg. [with:public city name]. If you can’t immediately find a Wave for your location, you can start one! Just create a crafty title, and make the Wave public. Encourage people who join to mark themselves on a map, and shout out their Twitter/social details for people to connect elsewhere.

Have a tonne of fun, and stay safe!

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.