I have had quite a number of friends who are asking what Google Wave is, and those who have already got invites and signed up keep asking how to go about it as they find it quite difficult to use.

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I will try and sum up what it is and how it works as simply as I can.

Google wave was announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27th 2009. The current preview available is really in its early stages, BETA stage if you like, and is buggy.

Basically Google Wave is a real-time collaboration & communication tool whose aim is to really try and unify email, social networking, instant messaging, wikis and even project management. Think of it as a massive whiteboard space where you bring your friends or business colleagues to discuss and share ideas & files.

There are alot of innovative features to Google Wave however I will just mention the ones I have used so far and that are known to me.

  • It’s Real Time – Anyone participating in a wave can see whats being typed Character by charecter.
  • Plug-ins – You can add 3rd party based plug-ins into a wave, API’s are still being developed. So far I have used the Google Maps & Twitter (not developed by twitter) ones.
  • Drag & Drop – The drag and drop functionality is really nifty, drag anything from your desktop, folders into the wave and voila! Its and attachment in the wave. This requires Google Gears to work (Does not work in OSX 10.6 and above).
  • Playback - You can play a wave from start to finish to see what happened when.
  • Wiki Based – Anything written in a Wave can be edited by anyone else, thus one can correct, append or add onto a thread (called blips) within the wave.

I feel this is what Google Wave is based on, to me these are the building blocks and really they just need to be refined as 3rd party developers rush in to create API’s to use with Waves. I came across quite a nifty one from lonely planet but could not really make sense of how to use it.

You may come across gadgets, robots. These are different in terms of what their functionalities are. So let me try and simplify them for you below starting with what a Wave is :-)

  • Wave – A Wave basically is a threaded conversation from start to end similar to an instant message if you like. A Wave can have just one person, a number of participants or even robots.
  • Wavelet – A Wavelet is a subset of a Wave, its also a threaded conversation. A continuous threaded conversation to a Wave.
  • Blip – Even smaller than a Wavelet, a Blip is a single reply.
  • Extension – These are applications that can be added into a Wave to add to a Wave’s productivity/functionality. Extensions include Robots and Gadgets.
  • Robots – These are automated participants in a Wave. They can talk to users and/or get information from outside sources such as twitter.
  • Gadgets – Gadgets are best compared to Facebook add on applications. They just increase the functionalites within Waves.

This really breaks it down from what I have used so far. With  time I will add on to whatever I come across. Hopefully this at least helps you get started with using Google Wave.

Edit:- By the way, drop some comments, if you know of anything on Google Wave that would help others, or even correct me.

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