Smarterware

Try Out Google Groups Support in Wave

Yesterday the Google Wave team confirmed Wave's unfinished but working Google Groups integration, which lets you send waves to groups of participants in one shot. To try it out, I created The Complete Guide to Google Wave Wavers group. Join that Google Group with your Google account email (not your Wave ID), then search for group:wave-guide-wavers@googlegroups.com in Wave to see and update group waves. Sound confusing? It is.

While I'd seen this rudimentary support for groups mentioned in various public waves, we didn't include it in the Preview edition of The Complete Guide to Google Wave because it seemed so utterly unfinished (and it wasn't officially documented). Right now, there's no way to add users to Wave groups in-Wave, and messages to the group in Wave don't show up on the list and vice versa. There's obviously a whole lot of work to be done in the Groups arena as it relates to Wave, but for now, this is what we've got. Give it a try and let me know what you think in Wave.

Waving with Groups [The Google Wave Blog]
How do Google Groups access settings interact with waves? [Google Wave Help]

My Google Wave Web 2.0 Expo Keynote Video

O'Reilly has posted the video of my 15-minute keynote speech at Web 2.0 Expo this week, entitled "Making Sense of Google Wave." There were over 2,000 people seated in the audience, and I was nervous. I wanted to communicate my enthusiasm about Wave but also get across that it's an power tool for power users, with a learning curve.

Take a gander at the video.

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My Latest, Favorite Google Wave Tips and Updates

Been hard at work readying The Complete Guide to Google Wave for its PDF debut this month. The Wave team has been making it more difficult with (welcome) changes to the app on the final days of copyedit. I've been updating a book-specific Twitter stream, @gwaveguide, with Wave news and tips, but wanted to round up three of my favorite must-know items here.

• You already know that public waves are a great way to interact with people on Google Wave (especially if your friends and co-workers haven't been invited yet). But the problem with public waves is that they were opt-out instead of opt-in: the moment you opened a public wave, you got added to its participants list. Today the Wave team fixed that madness. The "mute" button, which you would have to press to keep an active wave from constantly popping up in your inbox with new content, has been replaced with "unfollow."* Instead of getting automatically added to a public wave's participant list by just opening it, it's now opt-in: you click "Follow" to get a wave's updates in your Inbox. Follow/unfollow works for any wave, too--not just public waves. For now, unfollow is a stop-gap solution for the inability to remove yourself from a wave. Here's more on using follow and unfollow.
• Speaking of public waves, making a wave public is a weird pain in the ass using the public@a.gwave.com contact (which disappears from your Contacts panel any chance it gets). Instead, use the easypublic@appspot.com bot.
• Hold down the Shift key to select multiple waves in the Search panel, and the you can archive, mark as read, unread, or move them to a folder in one shot.

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My New Book: The Complete Guide to Google Wave

I'm tickled pink to finally announce the project I've been hard at work on for weeks now: my new book, The Complete Guide to Google Wave, is now available to read and share for free at completewaveguide.com.

Anyone who reads my stuff or listens to This Week in Google knows that I'm a Google Wave nut. Yes, it's a hyped, complex, do-it-all web application, but the sheer ambition is part of Wave's appeal for me. Since I logged onto Wave's developer sandbox back in June, I've spent a whole lot of time in Wave, figuring out how it works and what it might do--and blogging about my discoveries just didn't cut it. So, along with Adam Pash from Lifehacker, I've compiled everything we know how to do in Google Wave in a book format at completewaveguide.com. I'm calling it a book, but for now it's just a web site--with eight "chapters" and two "appendices," free for you to read, share, and if we're lucky, help us expand. The site will grow into traditional book formats, however: thanks to the team at 3ones, a PDF version of the book's preview edition will be available for purchase this month. In January of 2010, a softcover print version of the book's first edition will be available as well as an updated PDF. Adam and I have committed to four editions throughout 2010, so the book will change and evolve along with Wave. The latest and greatest version of the book will always be available for free at completewaveguide.com.

I turned down a request-for-proposal from my traditional book publisher to try this experiment in iterative self-publishing. I ran down the whole story of why on the book's About page. This approach scratches several itches I've had for years: I've always wanted to publicly collaborate on a book using MediaWiki, try my hand at self-publishing, and license a book under Creative Commons. Now, to see how it will all turn out. Check out the book and let me know what you think. (Also, follow @gwaveguide on Twitter for Wave tips and book news.)

Three Google Wave Searches Worth Saving

After only a few weeks of Wave usage, my inbox is been teeming with activity, full of waves from strangers who have added me and 17 other strangers to items I don't particularly care about. Rather than shoot for inbox zero in Wave and spend the time archiving everything in sight, I'm going with the flow--with the help of a few saved searches. Besides the previously-mentioned with:public search, three other saved searches are making drilling down to my most important waves much easier.

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Win a Google Wave Invite with Your Best Use Case

Update: The contest is now over, and here are a few of the winners.

Want an invitation to Google Wave? Tell us what you're going to use Google Wave for, and we'll nominate the folks who describe the best use case.

Google was kind enough to give us a few dozen extra Wave nominations, and we want to give them to people who will put Wave through its paces in real-world situations. We're not going to ask you to write a haiku, but we are going to ask you to tell us how you'll use your invite. Here's how this will work.

To enter the contest, send an email to wave-invite at lifehacker.com, subject line "How I'll use Google Wave." In the email, answer these three questions:

1.) What does your workgroup do or make?
2.) What software tools does your workgroup currently use to collaborate?
3.) Why would Wave make that collaboration easier?

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All the Google Wave Tricks I Know (So Far)

Been spending several weeks working, playing, and talking about Google Wave, picking up tips and tricks for usage as I've gone along. The Wave preview is very young, with lots of broken windows and signs that point to nowhere, but there's still lots of neat little functionality and must-know searches, operators, and quirks. This morning over at Lifehacker I got to run those down in my Google Wave 101 feature article. There I included my best answers to the most frequently asked questions I've gotten about how to use Wave. I've also started a public wave of comments on the article where other Wave users can ask questions and add insights. If you've got a Wave account, after the jump you can dive in.

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The First Google Wave Search You Must Know

If you're one of the lucky folks who got into Google Wave this week, your excitement probably turned to "Now what?" when you logged in and realized you had no one to wave with. If anyone on your Google account's Contacts lists also has Wave you're set--but for some folks that's no one, or just one person. I've gotten a few waves from people saying "I have no one to talk to, and you're the only one on my list."

If that happens to you, it's time to break out the first search command every Wave newbie needs to know: with:public, which returns a huge moving sea of public waves anyone can read and update. There you can dive in, meet other wavers, see what's possible with Wave, and ask how to do stuff. Wave documentation is building up fast and furious inside Wave, and since everyone's new to it, everyone is asking questions and lending each other a hand.

Once you're tired of your inbox crawling with public waves? Save a search for waves just to you by using the in:inbox to:you@googlewave.com to pare down your list.