Posts Tagged ‘The Complete Guide to Google Wave’
A week ago I asked readers to tell me how they're using Google Wave in their daily lives, and despite a bit of "ha! no one's using Wave!" snarking on the Twitter, I got lots of interesting responses. Unsurprisingly, most Wavers use it as a real-time wiki, but some take advantage of features unique to Wave, like inline and private replies, public tags, and gadgets. I featured the most unique use cases I got in a brand new chapter just added to The Complete Guide to Google Wave. The following is the text of the just-published Chapter 10, which describes ways in which a few people who don't work for Google are using Wave to get things done--with screenshots.
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Once you're active in Google Wave, you want to know if something new is happening there--even if you don't have Wave open in your web browser. Several Wave notifier applications and browser add-ons can do the work of checking your Wave inbox for you, and letting you know you've got new and changed waves.
The following is an excerpt from the all-new Chapter 9 of The Complete Guide to Google Wave. Got feedback? Let me know in the comments and help write the first book on Wave!
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Got a great response to last week's frequently asked questions about Google Wave, and it's worth expanding further on the differences between Wave and the current crop of web-based collaboration offerings.
Wave combines features from email, instant messenger, Google Docs, wikis, and forums and throws its own spin on things. For a quick visual of its offerings versus similar tools, check out this feature-by-feature comparison.
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The Google Wave Preview has been available to one million+ people for over three months now, but questions about Wave still abound, even by the early adopters who have gotten in and taken it for a test drive.
After publishing a book on everything I know about Wave, I still get many of the same questions I heard back when I started. Even folks usually bullish about new technology still don't understand what they can use Wave for, how to sell it to their friends and co-workers so they have someone to use it with, and how to fit it into their workday.
As much as I'd love it if everyone bought a copy of my book for every person they invite to Wave, reading 102 pages just to "get" a product is ridiculous. So, I've compiled some of the most frequently asked questions I've gotten about Wave and my best (and briefest) answers for them right here in quick-fire format.
Step inside to hear a two-word definition of Wave, what it's useful for, why you'd choose it over similar products, and how to do the things in Wave that most often trip up new users.
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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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Making Sense of Google Wave at Web 2.0 Expo Keynote Tomorrow · I'm in wonderful New York City this week, getting ready to do a 15-minute keynote talk on Making Sense of Google Wave tomorrow, November 17th. It'll be at 2:05pm Eastern time, and if you're not at the conference, you can watch it live on the web, here. I've also started the first public Web 2.0 Expo wave; search for with:public tag:w2e to chime in or make your own. I'll also have something good to announce about The Complete Guide to Google Wave. (It won't be a surprise to anyone following @gwaveguide on Twitter.) More tomorrow! · November 17th, 2009, 3 comments
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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Tweak MediaWiki to Co-Write a Book · My new book's web site is powered by the same software the runs Wikipedia, the deeply-customizable MediaWiki. Over at Lifehacker this morning, I ran though how to make MediaWiki your own for any collaborative or just easy-to-update web site with a skins, extensions, permissions, and a few more helpful tweaks. Here's how to customize MediaWiki for your next project. · November 4th, 2009, 1 comment
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