Wave - Working Around The Hype

I haven't blogged for a little while, and my only excuse is that I've been concentrating on doing rather than writing about it.

Anyway I thought I would put down some notes about the stuff I've been doing with Google's Wave and the avalanch that has been the launch of the new Beta Preview.

Firstly I should mention the new area I've setup for the work I am doing with Wave. http://wavingtheshiny.collaborynth.com.au/ is basically my Wave workspace, where I'm going to work on a range of different projects, from an embryonic book about the FedOne Wave Reference Server to a wiki that will contain information about the different Wave related projects I'm going to be working on.

Okay, next up, I am so sick and tired of seeing the "We have 000's of invites" spam awash on twitter and other places. Please people if you are looking for an invite, hit up wave.google.com this is the only legitimate place to sign up. Do not randomly beg people for an invite, do not believe the people who claim that if you just fill out a form and sign up for this free offer you're in like Flynn.

Right now for the hype. More has been written about Google Wave over the last week than since the IO Conference. This is understandable, all of a sudden a whole lot more people are getting a real look at the Googles system and seeing what it can do for them. I would like to make a couple of points though:

• To those of you who are complaining that it doesn't work like email, umm yeah, it's not meant to. Wave is what email would look like if it was invented now.
• Wave is not the messiah. I'd just like to get that out of the way right now. It is not the next Twitter/Facebook/Other Social Network. However it can enhance those services.
• Do not forget, Wave is not just limited to Google. I urge as many people as possible to get involved with the FedOne project. Let's get that network of federating servers going.

A couple of hints and tips for new wavers:

Making Public Waves:

Okay so you've got the wave and you want to talk to other people, or you want to start a wave for people of similar interests. Great. There was a facility to do this on the Wave Sandbox however it is a little broken.

The facility used to make a wave public is added just like any other robot or participant. You need to add the following address to your contact list: public@a.gwave.com. As I said this is slightly broken so you need to do the following:

1. Click on the + sign next to the "Manage Contacts" link in your Contacts Window.
2. Enter the address above. Important: The Submit button will remain greyed out, however hitting the Enter/Return key will add the address to your contact list.
3. Add the contact to your wave and it will become public.

What Browser:

For the moment, I'd use Chrome if you're having a play around with the Wave. Firefox 3.0.x tends to be really dog like and even Firefox 3.5.x can be slow. Chromes Javascript engine seems to be able to handle the heavy work involved with the wave interface. I haven't tried with any of the IE's or Safari.