Four reasons Wave has a real chance to replace email.

The Next Web attended the Google Wave GTUG (Google Technology User Group) meetup in London where Lars Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon (the two responsible for Google Wave) gave a presentation on some upcoming Google Wave APIs. James Glick from The Next Web has included a dot-point summary of the most important parts, a few of which I have included below. Read his article for even more juicy inside information.

To cut a potentially exhausting blog post short, a summary of snippets from their presentation include:

• Extension gallery to be fully up and running in months with a wider collection and sharing functionality.

• An extension store is planned where developers would be able to display and charge for apps.

• [Read the article at The Next Web for more]

• Google Wave will be able to be deployed within networks and intranets for organisations and companies to use internally.

• Although it has been requested by a substantial amount of preview users, there are no plans to intergrate Gmail or any mail with Google Wave. The APIs though, will provide developers with the ability to do it in the future…

The rest of the items on Glick’s list show Wave team is obviously committed to improving the experience for everyone. The four items I’ve included above highlight for me the potential for Wave to grow beyond the bounds of what Google can achieve and put it firmly in the hands of developers who can make it a thriving, useful tool. If Wave can ever dethrone email as the default form of communication, it will be because of these for things: The ability for developers to extend it and make money from it, for businesses to deploy their own secure versions, and for Wave to send and receive email. Although it looks like the Google team don’t have plans to bake email support in, I am confident it will not be long before such an extension is built and available.

Waver is a simple Adobe Air app for Google Wave

Put this in the same basket as Waveboard, the Mac only stand-alone app for Wave. Waver takes the iPhone/mobile Wave interface and puts it in an Adobe Air window on your desktop.

It’s a simple idea: take the minimal interface and make it available (faster) on the desktop, to dash of quick messages and keep an eye on your inbox (or other important folders). Because it’s so small you can pop it into a corner of your screen and keep working. While Wave is getting its feet, it also saves you dedicating a tab to it while letting you participate and build up the community.

Unfortunately becuase it’s simply a view to the mobile interface it suffers one of the same beta flaws – it does not sync changes until you click “done”. So if you’re used to the behaviour of the regular wave interface, you might find it difficult switch back and forth regularly. Additionally, none of the keyboard shortcuts from the main interface work, so you need to mouse around a lot more.

If you need a simple interface to use Wave, Waver might be for you,

Emaily: An important first step.

Google Wave Sample Details – Emaily – Google Code

Emaily is a bot that sends an email alert for every new blip in a specified wave.

If your main inbox is your email inbox then this bot could be an important part of your wave testing, at least until Wave catches on with more of your personal network. Instead of keeping Wave open all day, have this bot send you a ping when anyone updates the important waves.

One day though I hope to see the flow reversed, and email will flow in and out of Wave instead.

Twitter on Wave

I should preface this post with an introduction.

I’m Cathie and I am the “bloody end user” component of this blogging team.  We figured that if Wave is going to be the ubiquitous thing that Google envisages, it will have to be workable by everyone – not just the more “savvy” of those amongst us.

So what I’ll be doing is coming at Wave from my perspective – perhaps not such a big picture view – but a fingers on keyboard aspect.

Okay … so one of the first things I looked for once I had my Wave account was a Twitter interface thingamabobby!

I found two – the first was clunky and ugly – but the second works a treat.  It’s by TwitterGadget.com

To set it up …

Open a new wave, and click on the green blobby thing which allows you to add a gadget by url and paste the following url.

http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml

This will then take you through to Twitter to allow access – and then this tidy little interface appears in your wave!

Wave the Protocol

The final and most exciting of the Three Ps is Wave as a protocol. The Product is Google owned and operated. The Platform enhances their offering. The Protocol opens the code up and makes it available for others to use, re-create, and improve. From the day Google Wave becomes available, the Wave Protocol will allow other parties to create competing products that will interoperate with Google’s offering.

To me, this is the most exciting and wonderful part of Google’s announcement. No one company stands a chance of dethroning email as the reigning form of communication on the ‘net. By opening up their idea, Wave stands a chance of becoming the way we communicate into the next decade. Only by giving users a choice about where their business critical data is stored will users begin to trust Wave like they have learned to trust email.

Google have stated that when they launch Google Wave, anyone will be able to download the “lions share” of the code to run on their own servers promising that the open-source code will run and operate almost exactly the same as the Product they offer on Google’s own servers. They liken it to the SMTP (email sending) protocol – open for everyone to create and use their own implementations as they see fit, and email has taken off because of it.

Wave the Product

The first of Google Wave’s three P’s announced at the Google I/O Developer Conference was Google Wave the Product.

As previously mentioned, Google’s Wave product is a re-invention of our traditional web communications. It combines elements of email, instant messaging, and real-time collaboration in a completely new way. It is set to become a replacement or alternative to their Gmail and Gtalk products, but contains a lot more.

The distinction of the Google Wave product is that it will run on Google’s servers, using Google’s bandwidth, and have all their weight behind it, driving it. It might also mean it will include their advertising, and the more paranoid among us might think it has the downside of running on their infrastructure.

It is more than likely they will offer free and paid plans similar to those they offer Google Apps users. It will come default with a select set of features such as the inline spell checker/corrector, and translation robot. “Wave the Product” is the obvious public face of Google Wave, and the way Google will monetise their invention.

For those that want more Google offers Wave the Platform