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,

The best bits of the Google Wave presentation for easy digestion.

The best bits of the Google Wave presentation for easy digestion.

Don’t get what all the fuss is about Wave? Don’t have the time to watch the original hour-twenty demonstration? Lifehacker has chopped the presentation up into bite-size chunks to highlight the parts they think are most important.

Waveboard – Stand-Alone Wave App

Waveboard – Stand-Alone Wave App

Waveboard is an app for the Mac (and coming soon for iPhone) that puts Google Wave into it’s own application window. Observant readers might recognise that this is not really all that different from using Fluid or Prism to create a stand-alone site-specific window. Links from the site suggest it is related to Mailplane, a similar concept for Gmail.

Additionally, the demonstrated iPhone application seems to be no different from what Google has already made possible simply by bookmarking your Wave page to the home screen.

If however you don’t wish to worry about setting something like this up yourself you may wish to give it a try.

Waveboard is free software (at time of writing).

"Retro" Chat for Google Wave (Wave Samples Gallery)

“Retro” Chat for Google Wave (Wave Samples Gallery)

One of the biggest complaints from first time Google Wave users is the tidal wave of information and updates that threatens to suck their precious time away as they watch the chaos unfold.

In a carefully tended wave, the noise can be kept low and the chaos controlled, but in some of the larger (public) waves, users have given up hop of ever keeping on top of it all.

Charles Lehner has created a simple chat gadget that might help calm the swell, by focussing some of the chat into a form most of us will recognise: IM. By introducing this gadget to a wave, you can give people an outlet to speak that brings in years of built up convention for managing the flow. People understand Instant Messaging, so you can add this gadget to bring an element of normalcy to the new medium.

Perhaps you could embed this in a wave and encourage people to use it for idle chitchat, leaving the rest of the wave for the real-time collaboration on the task at hand.

As with other gadgets the Playback function records every new person who is added to the chat, and every message, so be aware that this can blow the size of your wave recording out with a lot of extra data to wade through if necessary.

michaeltalbot: I think us Wavers should be worried… Oh my.

michaeltalbot:

I think us Wavers should be worried…

Oh my.

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11 + 1 Google Wave Tips at Nethead

11 + 1 Google Wave Tips at Nethead

If you’re wondering where to start when you first open Google Wave, try these 11 simple tasks that will give you a feel for the interface and the design decisions that went into it. For example, Tip 7 is:

7) Creating Folders in Google Wave allows you to create categories for your Wave documents. This is also useful to clean the Google Wave Inbox of older Waves and file the Waves documents.
To move a Wave document to a Folder: click on a Wave document and dragdrop it to the Folder name.

Also check out this simple tip to add video to a wave

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.

Votely – Votes for public Waves

Votely – Votes for public Waves

Using the WaveVotely bot, people can vote on which public waves are useful or fun. The results are collated here.

Three Google Wave Searches Worth Saving | Smarterware

Three Google Wave Searches Worth Saving | Smarterware

With so much happening at once in Wave it’s easy to be overwhelmed with it all. Save yourself some grief and use these handy searches to make managing the flood easier.

The subject matter might be dry, but this 7 minute video demonstrates the collaborative power of Wave when developers create useful tools for it. Note the real-time updates throughout the entire process, including the creation of the model. SAP Community Network Blogs