Using the standard CTRL+Z (Undo) or CTRL+Y (Redo) [CMD for Mac users] this will prevent one of the biggest frustrations that users had. The introduction of this feature is, undoubtedly, connected with the recent acquisition of AppJet by Google and its web application Etherpad.

Picture Credits: Hamed Saber under a CC License

For many, this was the first time that they were hearing about AppJet’s main product Etherpad, a web based application that allows multiple users, on different locations, to edit a text in real time.

The industry took this as a natural step but for millions of users that used Etherpad on a daily basis this was nothing but bad news: one of the first measures implemented by Google was to immediately cancel the ability to create new free etherpads or open new accounts. Etherpad was shutdown for new and current free users and existing clients were to be shutdown, as well by, March 2010.

Etherpad was one of the most loved resources by online groups of activists to prepare documents, among them Telecomix, that used the application to produce content in several languages to be sent to European MPs regarding Net neutrality and other relevant on-going discussions.

As soon as the announcement was made at AppJet’s official blog the comments section got filled with negative comments towards Google and AppJet alike and Telecomix started to raid Twitter, using #faxpad, asking for programmers to join the Telecomix team in order to think about alternatives to Etherpad.

In the meanwhile the comments box at the official Etherpad blog was getting more traffic than ever and not good traffic at all.

The answer from Google came 24h later and , surprisingly, has escaped the radar of the big online sites: In the form of a new blog post, Etherpad’s ex-CEO Aaron Iba, announced the following:

Dear EtherPad Users,

Many of you were not super thrilled with the transition plan we announced in our last blog post, which I guess is really quite flattering. We have worked with Google and the Google Wave team to make the following changes to the plan, which I think you will appreciate:

* We have re-enabled pad creation from the EtherPad home page.

* We have begun planning how to open source the code to EtherPad and the underlying AppJet Web Framework. We will continue maintaining new pad creation from the EtherPad home page at least until we have open sourced the code, and work hard to make sure there will be no or minimal service disruption in the future.

* We are working with the Google Wave team to get all EtherPad users a chance to try out the Google Wave preview within the next couple of weeks. We do realize (as does the Google Wave team) that Wave doesn’t yet have all the functionality you rely on, and isn’t yet as mature as EtherPad. We are confident that in the long term you will be really happy with Google Wave, though. That’s why we decided to join them!

The team we are joining already gets open souce, and we hope that by releasing the code to EtherPad we will not only help you transition your existing workflow, but also contribute to the broader advancement of realtime collaboration technology.

I am sorry for disrupting your productivity, and I hope that this new transition plan helps you out.

The blog post, made on a Saturday, is a huge setback to Google’s original intentions of shutting down the service to new and current free users. It is also interesting that, if confirmed in the future, Google has bought a company to acquire technology that will available as open source. I don’t want to speculate regarding the reasons that were behind this decision and what talks went on during the hours between the first announcement and the second.

What I can say, without a doubt, is that a group of passionate users have put social media to a good use and made Google reverse on a decision that it had made. What I can also say, in defense of Google, is that the company is listening and is humble enough to recognize when a decision that was taken was wrong.

** Full disculosure: I am a active member of Telecomix. The views expressed on this post are mine and mine alone.

Picture Credits: MargoLove under a CC License

“Can someone (anyone) list 5 things possible on Wave that you CANNOT do using established familiar tools?”

The answer to your question is: Yes! But, before I go and write one of my beloved lists, I would like to point something that I think is important to highlight: Google Wave is a new frontier, a new way of doing things and integrating concepts and practices into one place. Pretty much like Twitter (or anything else) its up to you, the user, to discover how you can use it and how it can be of use to YOU. This is one of my quests and you can read more about what I think of this subject right here.

On with the list then! (That I was asked to be “truly unique, can’t be done in any other way, (…) meaningful and useful, not a solution looking for a problem“)

1. Collaborate: make a new wave, invite those involved in creating any type of document (or even code) and start working. I am aware that etherpad does this already, and does it well ,but it doesn’t allow you to share backup documentation, like a PDF document, that can be shared with all those involved. With Google Wave you also have the ability to add more people to that wave and, for them to get up to speed with everything that happened before, all they have to do is click on the Playback button.
2. Get Feedback: If you are attending or organizing a conference you can open a wave and search for people (using Twitter for example) who are at the same conference and invite them. At the end of the conference you will have a finished document with the different points of view ready to be published. Also very useful to receive feedback in real time, in more than 140 characters, to the conference’s speakers.
3. Create Knowledge: Wave is amazing to do this! Make a new wave and establish it as your official Help Desk. Use another Wave to be used as a FAQ. Wait! Wait! I know! There are thousands of Help Desk solutions out there but with Google Wave you have a service that is easy to use for your end client and, from scratch and for FREE, allows you to have a video conference system, the possibility to direct to specific departments (waves) and so on. Also on the plus side you can develop your own applications for it so you get what you really want and not a package.
4. Learn by Sharing: There is a wave called “Music DSP Wave“. This wave has coders sharing their codes of Digital Signal Processing. You can do that in a forum right? But can you have several coders tweaking around with the code and creating a new code out of it? With proper idents? Ready to be compiled? That’s what I thought. Google Wave can be used as a creative pool no matter what you are into. Try it is my advice to everyone.
5. Have Fun: Yes fun! Watch the same video at the same time with all participants of a wave. Play Sudoku with 100 people from all over the world.

This what you can do right now, using Google Wave that is still on a preview stage. Are you using Google Wave in a unique way? Lets us know in the comments or leave a video comment. YOU choose!

Picture Credits: Hamed Saber under a CC License

Sometimes I think that users are using Google Wave in ways that Google never thought of (this much is true for public waves that were not a part of the original plans) and they are trying to adapt to it as well. This applies to a wave’s size limit as well. Remember when GMail came out and you had a 10Mb quota? Have you noticed that you now have almost 6GBs or more? Expect the same to happen with the amount of information you have on Wave. The original permitted size for any wave was around 50kb when Google Wave opened to public preview (around 51200 characters). Now those limits have been raised to around 100kb but waves keep reaching their size limit.

Remember that you don’t get any warning that the wave is about to reach its limit. What you get when you try to edit a wave that did is this:

“This wave is experiencing some slight turbulence, and may explode. If you don’t wanna explode, please re-open the wave. Some recent changes may not be saved.”

This doesn’t explain much does it? I will try to shed some light on this. A wave explodes when it reaches its size limit. This is not about how many blips or wavelets a wave has but about the amount of data that they contain. A wave with a single wavelet can explode (just paste a whole e-book in it and you will see what happens for yourself). Also, the waves that “explode” become read only. There is no point in clicking on the “Re-Open wave” button because that will just take you to the same menacing message. There are signs coming from Google that these waves will be again editable when the size limit is raised once again but for now there is only one thing you can do:

If you are starting a discussion wave where you expect to have a of lot content being written on it plan ahead: Start that wave and immediately create a new one that will be your backup wave. When you start to feel that the wave is starting to get heavy (meaning taking more time to load than usual) edit your initial blip and paste the link to the backup wave there (you can do this by dragging and dropping the wave into the blip). This way when those taking part on the discussion receive the “explode” message then will not explode in rage: they will just think of you as someone that has it all covered.

What is your experience? How are you managing and overcoming Google Wave’s obstacles? Let us know in the comments!

Picture Credits: Hamed Saber under a CC License

Here is a list of 5 things that users are finding really annoying. How do I know? There is a wave just for that.

1. No undo: If you are planning to write a long text inside of a wave don’t! Write it first on your word processor of choice and then paste it inside the wave. There is no undo on the Wave universe and that can be very frustrating.
2. Contacts Management: As I wrote before, Google Wave was tagged as the e-mail killer by Google itself. The same Google that recently announced, in a User’s Group Meeting in London, that it would be making no integration of Gmail or any other mail client within Google Wave, something that makes perfect sense. So why oh why is it, that to manage your Google Wave contacts you are taken to… your Gmail contacts? Add to this that anyone can add you to their contacts without your permission and that your googlewave.com account is the same as your gmail.com account and it smells… like spam attack.
3. Dr. Wave: If you were invited directly by Google, to join the Google Wave preview, the only contact you have when you login for the first time is Dr. Wave. The fact that this contact never, i mean NEVER, interacts with you, no matter how many blips you send him is just frustrating. Communication tool anyone?
4. Invites: At the Wave Helpdesk I have setup with other users to help newcomers to Google Wave, I don’t know how many times we had to answer to this question: “When do I get to invite others?“. The short answer is: “No one knows”. Google Wave’s team should communicate better what is going on regarding their invitation’s policy that, from what I have been observing, is more random than a lava lamp (and lava lamps are über random). They could perhaps put Dr. Wave communicating these kind of things? Just a thought.
5. No error messages: You know that something is wrong, something that was working is not, the wave where you just wrote is gone forever, your navigation pane was occupying that space that is now blank. You know all of this and still you think YOU are the one doing something wrong. Why? Because there is no indication whatsoever that there was some kind of error. Things are either working or they aren’t. I know, this is a preview but still, we are not talking of a preview of a product made by a startup. Google has accumulated over the years unimaginable amounts of data regarding usability and UI. Why they didn’t apply them to Google Wave is something I don’t understand. What do you say, Dr. Wave? [Ah, right, you don't say anything to anyone]

What about you? What do you find most annoying on Google Wave? Leave your comment please.

Picture Credits: Hamed Saber under a CC License

But where is Google Wave heading? What trends are we seeing? What can we all expect? On a weekly basis, I will be making a roundup of all the information, gathered directly from Google’s Developers and team leaders, that point to the future of the e-mail killer.

This week I will be writing about Permissions.

Google Wave allows you to start public waves where everyone can join in and participate. To test the new service there is nothing better than this but, as with everything that is fully open to the world in general, things sometimes take a wrong turn. In the case of any public wave, a wrong turn can be very frustrating for those that have spent their time adding content into it: the content is lost and, to recover it, users have to pray to the Wave’s gods that the playback function is working properly. (It’s a preview, remember? It usually just makes the wave crash)

It didn’t take long for users to start asking for some kind of control over the Waves that they created: They wanted to be able to choose who could make what inside a Wave, they wanted to be able to turn a public wave into a private Wave, they wanted to be able to make a Wave read only, etc. At the end of the day what Wave’s creators want is the same kind of control that a blog admin has. And guess what? The Google Wave team is going to give them to you.

On a conversation with two Google Wave Development Team Leaders, in a Users Focus Group in Madrid this week, the issue was addressed and here are the plans. In the near future there will be three levels of permissions:

• read/write – What everyone has now: This user will be able to add new participants in read/write mode, commenter or read only modes
• commenter – The user will be able to add new blips, edit own blips and add new participants in commenter or read only modes
• read only – This type of user will be able to read but not modify the wave and will not be able to add new participants

As soon as these features are implemented the global Google Wave experience will change for everyone and we will see more content being added to Google Wave.

What do you think? Did this lack of control got you thinking before you produce public content? Will the future permissions be enough? What would YOU like to see implemented? Leave your comments here or come to this wave to discuss it. (Google Wave link: you need an account to be able to access it.)

A 12 year old, named Chris W., decided to start deleting content from as many as 7 waves, editing and counter-editing information inside  blips and wavelets,  in a live war watched by many. Two of the Waves that I had setup to help newcomers to Google’s new platform were victim of these attacks and some of the its content has been lost forever. You can read a first hand account of what was happening, while it was happening,  here.

The attack only finished, and a public apology was posted in all of the waves that were attacked, after I used “old-school” methods and found out Chris’ website and, with the information that he has in there [and some Swedish geek magic], contacted his uncle via e-mail, sending a copy of that same  e-mail to Chris’s mailbox.

That a 12 year old is on Google Wave is already something that should raise some questions. But what really is important to address, in my opinion, is the lack of moderation that you have at this moment all around Google Wave. You can only create a private wave or a public wave and nothing else in between. The creator of a wave doesn’t wave any moderation/administration  powers and that makes any content, posted on any public wave,  subject to the good will of all of those participating in it. If someone decides to delete, blip by blip,  all the information you can use the playback function to see what happened but you can’t reset the wave’s state to any given point in the past. Also it is impossible to to copy all the content of a Wave to a new wave without taking authorship from the different entries. Even if you could copy all content with one click,  to get all the users participating on the attacked wave, to the new one, implies adding all of those users  to your contact list, one by one and then, again one by one, add them to the new wave.

Today’s events have shown how the work of many can be destroyed in just a few minutes by a 12 year old that “thought it would be funny to delete stuff“. As Google Wave grows I am sure that others will come that will aim to do more damage in more dangerous ways. If Google doesn’t address these issues, at this early stage,  I am afraid that the positive things that public wave’s can bring to all users will be small compared to what the damage that a few can make.

What do you think?

[wave id="googlewave.com!w+gMjdmPmAU" color="#7f7f80" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="500"]

I know:  the title* is waaaaaay to bold for something that is evolving every single day but I am sticking by it

As soon as I got to use Wave actively one of the things that I was asking myself was:

“What are the major problems people are experiencing when logging into Google Wave for the first time?“

There was only one simple way to know it. I setup a public Wave called “Newbies Room” and waited for people to start dropping in and making questions. I got to help new users out and getting answers to my question.

Here is the (on going) result:

1. How doI get to invite my friend to Google Wave?

This is a question that is on everyone’s mind. You do need to have other users on your contact  list to experience Google Wave to its fullest (unless what kicks you is speaking to Robots). Apparently there are no rules for this: Some users are finding  a Wave that gives them 20 invites to send out and some aren’t. If you do get this Invites Wave do not make it public: If you do, other people will be able to join it and use your invites.

2. How long will Google keep Google Wave in this Preview Stage?

If Gmail taught us anything was the way that Google works: The roll out of Google Wave will be pretty similar to that of GMail.

3. How do I make a public wave?

A New Wave is, by default, private. To make a Wave public, please add to your contacts the easypublic@appspot.com robot and add it to your Wave. Your Wave will be, then, public and listed on the public searches.

4. What is the best browser to use for Google Wave?

Without any doubts Google Chrome is the best browser to experience Google Wave. If you are feeling experimental and use any other browser remember you will have to have Google Gears installed.

5. How come I don’t have any picture and my name is not showing?

You still have to fill out your Google profile. Go to your contacts, click on your blank avatar and then click on “Edit Profile“. You will be taken to your Google Profile page. Fill it out and you are all set. Other Wave users will be able to see the new information as soon as they log back to Google Wave.

6. I just got to participate in this huge wave and I can’t keep up with the conversation. What can I do?

You can use the Playback button to see everything that happened on the Wave (editing included).

7. Google Wave is behaving really badly with lots of lag

It is a PREVIEW and everyone should keep that in mind

8. When I add someone to my contacts are they able to see I did that? And the reverse, can I see who is adding me to their contacts?

The short answer is:NO. Contact’s notifications are still not implemented. This is something that has too many people puzzled (me included) because you would expect Google to port technology that they already have (GTalk) to Google Wave.

9. Public Wave Search is chaos. Is there any way I can narrow that search?

Sure. There are several ways to do this. Try searching “with:public Nuclear” and will get all the public waves that mention the word “Nuclear”. Another way is to search for “with:public tag:music” and you will get a list of all the waves that are tagged with “music”

10. I am here how to I get to have some fun? Games? Maps? Images? Videos? Audio? How to I insert all of these inside a Wave?

First thing you should do is  to install the available extensions that are already developed for Google Wave. On your inbox, you will have a Wave called Extensions Gallery. This wave will show you what Extensions you have installed. You can also uninstall them from this wave.

The installed extensions will be added to your top menu and you will see them as soon you open a blip. Here is where you can find Video Conference Extensions, Maps, Sudoku among others.

To insert Audio inside a Wave

The neatest and coolest way to insert audio in a Wave is by using the Soundcloud Gagdet: Just click on the insert gadget button (little green jigsaw puzzle) and insert the following URL:

http://wave-projects.googlecode.com/hg/gadgets/wave-soundcloud-player.xml

Wait for it to load, insert the URL of the track OR set (cool hey) and your Wave is ready to rock! (Or go techno-glitchy in my case)

To insert one or  more images just drag and drop it to your blip and it will appear as a thumbnail. If you double click it will show up full screen. If there is more than one picture on the Wave you can click on the “Images” tab (down left corrner) and choose “View as slide show”.

To insert video is also as easy as as pasting the YouTube URL on your blip. A yellow lamp will automatically show up right next to the URL and you will have the option to embed the video on your blip.

11. How do I tweet from within Google Wave.

Full Disclosure: I hate this robot but it is one question  that I get asked often. To tweet from within Google Wave you have to do the following:

1. Open a new Wave. Do not make it public!!

2. Add tweety-wave@appspot.com to your contacts and add it to that wave. A pop-up window will appear asking you to login to Twitter. After your credentials have been accepted everything that you write on that wave will be forwarded to your Twitter account.

Do not add this robot to a public wave. It will cause major disruption to all the users on that wave, it will delete the Wave-ID and you will have lots of people hating you instantly.

Links of Interest (You will need a Google Wave account to use these)

Newbies Wave and The Newbies Chat Room

For all of you Ableton Users out there I have setup a Ableton Users Wave that is currently being managed by the AbletonTweets Crew

______________________________________________________________________________________

If you are already using Google Wave what you see above is my own “Living Room” on Google’s new service. [A place to hang out and talk about taking over the world and such light subjects].

If you don’t have a Google Wave account yet,  all you will be able to see a is  generic screen and this post will be of no interest to you whatsoever but save it,  because it can come handy when you get your invite.

Hello fellow wavers!

This is a really exciting thing, in my opinion. The wave that you see up there, if you are logged on Google Wave, is live, meaning you can update it right  from here. In the same way, whatever you write on the Wave inside Google Wave will show up here. [So be careful with what you say ,-)]

The implementation is quite easy. First of all you have to install the wavr plug-in.

After you have done that every time you create a new post you will have a new icon that looks like this

When you click it a dialog box pops up.  It looks like this:

My experience is that no matter what you are going to insert as the wave Id (or url) it will not work. So just paste the url of your wave, fill in the rest of the information and click on insert. You will have now something like this on your post:

wave id=”" color=”#0a0a0a” bgcolor=”#ffffff” font=”Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif” font_size=”10″ width=”400″ height=”700″ between [ ]

How do you get your wave id in order to work properly with this plugin? Here is a step by step:

The original wave url is:

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252Bbu_3xD1OU.3

What you need to do is to strip the url of everything except googlewave.com!w%252Bbu_3xD1OU.3

Almost there. The wave id is in reality Bbu_3xD1OU but for this plugin to work properly you will have to insert: googlewave.com!w+bu_3xD1OU

Please notice how you have to change “%” for “+“. You also have to delete  ”252B” and everything that shows after, and including,  the “.” I believe that anytime soon I will have to edit this post with some new implementations that make the whole process easier to the end user.  This method, at first, it look complicated but it is worth it.  The first line of your new post should look like this:

wave id=”googlewave.com!w+bu_3xD1OU” color=”#0a0a0a” bgcolor=”#ffffff” font=”Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif” font_size=”10″ width=”400″ height=”700″  between [ ].

Publish! Go to your site! Enjoy!

—

After a problem with my first invite [it got activated and de-activated for some reason], reporting that to Google and getting a new invite, my curiosity was growing and today I got sometime on my hands to explore it.

I logged into Googlewave and KABOOOM!!!! This “KABOOOM!!!!!” refers to Google Wave’s public timeline.

Imagine you were raised away from a big city. You have lived all your life at the countryside and all you know about the big city is what you watch on television. But you don’t have a television!!! Suddenly life plays a Hiro Nakamura on you and you are teleported to the very center of Times Square in New York, or to Tokyo’s Akihabara with its thousands of shops. You go crazy. You can’t possibly take that much information. You close your eyes. You teleport back to the country side. (You discover that you are, after all, Hiro Nakamura)

This is exactly what I did: I immediately closed that window. Now I know it was a search that looks for all the public waves. But as a first experience it was… scary and puzzling.

Soundclound Track Inside a Wave

I started to explore making some waves, had a chat with Brian, and basically applying a trial and error method to see how some things work inside Google Wave.
The service is still on Beta Beta Beta. What works right now, might not work in a few minutes or for a few days (for what I read).
I played around with some gadgets(1) and robots(2) [the Aunt Rosie robot is amazing and allows you to have your blips(3) translated in real time ].

And then what? Right… err…. mmm…. Yes… some more gadgets, some robots… Found out a way to insert a html page inside of a Wave….

The truth is: without contacts and people to interact with Google Wave is nothing. You can have some limited fun exploring some of the gadgets and robots but this is all about collaboration. On that level I think that the potential is huge. While having my first ever Google Wave chat with Brian we started to talk about the potentials, the future potential that such a tool has: Online collaboration will never be the same.

For now, if you have some contacts already on Google Wave the experience will be fun: This is pioneering work on uncharted territory and it will be fun to see how people will use it.

If you don’t have none of your contacts already on Google Wave well there are two options:

One option is to create your own wave, make it public and see what happens. If the theme of your wave is interesting enough you will see people joining it.

The second option  has you teleporting again to that “Public Waves” timeline and find people with the same interests and add them to your contacts. At the end is like surfing: you have your board, you have the waves and all those other surfers around you. It is more fun  if you can share your experience.

If you want to find me at the wave just look for me at quarter dot bit [at no spam] googlewave dot com

_________________________________________________________________

(1) Gadgets: URLs that you insert that allow for extended functionality like inserting a web page’s content on a wave.

(2) Robots: They are a part of your contacts list on the Wave and allow you to play the wizard: from translation to rss feeds robots are your friends.

(3) blips: What Google calls every entry that you put on a wave.