Getting Started with Google Wave

Well, I received my Google Wave invitation and I can’t wait to dig in and check it out. Oops, none of my friends are on Google Wave yet. What to do?

Okay, I went over to Twitter and tweeted that if anyone wanted to test Google Wave, I was available at billbolmeier [at] googlewave [dot] com.

I also received 20 invites with Google Wave so I could send out invites to my friends email addresses. Not only did I send a few out to friends that I knew were waiting for invites, I also posted a message on Facebook and Twitter.

Hoping to spark interest for Google Wave, I now have a few folks on it so we can test and experiment with waves.

What is Google Wave?

At its most basic definition, Google Wave is:

“An online communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless — in one place, you can communicate and collaborate using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is a conversation with multiple participants — participants are people added to a wave to discuss and collaborate on its content. Participants can reply any time and anywhere within a wave, and they can edit content and add more participants as a wave develops. It’s also possible to rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when.”

Here are some images to help:

Click image for larger view (800 px)

As you can see from the image above, there are basically four panels:

Your Navigation Panel (upper left) – The Navigation Panel allows you to filter your list of waves including all your waves, waves created by you, waves created by others who requested you to be on a wave. There’s more to the Navigation Panel but that’s a good start.
Below the Navigation Panel is the Contacts list. What more do I need to say, it’s your Google contact list that you can include people on your waves, assuming they have Google Wave.
In the middle is the list of waves that is filtered by your Navigation Panel. The list looks like a typical email list with subject and a brief description of the wave based on so many characters of the wave. It also includes a menu bar where you can create new waves, delete waves, archives waves and many other options.
The final panel to the far right is your wave conversation panel. It lists the conversation of a wave. Above the conversation are images of the folks that are included on the wave. A menu bar offers common commands you’ll find in email such as reply, archive, delete, spam, trash, etc. One cool feature of Google Wave is the Playback button. It allows you to playback the conversation of a wave. Very cool. However, it doesn’t end there, as mentioned above, this is where you can share videos, formatted text, attachments, images, maps, and more. Extensions really bring out the power in Google Wave. We’ll explore those in another article.

So here’s the deal. Once you receive your Google Wave invite and would like to connect with other Google Wavers, add your Google Wave contact information below in the comments. If you’d like to reveal what you’re interested in, such as technology or parenting or poker, etc. that could act as a spring board to connecting with like-minded people.

Playing with The Public

If you want to watch and play with the public you can enter with:public above your list of Waves. This will generate a rapid, “live” listing of waves. So if you’d like to slow that down, you might want to enter something like with:public Parenting or something that you’re interested in watching the public “Wave” about.

Want to create your own public stream of waves? Add public@a.gwave.com as a contact. Then you can create Waves that the public can get involved with. When you type in public@a.gwave.com as a contact, it will display a message about the contact not existing, just press the enter key and you’ll be good to go.

That’s it for now. If you don’t have an invite keep looking for one by asking your friends online. You might want to do a twitter search for people who are advertising they have Google Wave invites with this query on Twitter google wave invites. Whatever you do, don’t pay for one.

See you on the Wave!! Hang Ten!!