Google Wave to Launch Public Beta Service by End of September (w/ Video)

With Google Wave you can bring friends or business clients together to discuss topics of concern and share files at the same time. You can easily share files by dragging-and-dropping them inside a Google Wave.

The Google Wave development team, based out of Sydney, Australia, consists of two brothers and a lead project manager. All of whom were involved in the development of Google Maps. Google launched Google Wave at its Google IO conference at the end of May and has approximately 6,000 developers using the service.

To fully understand this new communication platform you need to understand the lingo used in Google Wave. Below I briefly explain a few of the basic terms used in Google Wave and have also included a Google Wave Video.

This video is not supported by your browser at this time.

Google Wave Terminology

- Wave: A wave refers to a specific threaded conservation. It can include a single person or a group of people or even robots (explained below).

-Wavelet: A wavelet is a subset of a larger conversation (wave). Wavelets can be created and managed separately from a wave.

-Blip: A blip is smaller than a wavelet and is a single, individual message. Blips can have other blips attached to them (children) and can be published or unpublished.

-Document: A document is content within a blip. It can contain characters, words, and files.

-Extension: An extension is a mini-application that works inside a wave. These apps can be played while using the wave. The two main types of extensions are Gadgets and Robots.

-Gadgets: A gadget is an application that users can use and many of which are built on Google's OpenSocial platform. Gadgets are wave specific rather than user specific. There are thousands of applications that have already been created that will work in Google Wave. Some gadgets include Sudoku, Bidder (turns a wave into an auction) and Maps (allows for collaboration on a Google Map).

-Robots: Robots are automated participants within a wave. These participants can interact with users and waves. They can also provide information from outside sources or check content from within a wave. Some robots service include Debuggy (in-wave debugger), Stocky (pulls stock prices), and Tweety (displays tweets inside of a wave)

-Embeded Wave: A way to take Google Wave and the conservation within it and place it onto a third party website. Wave Embeds are still in the early stages, however Google has already built two: YouTube Playlist Discuss that allows users to discuss a YouTube video via a wave and Multiple Extensions Embed which allows for interaction with multiple waves on the same page.

Prior to the rollout, Google is working on improving the speed, stability and usability of Google Wave. Google is also working on expanding the Google Wave APIs and their goal is that extensions built by third parties feel fully on-par with Google Wave's native features to users.

Via: Google Wave Developer Blog & Mashable.com

© 2009 PhysOrg.com