Da Blogmother

Google Wave Update 10.19.2009

I received a Google Wave Invitation on October 9, 2009.  Just 10 days ago.

I'm really liking Google Wave.  But in order to put Wave to use in my business, I need invitations that I can share with my associates, office staff, and closest confidants.

So, I check Wave each morning for an invitation wave.. but so far I am still unable to invite others. Google says they are scrambling to increase capacity.

So, I continue to eagerly monitor news of Google Wave developments on Twitter.

In order to facilitate the "monitoring", I built a simple little web site, which is nothing more than an aggregation of twitter feeds from a few core members of the Google Wave crew.

Google Wave: How to add yourself to a public wave

Google Wave:  If you find a public wave about a topic of interest, and you want to continue to monitor new comments on that wave, you'll want to add yourself to that public wave, so in continues to display in your wave inbox.

This method works for me:

First search for public waves like this  http://activerain.com/blogsview/1285678/google-wave-find-public-waves   (The first few days, there was a managable number of public waves, now they are popping out on the list several per second)

Click on an interesting wave, and all the contents of the wave will display in the right panel.

Now look up at the top of the right panel, and click on the + sign to add participants.

The Add Participants dialog box will open.  If you don't already show up in the list, just go ahead and type in your own GoogleWave address.

As soon as your own little avatar shows up, DRAG it to the Participants Gallery at the top of the right cancel. (Clicking the plus sign does not seem to work when it is your own icon)

To confirm that you are added to the wave's participants, click the word "More" beside the participant gallery.

The participant gallery will expand to show everyon in the wave.

Google Wave: Find Public Waves

Did you receive a Google Wave invite, set up an account, but now you feel small, alone, and unwaved-at?

Find some public waves!

In the search box, at the top of the center panel, just type  (or copy and paste)

with:public 

Then click the search icon.

You'll be pleasantly surprised!

Google Wave: How to Ping someone

First, the person must be in your Contacts list.

If they are not in your contact list, follow the steps here to add them.

Then find the person's little avatar in your contact list, and double click on it.

A little popup message will appear, click on Ping (the person's name)

Type a message and click done

The ping will show up at the top of the person's Google Wave Inbox

Note to Google Wave engineers:  It would be really super if a notification of a ping would also show up in the person's regular email box.   Thanks!!!

How to insert a photo in Google Wave

How to insert a photo in Google Wave.

1. DO NOT USE INTERNET EXPLORER.  There appears to be a bug that causes images loaded while using Internet Explorer to continually display a "working twirl"; never a finished image. 

 

Google engineers will probably figure it out and fix it soon.  Meanwhile use FireFox or Google Chrome or Flock or Safari.

2.  Start a new Wave, or reply to an existing Wave.

3.  Click the paper clip/attach icon.

4.  Select the image from your computer, click Open.

5.  A thumbnail of the image will appear.  Clicking on the thumbnail will bring up a full size version of the image.

So far, I have not yet been able to successfully drag an image into a Wave message.  Anyone managed that yet?  When I try to simply drag, this is what I get:

How to embed a video in Google Wave.

Embedding a video in Google Wave took me a little while to figure out, despite rather clear instructions in the help forum, because evidently at the moment it only works with YouTube videos, (and the first video I was experimenting with was not a YouTube video).  OK.

1.  Choose a video from YouTube, and copy the video's URL (NOT the embed code).

2.  In an open Google Wave, either click the Reply icon, or click on the bottom border or a particular comment in the thread.

A text box opens for your comment....

3.  You can type some text, then click on the Link icon.

4.  Type or paste in the URL of the video (NOT the embed code!)  Click Insert Link.

5.  Wave will display the URL with a little light bulb at the end.  Click the light bulb.  (If your video is NOT a YouTube video, you will not see the light bulb, and Wave will only display the link;  only YouTube videos are embeddable.)

6.  Click the light bulb, then click the words Embed Video

7.  The YouTube video will appear in your Wave Message.  Click Done.

8. YIPEEEE!!

Who else has received their Google Wave invitation?

I received mine, I know Missy Caulk and Kevin and Monica Ray received theirs.  Anyone Else?

My Wave account does not yet have the function to invite others.  Google says this is the reason:

As soon as we're confident that the system can accept more users, we will add a wave to your account that allows you to nominate friends and colleagues for an account. Once you have the capability to invite people, the wave appear in your inbox.

Meanwhile, if you did get your Wave account, we can practice waving at each other.

I discovered you must add the individual to your contacts list before you can wave with them.

If your Google Wave account is set up, go to http://wave.google.com

Click on Manage Contacts, at the bottom of the left panel.

Click the + sign/add contact icon

Enter my name: Cheryl, and my gmail address: cheryljns @ gmail.com, click save.

Once I am entered as a contact, you can create a New Wave, and add me to that Wave.

Google Wave is kinda sorta a hybrid of email/instant messaging/twitter/group blogging.  I can see a lot of uses for it.

Gee, maybe I should create a Google Wave group here on AR.

Eagle Rock Music Festival: TubePress Experiment

I figured the Eagle Rock Music Festival presented a great opportunity to experiment with Tubepress.

So here's the deal. If you shot video at Eagle Rock Music Festival last Saturday, and if you've loaded the video to YouTube ...

You can tag that video with the term "Eagle Rock Music Festival 2009", and the TubePress software should automatically find your video and plug it into this website... http://eaglerockmusic.nelanews.net/  

Please give it a try!!!

(There is one minor bug:  Some false positives that I managed to bump to the end of each group.)

Still Waiting for Google Wave. But Hey, Twitter People, look at this

The person who invited me, sent the "nomination" on October 1.  Here it is October 3.  Still no invite.  So I keep cruising around the web, looking for news of other people who have already received their invites.

In the process, I came across this blog post about using Google Wave to post Tweets to Twitter: http://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-add-twitter-to-google-wave-twitterwave.html

Patience is getting harder every day.

Google Wave Update: Still Waiting

No invitation yet.  But now I understand a little better how the system works.

Folks with invitations to share can not send you an invitation directly (Unlike the launch of GMail in 2004).  They nominate you to Google, and then Google sends you the actual invitation.

And Google sends you the invitation when they get around to "licking the stamps". 

This screen shot via Aaron Neale here

Patience is a virtue.