Many people that use Wave only use it from time to time, on an “as needed” basis.  This is fine, but causes people to miss new items when they arrive.  There are a few browser extensions and other workarounds, but now Google has released official email notifications!

The way they work is quite simple.  You can choose to have notifications send to you either:

• Immediately
• Hourly
• Daily
• Never

The default, as you would expect, is “never”.  However, if you don’t have another system in place it’d probably be wise to turn them on.  Even better, you should encourage your friends to turn it on so they don’t miss something that comes from you.

There are a few minor issues with it still, but it seems to be a very nice implementation.  Useful and customizable, yet simple and uncluttered.

What’s the next feature you’d like to see them add?

Post from: Google Wave Info

Email notifications are finally here

Google has posted 10 simple tips to improve your Wave experience.  None are groundbreaking, but all of them help make it just a bit more useful.

Included are some keyboard shortcuts, how to link one Wave to another, and a few other useful tips.

What other tips have you picked up in your time with Wave? Let us know in the comments!

Post from: Google Wave Info

Ten tips for better Waving

A Google Wave developer has spoken about a lot of non-confidential upcoming features for Google Wave.  You can read them all at Reddit, but here are some highlights:

• Better “new Wave notifications” are coming soon. I use the slick extension for Google Chrome, but other options will be coming soon.  “Very soon”, in fact.
• Tighter connections between Wave and email aren’t likely coming soon.
• People don’t like the weird scrollbars, but we’re told that they have a “really really really really good reason to keep them”.  Not sure why, though.
• Google Wave and Google Buzz share little (if any) code.
• Wave doesn’t work well with Opera, but the Opera development team is apparently working on it.

There are plenty of other unanswered questions in there, so hopefully those can be taken care of soon.

What are the biggest questions/concerns that YOU have about Google Wave?

Post from: Google Wave Info

Lots of insight on upcoming features for Google Wave

Slowly but surely, Google Wave is building out the expected features that people want.  They’re still missing some huge ones (publish to a site, print, rearrange blips, etc), but they’re getting there.

The latest two they’ve added are User Access Permissions and Restore from Playback.

User Access Permissions

This allows you to add people to a Wave with read-only access.  One neat thing you can do is allow public read-only access to the Wave to show it off to a wide variety of people without worrying about them messing it up.

You can make groups or individuals read-only.  Coming soon will be “reply only” access which allows users to reply to blips but not edit the blips that they didn’t create.

Restore from Playback

If a Wave gets messed up, anyone with full access to the Wave can restore it to a previous point.  This “restore” actually becomes a new instance at the end of the playback history, so others could essentially un-restore it if necessary.

What do you think is the biggest issue that needs to be addressed next?

Post from: Google Wave Info

Google Wave finally adds access permissions

Since my last entry, Chris Brogan has really become a fan of Google Wave.  Here are a few posts of his that you need to check out:

Tips for Google Wave: After using it a bit, he’s developed some techniques that may be useful to those of you just getting started.

Using Google Wave for Task Management: Is Google Wave a suitable tool for managing your tasks?  At this point, I don’t really think it is, but it certainly could become one.

How I Came to Love Google Wave: He’s now pretty much “all in”.  He loves Wave, and appreciates what it can do.  He admits that it has a limited scope of usefulness so far (“if you have no obvious collaboration project to try it on, it doesn’t immediately make sense”) but sees a lot of potential in it.

Also, Lifehacker has just built a great chart that shows the differences between Wave and other current web-based collaboration systems.

It’s a nifty little chart, and certainly makes it look like Google Wave is something to keep an eye on.  Once they fill in those last few boxes at the bottom, it’ll be a very powerful system.

Post from: Google Wave Info

Tips, Tasks, Love and all the rest

While people are still debating about the usefulness of Google Wave, it’s proving to be a great tool to make videos with.  There was the popular “Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction” a few months ago, and now we have “Waving Goodbye to 2009“.  It’s a very well-produced video, hitting many of the highlights of 2009 in a crazy-Wave format.

Check it out below:

Post from: Google Wave Info

The year in review

It’s a very minor thing, but in a text-based environment it’s very important.  Starting today, you can now use “undo” and “redo” commands within a wave.

They use the standard keys.:

To undo something, just press CTRL+Z ( or CMD+Z on Mac).

To redo it, use CTRL+Y or CMD+Y.  That’s it!

Again, nothing earth-shaking about this, but it simply makes it a little easier to use and gets it a bit closer to being ready for a wider release.

Post from: Google Wave Info

Google Wave adds undo/redo

For a while now, people have been asking for a way to use Groups with Google Wave.  It’d be nice to be able to just add an entire team to a Wave, rather that adding them one at a time.  Google has just added the first piece of this feature.  It’s clunky, but it’s a start.

Starting now, you can add a Google Group to a wave.  Once added, you can set permissions for the group and interact with them in Wave.  You can add a Group as a “contact” in Wave, making it easy to add them to waves that you create.

A step-by-step guide is posted in the official Wave blog, so check it out and give it a try!

Post from: Google Wave Info

Groups finally arrive in Wave — sort of

Google has just announced that they have now sent out over one million invitations to Google Wave.  It was just over two months ago that they invited the initial 100,000 to check it out, and now they’ve grown to over over 10x that size!

Specifically, they’ve sent invitations to everyone that has signed up on their site, and all existing users have been given more invites to hand out to friends and family.

I’ve noticed in the last week or so that very few people are asking us for invites on Twitter.  I assumed that’s because most of the people that want an invite have one now — great!  Early on, many people complained that Wave was pretty much useless without their friends and family there, which was certainly true.  Now that the invites are flowing like water, we can really get down to business and figure out how best to use it.

If you still are looking to get an invite, just leave a comment on this post with your email address and we’ll be happy to send you one.

Post from: Google Wave Info

A million invites sent, and plenty more to give

Google is in the process of developing a FAQ for Wave developers, and it’s coming along quite nicely.  The questions that they answer cover four areas:

• Wave Sandbox
• Debugging & Development
• Using the Robot Client Libraries
• Wave Preview

What’s neat is that they generated this FAQ from a series of Waves on WaveSandbox.com, then used the Exporty robot to push the information to the FAQ.  They’ve provided documentation on how this was accomplished in case you would like to implement a similar system for your site.

If you have other suggestions for them, you’re encouraged to visit the Google Wave API forum.

Post from: Google Wave Info

Lots of info for Wave developers