Google Wave Gadgets: What’s Different?

Most of the gadgets written for non-Wave containers can run in Wave. However, these gadgets are not able to take advantage of the live, multi-user environment like Google Wave. The main difference between Wave gadgets and non-Wave gadgets is that a Wave gadget lives in a wave and can interact with the wave.

Wave-aware gadgets can:

    * Access more granular (small parts) state management
    * Find out the current viewer and all of the other participants
      on the wave
    * Work harmoniously with the Wave playback mechanism

Wave gadgets typically aren’t full blown applications, but small add-ons that improve certain types of conversations.

For example, a wave might include a gadget that lets wave participants vote on where to go to lunch. Gadgets running in Wave belong to the wave they’ve been added to. This is slightly different from orkut-like containers, where the gadgets sitting on a profile page belong to the owner of that page. Consequently, any information associated with the gadget is stored on a per-wave basis (actually stored in the wave) rather than per-user. Gadget information and state are shared among the participants of the wave. Note that unlike typical gadgets, gadgets within Google Wave do not display a title. This allows the gadget to appear as part of the conversation, rather than apart from it.