Why Google Wave will have a life-changing effect on Business, Education and Project Management

Google Wave in Business
There are six reasons why Wave is going to have a huge impact on you. However, this is all predicated on mass adoption of the technology.

1. Extensions
Similar to Fire fox Add-ons, Google Wave is augmenting its power through two of  its wave extensions namely the Robots and Gadgets

Robot ; Robots are applications which can be added to waves as automated wave participants. Robot extensions commonly automate tasks, but can also participate in the wave as a participant, interacting with the conversation based on their capabilities. is an automated participant on a wave. Robots are programs which run on an application server and can modify state within the wave itself. A robot can read the contents of a wave in which it participates, modify the wave’s contents, add or remove participants, and create new blips and new waves. Robots perform actions in response to events. For example, a robot might publish the contents of a wave to a public blog site and update the wave with user comments.
Gadgets: Gadget extensions provide a shared program which runs within the wave, and to which all participants have access. is a small application that runs within a client. The gadget is owned by the wave, and all participants on a wave share the same gadget state. The only events a gadget responds to are changes to its own state object, and changes in the wave’s participants (for example, participants joining or leaving the wave). The gadget has no influence over the wave itself. 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 sudoku gadget that lets the wave participants compete to see who can solve the puzzle first.
The following table summarizes the differences between the various extension options:

ROBOTS	GADGETS
Runs on application servers(currently App.Engine) and interacts with the wave over a protocol	Runs within the wave client itself.
Each robot may instantiate at most oneinstance per wave. Remember that a robot is like a participant on a wave, so each participant/robot is a unique instance, but a wave can have many participants/robots.	Each gadget may have multiple instances per wave, one for each participant interacting with the gadget.
Robots may modify a wave and performthe same operations as a human participant.	Gadgets are not able to modify a wave, And have limited visibility into the wave. A gadget is only able to detect changes in the wave’s Participants.
Robots can modify a gadget.	Gadgets have no way to know that arobot exists, and thus are not able to modify a robot.

How to add Extensions?
If you’ve created an extension, you have several ways in which you can add the extension to Wave:
• Robots may be added as participants to the Wave itself. In theory, a robot can be added anywhere a (human) participant can be added. You designate a robot by its address within your Contacts address book, for example, and can open up multiple conversations with the same robot, just as you would with a human. A robot may also be added as a participant within an extension installer, described below.
• Gadgets may be added to individual waves, where they share state and all participants may interact with the gadget. You can add a gadget to an individual wave by clicking the “Add Gadget” toolbar item. A gadget may also be added to a wave within an extension installer, described below.
• Extension Installers may be added to individual waves, in which case all other participants on the wave will also be asked to install the extension package. An extension package may consist of gadgets and/or robots. You can add an extension installer to a wave via the Debug -> Extensions -> Add Extension Installer menu item.
Why are Wave Extensions such a big deal? I believe that developers and designers will be able to sell Extensions to their clients or to a wider audience, possibly in an Extensions marketplace. This means a huge potential source of new income, providing there is mass adoption of Wave.
2. Embedding APIs ( Application Protocol Interfaces )
Google has created a huge API to Wave, but one of the really interesting parts is the ability to embed a Wave into any web page. A great example of how this could be used with blogging. You can create a Wave and then publish it to your blog. Then whenever someone comments on the blog post, it appears as a reply to you Wave in your Wave client – no need to visit the site.
That’s the kicker, embedded Waves remove the need to physically visit a site in order to interact with it. This is a fundamental, and very exciting, change to the way we currently interact with blogs and content.
Why is the Wave Embedding API such a big deal? It means that content is king and consuming it will become even easier. Really understanding this and taking advantage of it’s power will make you much more effective in reaching your audience.
3. Collaboration
There is no separation between documents and emails in Waves. This is because Waves can be edited by more than one person. People can “chat” during the meeting, by creating private replies right inside the Wave. The writer can choose whether or not to make this chat visible to other participants.
4. Open Source
Google has made the Google Wave an open-sourced technology and created the Wave Federation Protocol which Google explains as :

[Wave Federation Protocol is] the underlying network protocol for sharing waves between wave providers.Yes, that’s between wave providers: anyone can build a wave server and interoperate, much like anyone can run their own SMTP server. The wave protocol is open to contributions by the broader community with the goal to continue to improve how we share information, together. To help potential wave providers get started, our plan is to release an open source, production-quality, reference implementation of the Google Wave client and server, as well as provide an open federation endpoint by the time users start getting access. This means you can either use Wave hosted on Google’s infrastructure, or you can have it hosted on your own server, without ever interracting or sharing data with Google.

5. Google Web Toolkit (GWT)
Google Wave is written entirely using GWT. GWT is seriously powerful. GWT allows you to write HTML 5 web apps in Java, which are then cross-compiled into optimized JavaScript. If you’re a web developer, you need to have a serious look at GWT and the potential benefits it has to offer. Programming in Java gives you all the traditional benefits of breakpoints and being able to step through your code.
6. Playback
The increased collaboration that possible with Wave might actually make it confusing for someone to be added to a Wave after a lot of editing and replies have been made. Enter ‘Wave Playback. The best way to explain it is by jumping to minute 13:00 on the Wave introduction video.
This feature allows you to step through the changes to a Wave as they happened over time.
Google Wave Extensions Gallery
Tools and add-ons are created by the developer community to add additional functionality to the Wave service.
The complete list of extensions includes the following:
• Wave Sudoku (play Sodoku with friends in a Wave)
• Extension Installer (for developers only)
• Colcrop (game)
• Yellow highlighter (highlight text)
• Napkin gadget (for doodles)
• Waffle (date-picker)
• Iframe gadget (embed webpages in a Wave)
• Yes/No/Maybe gadget (for polls)
• Map gadget (insert maps)
• Video Chat Experience (chat in Waves)
• Phone Conference (call your friends)
• Mind Map gadget (collaborate on diagrams)
• Likey gadget (like/dislike a topic)
• Pollo gadget (for surveys)
• Take-out gadget (for ordering out)
• AccuWeather (weather forecasts)
Google Wave in Education
The wave was started to explore concepts like “Collaborative Note Taking” and “Wave as a Debate Host.” Nearly 100 people are included in the wave, ranging from teachers to PhD students to IT professionals to high school students.

“Google Wave combines a lot of the best features from different applications” – but with a real-time twist. It was noted that while Google Docs can be used to share notes and collaborate on assignments, with Google Wave students can collaborate in real-time. This could be important in education for things like note taking, asking questions (a.k.a. a backchannel) and collaborative projects.
Another feature of Wave that would be useful for education purposes, according to this 100-person wave, is the play-back ability – “so instructors can see exactly who did what, and see the progression of ideas.”
Wave can be used in education.
- Building a more interactive / creative learning environment
- Proofreading / writing papers
- Brainstorming potential project ideas
- Interactive tutoring from home
- Collaborative Environment for Cyber Schooling
With more widgets, you could embed streams and communicate with professors in real-time. We’re excited about Wave’s potential to transform education.
Google Wave for Business Projects
Google Wave for project correspondence: In addition to Google docs, is working great for project management.
Monthly Wave : Get a new wave with the month and project title; example: “February: ClientWebsite.com.” This helps de-clutter and eliminate excessive scrolling.
Organization:  Organize thoughts similar to the email (and this document): Bold titles, include links, etc
Announcements: kick off each new Wave with a monthly address. It includes any new and/or critical information for the team.
No long email threads cluttering my Inbox. The team is tuned in to helping each other out.
Because it’s not in the Inbox, not distracted with every little issue. Can check in regularly and can focus attention, as needed.
Free and Easy to Use
Re-Inviting of team for every document, starting the wave without missing team members and improvement in document sharing are the areas which need focus

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