Share your Google Wave stories

We love getting messages like these:

"Just thought I'd share a quick story. Was out with a friend last night who is looking for a new apartment with another friend of ours who lives in San Diego. I'd invited both of them to try Google Wave and they said that using it to look for an apartment was a both a gamechanger and a lifesaver! My friend Eric said he cringed at the thought of all the emailing of links, trying to remember which one they liked, etc had they not had Wave. The ability to insert all the links into one wave, leave comments or chat in realtime and clean up as well as go back totally has them both hooked!"

"I used Google Wave to conduct an interview. We did the whole thing in a wave and it worked brilliantly--we could answer questions as he asked them so the pace of the conversation moved really quickly, and we had a record of the whole thing."

"I just had my big wave "aha!" moment. After ~3 weeks of using it, I went to compose an e-mail and found it totally strange that I couldn't have people collaborate with me on my e-mail. Want: collaboration everywhere!"

Have you used Google Wave in an interesting way? We're excited to hear your stories, so if you have one you'd like to share, here's how to let us know:

Share great waves
If you have a cool wave that came together really nicely, add wave.stories@googlewave.com as a participant.

Tell us about a wave 'a-ha' moment
Write a quick description (in a wave) of how using Google Wave helped you out and add wave.stories@googlewave.com to it. Or wave us with a link to a blogpost about interesting examples, like how it was used for international debates.

We won't respond or edit your content, just act like a fly on the wall (and maybe use playback to see how it came together). Down the road, we might feature your story on our blog.

Thanks again to all who are trying the preview, and happy waving!

Posted by Stephanie Hannon, Product Manager, Google Wave

Waving with groups

Some users have noticed that we have the beginnings of support for groups in Google Wave, so we figured we'd give everyone a quick explanation of how it currently works. Keep in mind that this is in the very early stages and we have much better functionality planned for the future, but feel free to try it out!

Currently, you can add a Google Group to a wave, set permissions and then view and edit waves with that group. Unlike other group conversations, however, group waves will only show up in Google Wave, not in the Google Groups interface.

Here are the detailed steps for how to do it:

Step 1: Create a Google Group
When creating a group, note that most of the settings of Google Groups are respected; for instance, if the group is set to allow anyone to view content, anyone may view that wave. You will have to add Google Wave users into your group with their username@gmail.com address (we're in the process of getting username@googlewave.com working, too). Under the 'Appearance' setting, chose an image that will help you identify your group in Google Wave. Learn more about how groups settings work with Google Wave.

If you already have a Google Group, you're ready to go.

Step 2: Add your new group into your contact list
Click the '+' button in the lower right corner of the contacts panel, type in the name of the group (including @googlegroups.com) and hit 'Submit'.



Step 3: Add the group to a wave
This works just like any of your other contacts.

Step 4: Find waves with your group
You can do this either by clicking on the group's contact and then on the "Group Waves" button or by searching for "group:groupname@googlegroups.com". If you'd like to create a quick shortcut to get to these, try saving your search! Find information on more group searches in our Help Center.



Step 5: Follow group waves!
We recently launched the ability to follow waves. You will not be automatically following group waves, so use the follow feature to make them appear in your inbox when they're updated.

This is just the beginning for groups. In the future, you'll have a groups option in your Navigation panel that will help you find and follow group waves. We'd love to hear your thoughts, let us know what you think on our Help Forum.

Posted by Jan Vaughan, Software engineer, Google Wave Team

A million stamps licked ... and counting

As we wrote in our last post, our users' top feature request is "more invitations." We've been working to increase the capacity of our preview setup and have sent invitations to everyone who requested an invite through our online form. If you'd like to request an invitation, you can still sign up here.

We've also given existing users additional invitations to share with family, friends, and colleagues. If you know people who want to try out Google Wave during the preview, log in and help them out!



Although we are opening up access a bit, do remember that Google Wave is still only in its early preview phase (read more about what that means). If you are interested in developing with the Google Wave APIs and would like an account on the developer sandbox, you can request one here.

Finally, there are a few sites and even public waves that offer invitations to Google Wave in exchange for email addresses or promotions (on Twitter, for example). You should always be careful about sharing your email address or other personal information and remember that Google Wave is free so you should never have to pay for an invitation, either. So, instead of using a public site or forum, please sign up on our form and we'll send you an invitation.

Happy waving and thank you so much for all the both encouraging and critical feedback we have received so far!

Posted by Grim Iversen, Product Manager, Google Wave