Clarifying wave deletion

In Google Wave, waves from which all participants have been removed are wiped from Google's servers permanently.

To be more specific: When you are removed from a wave that you have seen before, whether you remove yourself or someone else removes you, you are given a chance to acknowledge that you are OK being removed. At the top of such waves, there is a button that says "Delete my copy". Until you click this button, you keep a copy of the wave up until the point you've been removed.



You can keep that copy forever. We delete only waves where all participants have been removed, and none are keeping a copy.

Currently, "Delete my copy" does the same as moving the wave to trash, but this may change in the future. Previous releases of Google Wave did not have the "Delete my copy" button; moving to trash was the only way to delete your copy.

If you have questions, please visit our Help Forum.

Posted by Paul Korzhyk, Software Engineer Google Wave Team

Ole ole ole ole: Google Wave Football Fever!

Today we're announcing Google Wave Football Fever: a way to help you stay on top of the matches in South Africa, predict the outcomes and organize viewing parties with your friends.

My first experience following the tournament was back in 1994 when the information technology wasn't as advanced as it is these days. For weeks, practically all I did was stay up late, get up early, tune in to the TV day in and out, and wait anxiously for the newspaper to arrive in the morning just to get the latest scores, news, or highlights. Oh boy, what a fun life!

Nowadays, however, such information is delivered to us more conveniently on the internet, but so much of the fun is still getting together with other people to discuss and debate the games, both in person, and virtually. So we designed a set of templates for Wave to help you do both.

Visit our main Football Fever page. From there for each match of the tournament you can:

• Predict the game: Start a new wave where you and your friends can make predictions on the final outcome, the top player, and add your own custom polls. Once the match is completed, the prediction gadget will show the final outcome, and who came closest. Hey, who knows - maybe you have a hidden talent as a sports analyst!

• Plan a viewing party: Of course, these events aren't complete without fun hang-out times with your friends. Start a new wave where you and your friends can organize a gathering to watch a game together or an after party to celebrate your winning team.
• Get live commentary: Both the prediction and viewing party waves display live updates from Google News and Twitter. So, you won't miss a moment when Wayne Rooney scores a goal, and you'll see what the fans out there are saying about it!

To add some extra football love, why not show your team spirit in Wave with a fan-flavored avatar? Check out the football-themed Picnik effects and then update your photo.

And if you need any help, just visit our Help Forum.

See you in South Africa!

Posted by Marcel Prasetya, Software Engineer and Brasil fan, Google Wave Team

Wave This!

Google Wave is a great tool to collaborate with a small group of people and to share and discuss information from the web with your friends. However, to get interesting information from the web into a wave you have to use old school copy and paste. Until now! Today we're announcing WaveThis, a set of easy ways to create a discussion in a wave directly from the site you want to share.

Look to the right of this blog post. You'll see a "WaveThis" button that lets the visitors to this blog (that's you!) easily discuss this blog post with their friends and coworkers in a small group. It's less public than broadcast tools and more interactive than using email. When you click the "WaveThis" button, it will copy the title and URL of this post and drop it in a new wave. Then, you can add your friends to the wave to start discussing. Try it out!

Of course you will come across stuff on the web that you want to discuss in a wave where there isn't a WaveThis button ready for you to click. To help with that, we've created a WaveThis bookmarklet and a Chrome extension. To use the bookmarklet, drag the link below to your bookmarks in Firefox, Safari or Chrome.

WaveThis bookmarklet

After that, any time you see something interesting on the web you want to discuss, just select the text that drew your eye, click that bookmark and presto! you have a new wave! The Chrome extension works the same way. To get it, just visit the WaveThis extension from your Google Chrome browser and press 'Install.'

If you are a webmaster, you can now craft a URL that, if followed, automatically creates a new wave with a specific title and content, like this:

https://wave.google.com/wave/wavethis?u=http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/06/wave-this.html&t=Wave+This&c=Awesome+new+service

Now, a wave wouldn't be a wave if all you could do was copy over some plain old text. Websites that want to incorporate some interactivity into the resulting waves can specify a helper gadget. For example, a WaveThis link to a YouTube video looks like this:

http://wave.google.com/wave/wavethis?g=http://wave-this.appspot.com/public/youtube.xml&u=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo&t=Look+at+this+video

The wave that is created has the video embedded so that your friends know what you're talking about, like this:

Learn more about adding WaveThis to your website at http://code.google.com/apis/wave/wavethis/.

Wave away!

Posted by Douwe Osinga, Software Engineer, Google Wave Team