Google Wave Lists
Char and I both got invites to Google Wave today. First impressions say it's going to be a freaking awesome tool for collaborative works and online critique workshops.
I know there won't be many people to have these yet, but if you've gotten an invite, drop your wave address here and we'll get hooked up.
gabrielgadfly@googlewave.com is mine.
Before anyone asks, Google hasn't provided me with any invites of my own, but as soon as I get some, I'll certainly pass them on to weblit folks first of the line.
I promise you'll get one as soon as I get some invites. 
TY.
I'd better.
I think they are being stingy with the invites - I've not received any to distribute either 
I got a Wave invite a week or so ago, but haven't figure out to do with it until now. I'm tenaciousnbrauer@googlewave.com
I'll distribute invites like candy once I get some. Apparently it takes a while for Google to get them to new users.
Can someone explain what the big whoop is? 
Okay, hold on, back up, whoa, time...!
What is Google Wave and what does it relate to what we're doing?
Mind you, I've only had about a day to play around with it...but Wave is kinda like the bastard child that would result if Email, IM, Forums, and Wiki software had some mass orgy.
It starts off like an e-mail. I send a Wave to Char. She can then reply to my Wave, but since Wave works in real-time, her reply shows up instantaneously beneath mine, kinda like in IM. Actually, it's even quicker than that, because I see what she's typing as she's typing it. Of course, it works two ways -- she sees what I'm doing at the same time.
Waves are organized into a sort of hierarchy composed of Waves, Wavelets, and Blips. A Wave is the complete document (kinda like a forum thread). Wavelets are like the individual posts. Wavelets can replied-to to form Blips. It looks a bit like this:
- Wave
- Wavelet
- Wavelet
- Wavelet
- Blip
- Wavelet
Mass-Editable
Any Wavelet or Blip within a Wave can be edited by any of the participants, so in that regard, it's a bit like a Wiki. For example: when Char and I were first talking through Wave, she was typing something and I noticed she made a typo. She hadn't noticed the typo and continued typing the rest of her paragraph. Because wave is in total real-time, I was able to fix her typo before she'd even finished posting her Wavelet. Note: It's important not to think of Wave as communication. It IS, but so much more. If you just want to chat with your buddy, use IM or Twitter or something. Wave's potential is in its collaborative abilities.
Embeddable
You can embed pretty much anything into a Wave. Pull in a YouTube video, an audio file, photos, a Google Map, javascript apps (I pulled in a Magnetic Poetry thing at one point and Char was watching me compose poetry in real-time), polls, and a lot more. Since Wave is open-source, there's going to be a lot of extension apps for it, as well as a lot of specialized versions with different capabilities.
Not only can you embed things into a Wave, you can embed a Wave into things! You can take a Wave and pop it into your website or blog, and anyone logged into Wave has the ability to edit and post in it from your website. This will have a lot more capability later on, when people have self-hosted versions of Wave that they can moderate and control.
Playback
You can add new participants to the Wave at any point, but have you ever opened a forum topic that has 100+ replies and been daunted by the task of catching up? Chances are, you didn't bother. Wave provides a Playback function that allows you to watch the Wave develop from its infancy frame-by-frame, including new Wavelets and Blips and everytime something is edited. Since you can progress the Playback at your own pace like a slideshow, the task of catching up with a large thread of information becomes bite-size and manageable.
Taggable
Waves can be tagged kinda like blog posts can -- and any participant in the Wave can add tags. Tags are visible by everyone, and allow for a way to categorize things. Picture a "weblit" tag to categorize and collect all Waves used by the Weblit community, or something more specific like "weblit-critique" or something.
Private Replies
Let's say I'm in a Wave with 5 people, and I want to reply to a Wavelet, but I only want 2 of the 5 people to be able to read my reply. I can privatize my reply in such a way that it only appears to those two people. If later I decide I want a 3rd person to be able to view that reply, all I have to do is edit the reply and add them in.
How Can Weblit Writers Use It?
This is going to be a big tool for collaborative and critique groups, I think. Picture a poetry critique group of 3-5 members. Ideally, you choose one person to act as a sort of moderator (who doubles as a critiquer), an author whose work is being reviewed, and the rest are critiquers.
Opening the Wave, the moderator lays down some ground rules about how the critique should be handled, then the author posts their poem in a Wavelet. Each critiquer can then make replies to that Wavelet in real-time, letting the author see their thoughts as they write them. Even better, each critiquer can copy the poem into a new Wavelet, highlight and edit and change things in the poem to show the author "Hey, this would sound better if it read like this." Possible thought: the moderator could lay down ground rules to say, "highlight in green anything you think works really well, highlight in yellow anything that's iffy, highlight in red anything that totally doesn't work."
If real-time text is too slow for you, someone could even drop in a voice-chat conferencing gadget, and then we can all talk in real-time about the poem in question. Not close enough for you? Throw in video chat and bam, I can see your face as you offer scathing critiques of my work.
Let's say someone has to leave early, so they go offline. The Wave continues without them, and next time they log in, they can see everything that's occurred in the Wave since the last time they viewed it, even pulling up the Playback option to quickly catch back up to speed.
It's Still In Beta
Again, Wave is still VERY new and it's still in Beta. Right now, it's a bit buggy and a tad sluggish (incidentally, it runs much faster in Chrome than in Firefox -- surprise, surprise), and many features haven't been enabled yet (such as Read-Only Waves. Eventually, you'll be able to make a Wave and restrict it such that while it may have 10 viewers, only 2 of them are editors). But I do think it's going to turn out to be an incredible tool.
Those of you that already have addresses, I'm going to fire up a Wave in a second and show you some stuff.
[where'd that delete button go??]
Okay, that is very cool. Thanks for the lengthy explanation, GG. I don't see the promotional possibilities, but I collaborate all the time on dialogues by doing instant message role-plays with Shirley Meier (www.eclipsecourt.blogspot.com) and I can see how we could use this to create dialogues that need much less editing than IMs, and for collaborative narrative as well.
How does the invite thing work? Is it set up like so because it's beta or something?
Cancel the invite question -- I just requested an invite. It's on the Google Wave page.
Oooooh how about this for an idea... do a whole book as a Wave? Hmmmmmmmm........
The invite thing is sort of like what they did with Gmail when it first came out. They provided a limited release, which allowed them to deal with bugs and issues as they arose without getting overwhelmed. Within the next few weeks, they'll give out more and mroe invites and eventually take it fully open so anyone can sign up.
I said I'd be a good Google beta tester, reporting on bugs and everything, in the hope that that would make a difference. I want to try this.
You might get an invite directly from Google, or you might get one from someone that's already using the program. It seems every few weeks Google gives a certain number of invites to their users to pass along to those users' friends and family. I managed to get one via Twitter.
I've applied (twice! Shhh! Don't tell anyone. Once for personal, and once for BDP). I'm really excited about it, but like others, I'm still not quite sure what to do with it. I think it'll be one of those things that just presents itself once I get a hold of it.
Suggestion: those who want invites form a queue, and those who get them distribute accordingly... so as not to waste any duplicating them. If this thread is the start of the queue, then it's 1) Sharon, 2) me, and 3) grantcravens so far.
I been waitin' for one, but I figured Char'd pass it to me when she got one.
Yeah, there seems to be a gap of a few weeks from the time you get your invite to the time Google gives you invites to share with others.
::stands in line, hands folded patiently::
Oh and the friend who sent me the invite said it was about a month and a half before he got any invites.
GetWhirled's Invite Giveaway
Caught wind of this on Twitter earlier and thought I'd pass it along to anyone that's interested. @GetWhirled is giving away 30 invites to Google Wave over the next 30 days. Might be a chance to win one for some of you that are interested. Details are here: http://www.googlewavelottery.com/
Please add me to your Google Wave contacts!
Please add me to the Google Wave contacts!
Shirley and I are playing with it... very cool!
One limitation of IMs at least as we do them (Windows Live Messenger) is that you can't italicize or bold or do other formatting... and there's always a "So-and-so said:" caption in front of each IM, which later has to be edited out.
Nor can you fix typos as you go.
This is going to make a big difference for us.
Anyone here who wants a wave invite that doesn't have one yet? I just got a few to pass out. Karen, you seem to have snagged one already. Sharon, grantcravens, irk?
Yeah! Send it on over, please! Do you have my email?
Messaged you, GC.
I have 8 so I can send if anyone wants.
If you've still got any left, I'm interested.
Message me with the email you want it sent to. Same for anyone else who wants one.
OK, so now I have invites, so message me if you want one.
Hey all, I am piers.hollott@googlewave.com! thanks @miladysa!
OK, you guys can send me one so I can experience the rapture that is Google Wave.
Sent ya one.
I'm at zoetewey@...
I sent an invite to you Meilin. My ID is april.c.raines@googlewave.com and I've added you folks to my list! Yay!
I've got seven invites left if folks are still looking for one.
I got it, thanks! I'm there under my nom de reality, by the way.
I'm in as novarys@googlewave.com. I think I have invites, too.
I has Wave as charcotrill at googlewave.com, and I also has invites if anyone needs 'em.
Looks like invites are easy to get now, but in case by some remote chance others have run out, I haz.
SO JEALOUS!
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