Google Wave preview by ChiGTUG

fyi: ChiGTUG is Chicago Google Technology User Group.

I received al lot of questions on Google Wave over the Twitter, here is the scoop....

We have seen Google Wave presentation last summer at Google IO in San Francisco, since then our team was toying with creating the robots in the sandbox account Google kindly provided.


Recently, my whole team finally got their Wave accounts and since we are distributed between Milwaukee, Chicago and suburbs we tried to use it instead of SKYPE we normally use.


Observations we see as necessary:

• when you start a new wave you should be an admin and be able to assign admins
• only admins should be able to delete posts of others
• after collaborating on a (work) topic it should be possible to export it to (PDF) file
• you should be able to apply various formatting styles to your wave to make it look like: chat, documentation, meeting notes, etc.
• wave needs a desktop client like iChat, or Skype
• wave needs mobile clients: iPhone, Android
• Wave needs to become a OpenSocial gadget so we can plug it into Blogger
• Wave need voice and video chatting
• Wave need screen sharing like iChat, or Skype does

I am sure a lot of these issues will be addressed shortly. We cannot wait for Wave to become mainstream application for collaboration. 

Google Wave preview by ChiGTUG

fyi: ChiGTUG is Chicago Google Technology User Group.

I received al lot of questions on Google Wave over the Twitter, here is the scoop....

We have seen Google Wave presentation last summer at Google IO in San Francisco, since then our team was toying with creating the robots in the sandbox account Google kindly provided.


Recently, my whole team finally got their Wave accounts and since we are distributed between Milwaukee, Chicago and suburbs we tried to use it instead of SKYPE we normally use.


Observations we see as necessary:

• when you start a new wave you should be an admin and be able to assign admins
• only admins should be able to delete posts of others
• after collaborating on a (work) topic it should be possible to export it to (PDF) file
• you should be able to apply various formatting styles to your wave to make it look like: chat, documentation, meeting notes, etc.
• wave needs a desktop client like iChat, or Skype
• wave needs mobile clients: iPhone, Android
• Wave needs to become a OpenSocial gadget so we can plug it into Blogger
• Wave need voice and video chatting
• Wave need screen sharing like iChat, or Skype does

I am sure a lot of these issues will be addressed shortly. We cannot wait for Wave to become mainstream application for collaboration. 

Wave extensions preview is now available

Check out some of the extensions that were developed during Google Wave developer preview period:

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/extensions.html

Wave extensions preview is now available

Check out some of the extensions that were developed during Google Wave developer preview period:

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/extensions.html

Chicago Google Technology Conference #3

Make sure you REGISTER for September 17, 2009!

Chicago Google Technology Conference #3

Make sure you REGISTER for September 17, 2009!

Google Wave TextView styling with annotations

TextView textView = robotBlip.getDocument();

textView.append("Text awaiting some wave styling ");

textView.setAnnotation(new Range(2, 100), "style/fontWeight", "bold");

While developing a bot for Google Wave, I found out that styles are set using setAnnotations method which take a range of indices for the characters to be styles. Also this method takes a string for the style function name, and the actual string value. This is a wasteful operation since the server has to send the events "setAnnotation" back to the bot without consideration of whether or not the annotation already exists. This will cause unnecessary network traffic and makes bots more prone to loop errors.

Work around by:

 private void maybeAnnotate(TextView doc, Range range, String name,
        String value) {
      // If this annotation is already present, give up now.  Note that
      // we allow the existing annotation to be bigger than the one we're
      // creating, because in that case, setting the new annotation won't
      // do anything useful.
      for (Annotation annotation : doc.getAnnotations(range, name)) {
        if (annotation.getValue().equals(value) &&
            annotation.getRange().getStart() <= range.getStart() &&
            range.getEnd() <= annotation.getRange().getEnd())
          return;
      }
      doc.setAnnotation(range, name, value);
    }

Google Wave API:

http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api/browse_thread/thread/eb5c7c0de319c73e/41f67b9fce71445b?show_docid=41f67b9fce71445b&fwc=1

http://code.google.com/p/google-wave-resources/issues/detail?id=192

Google Wave TextView styling with annotations

TextView textView = robotBlip.getDocument();

textView.append("Text awaiting some wave styling ");

textView.setAnnotation(new Range(2, 100), "style/fontWeight", "bold");

While developing a bot for Google Wave, I found out that styles are set using setAnnotations method which take a range of indices for the characters to be styles. Also this method takes a string for the style function name, and the actual string value. This is a wasteful operation since the server has to send the events "setAnnotation" back to the bot without consideration of whether or not the annotation already exists. This will cause unnecessary network traffic and makes bots more prone to loop errors.

Work around by:

 private void maybeAnnotate(TextView doc, Range range, String name,
        String value) {
      // If this annotation is already present, give up now.  Note that
      // we allow the existing annotation to be bigger than the one we're
      // creating, because in that case, setting the new annotation won't
      // do anything useful.
      for (Annotation annotation : doc.getAnnotations(range, name)) {
        if (annotation.getValue().equals(value) &&
            annotation.getRange().getStart() <= range.getStart() &&
            range.getEnd() <= annotation.getRange().getEnd())
          return;
      }
      doc.setAnnotation(range, name, value);
    }

Google Wave API:

http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api/browse_thread/thread/eb5c7c0de319c73e/41f67b9fce71445b?show_docid=41f67b9fce71445b&fwc=1

http://code.google.com/p/google-wave-resources/issues/detail?id=192

Google Wave: capabilities.xml version

As I was developing my first robot on Google Wave, I encountered a bug where my robot's capabilities are not recognized when I deployed it to Google App Engine. The reason for this bug is due to the fact that the robot's capabilities are cached on the robot proxy server. If you do not update the version in capabilities.xml, the robot will use the cached information and you on the other hand will be wondering why my robot ain't working properly!

The best way to think of the version tag in capabilities.xml, is to use it as a tool to mark the milestones in your robot's life cycle. Therefore version 1 for instance will correspond to hello world, and version 2 will correspond to a new capability that you may add such as name="document_changed", etc. Also, it is a good idea to keep the version in capabilities.xml same as version number in appengine-web.xml just to make things simple, though this is not required. Note that Google App Engine will allow you to deploy a single app 12 versions only, so you will have to delete the unneeded versions there.

Google Wave: capabilities.xml version

As I was developing my first robot on Google Wave, I encountered a bug where my robot's capabilities are not recognized when I deployed it to Google App Engine. The reason for this bug is due to the fact that the robot's capabilities are cached on the robot proxy server. If you do not update the version in capabilities.xml, the robot will use the cached information and you on the other hand will be wondering why my robot ain't working properly!

The best way to think of the version tag in capabilities.xml, is to use it as a tool to mark the milestones in your robot's life cycle. Therefore version 1 for instance will correspond to hello world, and version 2 will correspond to a new capability that you may add such as name="document_changed", etc. Also, it is a good idea to keep the version in capabilities.xml same as version number in appengine-web.xml just to make things simple, though this is not required. Note that Google App Engine will allow you to deploy a single app 12 versions only, so you will have to delete the unneeded versions there.

Google Wave beyond the sandbox

On September 30, 2009 Google is planning to make the Google Wave available beyond the current developer's sandbox to additional 100,000 users.

In the meanwhile, if you want to see Google Wave in action, come to the Chicago Google Technology User Group conference:

http://chicago-gtug.eventbrite.com/

Stay tuned:

http://wave.google.com/

Google Wave beyond the sandbox

On September 30, 2009, Google is planning to make the Google Wave available beyond the current developer's sandbox to additional 100,000 users.


In the meanwhile, if you want to see Google Wave in action, come to the Chicago Google Technology User Group conference:

http://chicago-gtug.eventbrite.com/

Stay tuned:

http://wave.google.com/

Google Technology (to jump-start your next big idea)

Agenda:


5:15 PM - Uki D. Lucas (Chicago-GTUG.com):
- Introduction

5:30 PM - Gregory Kick (Google.com)
- GData, Guice, Google collections

5:45 PM - Jordan Beck (Revere Group)
- hosting on Google Code
- GWT and Google AppEngine
- Photo Carousel example Widget

6:05 PM - David Wolverton (Revere Group)
- Facebook for Google Web Toolkit

6:30 PM - Trevor Skaife (Revere Group)
- Maven2 dependencies with Google Web Toolkit

6:45 PM - David Wolverton (Revere Group)
- OpenSocial
- Google Friend Connect for Google Web Toolkit

7:00 PM - David Lo (Revere Group)
- Building mobile applications with Android

7:15 PM - Phil Wodarczyk (Revere Group)
- Building application with iPhone (cool bonus presentation)

7:30 PM - 8:00 PM
- Questions and Answers

------------------------------------------------

Purpose of these meetings:


We would like if after this meeting you go home and by Sunday night had a little social application deployed.

- think tank
- open-source project support
- established enterprise education
- new idea/start-up incubator

A new generation of websites using social networking:






angel investments:
http://www.prosper.com/


Do not leave tonight without stopping by and saying hello, leave your business card!


Future:
- Google Wave
- Android in-depth
- Google Maps for GWT
- Friend Connect in depth

Google Wave

http://www.youtube.com/google

Google Wave

http://www.youtube.com/google

Google IO - major trends: Google Wave, GWT, HTML5

The conference was packed with a lot of classes presented in parallel  so I was not able to attend most of them, but from my own perspective that is what I learned (more on each topic in separate articles).

1) Google Wave will change the way we do things on the Web

2) Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is the right technology of the future, I am glad we did not go with Flex

3) Google Friend Connect is a must for any socially engaged website

4) HTML 5 will rock the Internet;  "Web is the platform" not the particular mobile OS

5) Google AppEngine will dramatically change how development of the new apps happens

6) Android operating system for mobile phones has a bright future, even if it does not match iPhone

Click here for more information:

http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/

Google IO - major trends: Google Wave, GWT, HTML5

The conference was packed with a lot of classes presented in parallel  so I was not able to attend most of them, but from my own perspective that is what I learned (more on each topic in separate articles).

1) Google Wave will change the way we do things on the Web

2) Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is the right technology of the future, I am glad we did not go with Flex

3) Google Friend Connect is a must for any socially engaged website

4) HTML 5 will rock the Internet;  "Web is the platform" not the particular mobile OS

5) Google AppEngine will dramatically change how development of the new apps happens

6) Android operating system for mobile phones has a bright future, even if it does not match iPhone

Click here for more information:

http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/

Google Wave Preview

http://wave.google.com/