Ibrahim Abdel Fattah Mohamed Personal bLOG

7 Google Wave Extensions I use

PS: There is a double Bonus! gift at the end of the post, so keep reading it till the end

After I received my Google Wave account, I started exploring the service and I’m really impressed of how those guys got this thing to life and started to think of how this service might change the web and online communication specially. I dug around and knew that there are even extension for this great service and I thought of sharing you with some extensions I use. It will be also great if you got one extension that is not listed here, to share us with it so we can discuss them.

Let’s first define what is a wave extension:

Wave extensions are a way to augment the functionality of waves and the wave client. Currently, the Wave API supports the following extensions:

• Robots: 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. For more information, see the Robots API Overview and Developer Guide.

• Gadgets: Gadget extensions provide a shared program which runs within the wave, and to which all participants have access. For more information, see the Wave gadgets Developer Guide.

Google Wave also supports Extension Installers, which bundle up Backend elements (robots and gadgets) and Frontend UI elements into an integrated package. Users may install extensions directly within the Wave client using an extension installer. Because these installers include UI elements, their presentation is ultimately implemented by the Wave client; Wave clients, in turn, must understand the extension installer specification (known as a manifest ).

Note: currently, the Google Wave client is the only supported client, and therefore the only implementor of extension installers, but third-party clients should also support extension installers in their own way, once they are built.

For more about the difference between those two types, check this page. I have been trying some of those extensions, and here is a list of what I really love to use:

1. Notify, Type: Google Wave Bot


Notify Google Wave Bot

Because it’s just starting to spread, we are still depending on our email (gmail) accounts. Notify is a Google Wave Email Notifications it’s a wave robot that sends an email to the participants of a wave whenever the wave is updated. Sends an email to all participants when a PARTICIPANTS_ADDED (adding contacts), BLIP_SUBMITTED (submitting a comment) or BLIP_DELETED (delete a comment) event is fired.

Robot Address: wave-email-notifications@appspot.com

2. Tweety Wave, Type: Google Wave Bot


Tweety Wave, Google Wave Bot

Twitter (and micro blogging) is one of the most successful web 2.0 social services that have ever introduced to web after blogging. So, Google didn’t forget integrating between wave and this great service. Tweety Wave tweets wave blips to twitter, and retrieves tweets from it.

Robot Address: tweety-wave@appspot.com

3. Emoticony, Type: Google Wave Bot


Emoticony, Google Wave Bot

Plain text sometimes looks ugly and emotionless, so Emoticony is here for you. Emoticony is a robot for Google Wave which replaces text representations of emoticons with the relevant image. With a large number of Emoticons included, ~50 and increasing with themed emoticons for specific events like Halloween.

Robot Address: emoticonbot@appspot.com

4. Cody, Type: Google Wave Bot


Cody, Google Wave Bot

Cody is a syntax highlighter for Google Wave that will read submitted blips for any code and color the code based on the language that it either detects or the language you specify. There is another bot called Syntaxy, but I love Cody because it can highlight almost any language and it was first tested with php too.

Robot Address: codeditor@appspot.com

5. Rssybot, Type: Google Wave Bot

Rssybot lets your watch RSS feeds from Google Wave. Just add it to a wave, enter the link to the RSS feed you want to subscribe to and wait for new posts to appear in your inbox as unread blips. For more information, visit this page.

Robot Address: rssybot@appspot.com

6. Translabot, Type: Google Wave Bot


Translabot, Google Wave Bot

Translates a Wave to a selected language. A lot of languages included, very handy when dealing with a Spanish client, ha?

Robot Address: translabot@appspot.com

7. tic-tak-toe, some fun at the end., Type: Google Wave Gadget


tic-tak-toe, Google Wave Gadget

Yes, there is a place here for fun, invite a friend and start the mighty tic-tak-toe. A pencil-and-paper game for two players, O and X, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid

Gadget XML

Bonus 1

As I stated at the beginning of this post, there is a bonus for you all, by chance I found this cool beta Firefox plugin, it’s called Google Wave Notifier for Firefox, it’s really handy when you don’t check you Google Wave account regularly, so give it a try.

Bonus 2:

I have two wave invitations for the randomly chosen two commenters if they don’t have a wave account.

Thanks Google, they increased my number of Wave invitations, so now there is more 5 invitations to go, to get one:

Your should RT about this post too, so a comment and a ReTweet using the twitter button in the listed social icons beneath

Update 1: Eslam Diaa’ was the first who got the invitation.

..or you may would like to check other posts that can be useful..

1. Ever knew that Chrome has Extensions?
2. The new Wave
3. Google Chrome
4. Real-time Tweets in Google Search Results
5. Google Code Jam ’09, My Experience