HOW DO
I GET
INVITED?
Google Wave is still in beta, and it’s
invite only—just like Gmail was back
in the day and Google Voice still is. But
since it’s all about collaboration, Google
wants Wave users to invite their friends,
so lots of invites are floating around.
Here’s how to score one for yourself.
> IM Status. iChat, Adium, Google Chat,
and their kin usually let you set your own
status, visible to your chat buddies. Let
’em know you want an invite—especially
your Google Chat friends, for obvious
reasons.
> Twitter. Update your status to let
your followers know you’re looking. If
somebody’s willing, direct-message them
your email address so they can send you
the invite.
> Facebook. This is even better than
Twitter since you’re probably better
friends with your Facebook buddies. In
other words, once you’re both on Wave,
you’ll actually use it to communicate with
each other.
> Other Techies. While you’re on
Facebook, become a fan of some tech-related publications (cough, cough,
Mac|Life) and put a wall post on their
fan pages asking for an invite. All the
other fans will see your request, and you
might get hooked up that way. (Our page,
Facebook.com/MacLife has 4,000-plus
fans who might want to help.)
> Spam. Getting desperate? A pithy email
to your most cutting-edge contacts might
shake out a spare invite, if for no other
reason than to get you to stop bugging
everyone.
> Google. Fill out Google’s invite-request
form at services.google.com/fb/forms/
wavesignup/ and then just wait. “We
know it will be frustrating to wait for
your invitation and we appreciate your
patience,” it says. But there it is. (For the
record, one of our editors went this route
just to try it, and it took him about two
weeks to get an invite.)
GOOGLE WAVE
Conference calls via phones used to be a pain to create and follow through with, but with
Google Wave and an add-on, setting up a call is as simple as typing an email. To create a
conference call, you must install the Conference extension from the Extensions Gallery (see
No. 4); it’s a beta gadget powered by Ribbit ( www.ribbit.com).
To start a call, click the R button in the edit bar to insert the Ribbit Conference gadget into
the Wave, then simply add the attendees as recipients of the Wave and have them enter their
phone number into the Ribbit extension by
clicking Add My Number next to their name
and avatar. Once all of the numbers have been
entered, click Start Conference to begin the
call. Ribbit will take a minute or two to call all
the participants and connect everybody, and
then a green Active button will be displayed
beside their names. The entire Wave will also
be notified when a caller hangs up.
Ribbit’s Conference gadget works like a charm.
Google Translate ( translate.google.com) has been around for years, but when it comes
to automatically translating between languages, software can be iffy. Google is presently
working on a bot for Google Wave called Rosie, but it hasn’t yet been released to the public.
Fear not, however, as another developer created a substitute that’s just as good and still uses
Google Translate.
To translate any email, simply add aunt-rosie@appspot.com to the Wave you’re editing, then
type something. A dropdown menu containing languages
is instantly added to the message. Select the language
you’d like, and Aunt Rosie will go to work. Soon enough,
you’ll have a new message in the Wave with the translated
text you requested. In our testing it worked rather well, but
remember that it’s translating to the requested language.
Aunt Rosie will detect
which language it’s written
in automatically. Type in one language, and Aunt Rosie will translate to another language of your choice.
Video chatting from your web browser has been around
for a while, and it’s even available in Gmail. With a free
extension, Google Wave can video-chat just as well as
Gmail can. Start by installing the Video Chat Experience
extension from the Extensions Gallery (see No. 4).
Next, create a Wave as you would normally, adding the
newly installed extension to the Wave. When you enable
this, you can add up to six people inside of a chat “round.”
To join that chat, simply select a virtual seat around the
table, and the chat begins. In addition to video chatting, you can also text chat using the input
field above the video. The textual chat will display over top of the video while chatting. The video
chat service and extension is provided by 6-rounds.com. <<
