Web Reservations International has launched the first collaborative travel booking on Google Wave.

Hostel WithMe’ application launched on Google Wave.

World’s first real-time collaborative accommodation booking tool.

Detailed information, photos as well as live availability of 24,000 hostels and other budget accommodation from Hostelworld.com

Discuss and vote on each hostel with everyone who’s going. Columbus Internet, the company behind the trip-planning applicationTravel WithMe, and Hostelworld.com, the world’s leading provider of online reservations to the budget, independent and youth travel market today announced the launch of Hostel WithMe, the world’s first real-time collaborative accommodation booking application.

Hostel WithMe utilizes Hostelworld.com‘s vast inventory of properties in 180 countries, which each include detailed descriptions of the facilities and high-quality photos. Live availability and pricing information is available on all the accommodation presented and a link is provided to allow secure credit-card booking. Google Maps and Google Streetview are also integrated so users can check out the location and area surrounding their accommodation.

When several people are using Hostel WithMe simultaneously, and one of them views an accommodation, this is visible to all the others in real-time. If the accommodation is potentially suitable, it can be added to a shortlist of proposals, which each person can comment or vote on.

Hostel WithMe is also an ideal tool for organizing travel for a group. The organizer can identify appropriate accommodation in advance, and then submit a list of proposed accommodations to the group for commenting and voting. For the first time, the 89 percent of people who don’t travel alone (only 11 percent do) can use the internet to conveniently make joint decisions on their accommodation.

Hostel With Me is provided as a gadget within Google Wave. Google Wave account holders can find Hostel WithMe in the Google Wave Extensions Gallery or go to www.goo.gl/GPFo.

Santina Doherty, VP of commercial development at Hostelworld.com, commented: “As market leaders in the budget accommodation space, Hostelworld.com is committed to innovation and the use of best-of-breed technology, which is why we’re excited to be partnering with pioneering products like the Hostel WithMe app. By allowing our product to be available through the app on Google Wave, a whole new audience can now enjoy the value and choice that is featured on Hostelworld.com.”

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Lately the gadgets that have been released for Google Wave have been increasing in quality. If you recall, not very long ago the folks over at Mastering Wave wrote a post titled “Google Wave Gadgets Lack Quality“, which questioned the quality of many of the extensions being made. At the time, he was right. There was a real lack of quality in what was being offered. But, I think over the last little while we have seen the quality of these extensions increase dramatically.

Firstly, I would draw you attention to a gadget I wrote a post about a few weeks ago called MindWave.

The post was titled MindWave: My Favourite Google Wave Extension Ever! It was and still is as far as I’m concerned. I have used it now in two different projects and although it is still limited it has one really big feature….it works with other stand-alone applications I have on my desktop. Thus, I can work on it as I wish a then upload to share, and vis-versa. Priceless! Can’t wait for the improvements that they are working on with this gadget.

See the YouTube video explaining MindWave:

Next, a gadget that was made by the people at Quaker Oats called Grocery List. See the screen shot below:

Their description of the Gadget is one that can be “used for your grocery list needs – share with your family, sort the list automatically, print and take it to the store, and more!”

Check out the Live Demo and then download and install the Gadget XML and give it a try!

The last gadget on my list that I want to draw your attention to is  called yourBrainStormer, which is described as:

This gadget allows users to share ideas across more efficiently during brainstorming session. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. Hint boxes will be displayed to guide new users on how to use this gadget. User will be able to view the description on each node by clicking once on the node. Users can choose to print the data. Animation Changes in the gadget will be accompanied with a simple animation.

Here is a screenshot of the gadget:

What does it do?

This gadget allows users to share ideas across more efficiently during brainstorming session.

What features does it have?

• Simple UI The interface is intuitive and easy to use. Hints boxes will be displayed to guide new users on how to use this gadget.
• Useful Tooltips User will be able to view the description on each node by clicking once on the node.
• Print Outline Users can choose to print the data.
• Tracking Changes This gadget can record down changes made on the data in the gadget
• Animation Changes in the gadget will be accompanied with a simple animation.

What’s next?

• Voting Features!
• Drag and Drop Nodes
• Advance Display Settings such as user defined number of node display per page

Check out the Live Demo and then download and install the Gadget XML and give it a try!

I think that once you use these gadgets you will find them to be a big leap in quality from many of the extensions that have been built. I am quite convinced you will be impressed with the quality being offered by these developers. I hope this will be a taste of what we can come to expect for future developments.

Make sure you come back to let us know what you thought of these gadgets. We love to hear your thoughts and read your comments.

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Not sure how many folks have actually already seen and have been using the Google Wave Templates that were released at the beginning of Feb, but due to the low number of users to that particular Wave (actually, I mean the discussion Wave which has a whole bunch of useful user submitted templates), I though I write something here to try and draw some more attention to it.

After getting lots of feedback on Google Wave use case the wave.stories@googlewave.com address from the Google Wave team wrote the following Google Wave Templates Wave:

Thanks for all of your use-case stories.

It’s great to hear how people are really using Google Wave. We know sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to do with waves and that there are some things you do over and over.

So, we’re testing out a series of templates and would love your feedback, or you can even share your own.

These templates are public, read-only so to use them, you will hit ‘Copy to new wave’

General

• Plan an event
• Discussion with voting

Small group or business

• Meeting Agenda and Notes
• Team status updates
• [Coming soon] Project wiki

Document-type

• Resume: Formatted resume
• Research paper: Research report

Education [Coming soon]

• Study group session
• Lesson plan

To share your own templates

• Add the tag “wavetemplate”
• Add wave.stories@googlewave.com to your template wave.
• Add public@a.gwave.com and set it to “read-only” access
• Include an explanation or example for how you have used your template

Thanks and Happy Waving!

As I mentioned above there is also a Discuss Google Wave Templates Wave that has a lot of user developed templates, which I think you will also find very useful. The list thus far is:

New! User-submitted templates:

• Trip Planning Template
• Daily Log Discussions Template
• Meeting Template
• Pizza Ordering Template
• Software/Server Project Wave Template
• Wave Blog Template
• Lesson [Title Here]
• [Template] Organicing the waves of our group
• [template] example1 vs.
• [Template] <Subject> – <date>
• Meeting Agenda Template by Ernest Rando’s Google Wave Profile

One of the more interesting discussion in this Wave was the comment by wave.stories@googlewave.com that the Google Wave team’s long term development see these templates being added as extension…vice this copy and paste way currently being used. I think that is a great idea. Be nice if you had a little box pop-up when you start a new Wave asking if you want a “blank document” or the different template choices…similar to the way we have become used to with our document applications.

A useful tip that was given by Alan Campos was to organizer your templates by creating a separate folder for them. He provided this screenshot (click to enlarge):

So go check them out. Moreover, vote on them in the Waves and let Google know how useful you found them.

Have you been using these templates? Do you like them? Got any idea for a template? Share below in comments and share on the Waves linked above.

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The following is taken from a Wave titled iGoogle Gadgets That Work Inside Wave that was started by Russell Trip, which is basically what you see below – a list of iGoogle Gadgets and how well they work inside Google Wave. Russell also started another wave that is just for discussing iGoogle Gadgets in Google Wave called Discuss: iGoogle Gadgets That Work In Wave.

I highlight these two posts to draw attention to the Waves for folks inside Google Wave that have not found this and too also provide info to folks that do not have a Wave account but are hungry for every piece of info they can get. If you don’t have an invite you would not be aware about these iGoogle Gadgets.

For those that are not familiar with iGoogle Gadgets, they are the gadgets that are available for your Google personalized page.

Status colour tags take the following format:

Working = works correctly in Wave

Limited = partially working or works with limitations inside Wave

Non-Working = does not work inside Wave

Fun & Games

Working Fish: http://fishgadget.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fish.xml – adds swimming animated fish

Working Turtle: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/112581010116074801021/turtle.xml — adds animated turtle

Working Verse of the Day: http://www.believer.com/outreach/versetoday.xml – provides daily bible verse and links to bible study and other versions

Working Daily Horoscope: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/horoscope.xml

Limited Eyes: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/eyes.xml — adds Google eyes in, but they don’t follow your cursor

Working Yo Momma Joke of the Day: http://gwidgets.com/lig/gpa/gquotes/yo-mama-jokes.xml

Working Trio:http://www.labpixies.com/campaigns/trio/trio.xml – a simple, fun and extremely addictive game! Create a sequence of three or more balls of the same color to make them disappear. Remove as many Trios as you can to improve your score. Trios can be formed horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Use your arrows to arrange the color sequence and the location of the Trio.

Working Aquarium: http://www.geocities.com/delabs/gadgets/aquarium/index.xml – Animated Aquarium Gadget with Moving Fishes and Plants.

Working Hulu Player Widget: http://widgets.clearspring.com/cscallback/gallery/485947a33091a9f5/googlegallery.xml — find and play video from Hulu directly inside widget/blip (For US Only)

Non-Working Scrabble: http://webmayhem.eamobile.com/mayhem/scrabble/igoogle/gadget.xml — Returns message “This gadget cannot access the information it needs so that you can share or collaborate with friends. Please adjust the gadget’s settings to enable access.

Working Frogger: http://www.shockinglyfun.com/froggerGGadget.xml — Play classic Frogger game

Working GoComics from Universal Uclick: http://images.gocomics.com/images/google/gc.xml — View comic strips.

Communication

Non-Working Google Talk: http://www.google.com/ig/googletalk/googletalk.xml – official Google Talk gadget returns a 404 Not Found error

! Limited Google Talk: http://widgets.tropicalpcsolutions.com/widgets/google-talk/google-talk.xml – adds gadget, pops Google Talk into external window, though – so not really “in” the wave.

Working Google Talk/Orkut Chat: http://opensocialtadka.googlepages.com/googleTalkopensocial.xml – Chat with all your Google Talk friends across all opensocial networks – this one actually works inside the blip on your wave

Non-Working Gmail: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/builtin_gmail.xml — error returned: “this is a built-in module, so the UserPrefs and Content are ignored.”

Limited Gmail: http://william.mcsweeney.googlepages.com/gmail.xml — this one just shows Loading… for me constantly, would love to hear reports if others have gotten this to work.

Working Gmail: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/gmail.xml — puts your gmail inside a wave

Non-Working from Germany, Australia, The Netherlands, France…

Working Gmail using iFrame: https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:gmail,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B-yEkrKoCG.5

Limited Official Wikipedia Gadget: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/wikipedia.xml – adds gadget and form appears functional, but clicking on “Go” button takes me to a non-existent link

Working ToDo: http://www.labpixies.com/campaigns/todo/todo.xml — add To-Do list

! Working AllEmail (multi):

http://tejash.p.shah.googlepages.com/allemail.xml

Access GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, Facebook, Flickr & a plethera of other services

Non-Working Blogger Post Gadget

http://amonat.googlepages.com/post_dev.xml

The gadget loads but Submit button is grayed out.

Limited Google voice Gadget

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/103004048084238050439/GoogleVoice.xml

This gadget works but, part of it is cut off.

Social

Limited All For Good: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/all_for_good.xml — find volunteer opportunities in your area, share them with your friends. Seems to work, but width of the gadget when it’s embedded makes it difficult/impossible to really use. Ex. “Set location” pops up entry field, but it is too far right and cut off in the gadget.

! Working TwitterGadget: http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget.xml — adds complete Twitter client inside wave

Limited Facebook for iGoogle: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/facebook.xml — goes through all Facebook Connect settings OK, but then reports “Unable to get your Facebook feed, trying again in a minute.”

Limited Facebook with Full Screen: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/facebook.xml — adds gadget, but then shows “link appears to be broken” message inside gadget

Limited Facebook: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml — this one seems to work, but the width of the frame where Facebook is placed makes its usability somewhat limited

! Working Facebook: http://spongestuff.googlepages.com/fbook.xml

Tools

Non-Working Google Calendar: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/calendar3.xml — official Google Calendar gadget – for me, at least, it only adds a blank frame to the blip (in Chrome) – would love to hear if someone else gets this to work.

! Working Easy cool calendar: http://efattal.fr/google/calendar/ http://kissandtellphoto.byethost17.com/gcal.xml – Calendar app, have to provide Google credentials to link it to Google Calendar

Working To Do List: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/todo.xml – Create multiple to do lists in one location and share them with your friends.

! Working Evernote: http://renecum.com/gadgets/evernote/evernote.xml

– Store notes online, works just like the Evernote mobile web site

Working Countdown timer: http://www.opel-europe.com/agila2008/gadgets/Countdown/countdown.xml – Create a (or many) countdown(s) to a specific date(s) and time(s). There were many of this style that “worked”, yet this one worked the best/with the least hassle.

Working gWoWDatabase: http://igoogle.gryphonllc.com/gwow/gwowdatabase.xml — Search warcraft database sites.

Non-Working Google Reader: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/reader.xml - Aggregate your RSS feed subscriptions.

Working Snow Report: http://igoogle.gryphonllc.com/gwow/gwowdatabase.xml – See Snow Reports and maps for ski resorts.

Working Sticky Notes:

http://www.google.com/ig/modules/sticky.xml – I don’t see at all how this can enhance Google Wave, but I can tell it works.

Working Programme TV:

http://www.programme.tv/webmaster/google/tv.xml – Display French TV programs.

Working National Geographic Photo of the Day:

http://nationalgeographicphoto.com/nationalgadget.xml – Displays National Geographic’s picture of the Day

Working Prix du carburant:

http://www.efattal.fr/google/carburant/ – French gaz prices comparison tool

Limited World Clocks:

http://www.ljmsite.com/google/gadgets/worldclocks.xml – Displays world clocks. Cannot be configured properly in Wave it seems.

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I have received a number of e-mails about where do you find the robots, gadgets and extensions for Google Wave.

So, this post is an attempt answer a lot of those e-mails ahead of time:

The first is the Google \/\/ave Extensions List Page

This list has all the gadgets, robots and extensions currently available to be used with Google Wave. Getting your way through this list will certainly keep you occupied for the next little while and will be a whole lot of fun also. It is important to give these a try. Just using Google Wave as a messenger is only scratching the surface, it’s not until you start using all these different gadgets and robots then you start to feel the power and possibilities.

The next few is the Cheat Sheets that I published earlier. Much of the information (well all of the information) comes from the developer sandbox and there may be one or two pieces of info that is out-dated. I have not updated this for the preview and apologize, but for the vast majority of information 99% it is all applicable. Thus, you will still find these very helpful.

Cheat Sheet

Hints & Tips

FAQs

Also, inside Google Wave there are some important “Waves” you should search for inside Google Wave that will help and provide some great info:

Inbox Management and Organising Folders

Beginners Guide to Google Wave

Wave Guide: Waves Greatest Hits – (This Wave is a must, it has a link to every helpful discussion in Google)

Let me know of any other resources you think should be added to this list. I will be glad to update.

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AmazonBot is a neat little robot/gadget made by “with Waves“, they describe  it as such:

AmazonBot is a robot and gadget – which enables social product research and shopping on Amazon.com. Wave participants can share products & reviews with contacts in real-time thanks to automatic queries by the AmazonBot against conversation keywords. The AmazonBot gadget can detect products and return inline product links or a custom full product browser.

Check out the video to see how AmazonBot works:

AmazonBot by WithWaves from Derek Punsalan on Vimeo.

On their site they give instructions on how to install the robot & gadget, how to search and how to install just the gadget. Make sure you visit their webpage at “with Waves“.

This is a really great little robot that shows just how easy it will be to monetize Google Wave. Imagine every website with their own robot. You are surfing along find a store or service that you interested. You install the robot and open up the wave to your fellow business partners and start discussing what you want. Imagine what can be done with wedding lists, Xmas lists, etc, etc.

This very small robot again shows what is possible. Great work guys! Keep it up.

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Ribbit is a new robot for Google Wave that is similar to TwilioBot. But not exactly. Ribbit is is web-based telephone service. How is this different than VoIP? Well you can actually imbed Ribbit into you web-page, into your presentation, into your applications. It is very cool and I recommend visiting their developer web-site and read through the complete description of what Ribbit is capable of.

Digitalbeat did a very good article on Ribbit explaining what it is capable of doing. The highlights of the article was that Ridget allows:

• Voice calls
• Phone conferencing
• Text messaging, and
• Voicemail

But the best example of how Ribbet works is this YouTube video:

This robot was selected by Google to be available in the Beta release, 1 Oct 09. So new users should give it a try and see how they like it. I imagine some of the businesses selected for invites will be trailing this robot in the Beta.

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The below information and YouTube video is directly from the developer’s Wave:

This is an example of CodeBot, a code formatting robot. Just include the opening tag, type or paste your code and then end with the < /c> closing tag.

Currently you can’t edit the output, you have to write the code first, then close the tag. But i’ll soon make it so that when you write <c> at the beginning and <c> at the end it will jump to edit mode but without losing the tags. That way, you’ll be able to finish everything by changing the second <c> into < /c>.

This is a very cool Robot that has great potential! I think developers will love this type of collaborative Robot to code with. What are your thoughts, leave a comment after you see this video. The developers Google code-source page is here.

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As described at the Joomla Homepage:

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

The plugin that was created for Google Wave allows you to embed a wave, as an article, into your website. You can go to the Joomla Content Plugin demo-site and get both information on using the plugin and see a demo of the plugin in action. Of course you will need a sandbox account to see the wave embedded.

One of the very obvious examples of this embed in Joomla would be to act as an alternative comments solution. However, I think there are more insightful and clever ways that this could be better used. Leave a comment with your idea.

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For those that are unfamiliar with Posterous, it is a extremely simple to use blog creation site. You send them the content you want in the blog via e-mail. You can attach what you want: photos, videos, mp3′s etc. The Posterous engine then goes and creates a blog page for you with your e-mail that you send as the current blog entry. You can then adjust settings, look etc as you wish.

The Posterous robot for Google Wave allows you to simply add the Posterous domain address to your wave. Create your post. Click done and it goes off to Posterous and creates your blog page and entry.

The Posterous webpage describes it as such:

What is Posterous-Robot?

Posterous-Robot is first a Google Wave robot. It is built by lookon with Google Wave Python Library and Posterous API. The posterous bot helps you to post blog to posterous.com in Google Wave.

How to use Posterous-Robot

It’s easy to use Poterous-Robot in Google Wave. You just need to add posterous-robot@appspot to your contact and start a new wave with the robot. After logining to Posterous, you can post blog to Posterous by editing the title and body of the foot wavelet.

A detailed guide: How to write a blog using Google Wave Robot for Posterous.

The how to guide comes complete with photos and shows just how simple using this robot is.

You can get the source code for the robot here.

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I have to say, this Robot really impressed me. Not so much by what it does, but the promise of what these types of robots could do.

Igor as explained on the Igor Google Source Code page is:

A proof of concept Google Wave robot that helps people manage the process of adding references to an academic article.

The minimum you’ll need to do to get started is to edit the appengine-web.xml file and put your own app engine application name inside the “application” element.

Note that I’m not normally a Java developer and this really is just a proof of concept. The code lacks tests and is poorly organized.

OTOH sometimes things that seem messy and complicated are that way for a reason. Usually the reason is that Google Wave is still a developer preview and bits of the Java API don’t work yet or need changing (notably getting the IDs of newly created blips and communicating with gadgets).

The debugging log is turned on in the code. I recommend that you look at what’s actually being passed between the Wave server and App Engine in the wire protocol JSON – right now it’s the best way to work out what is and isn’t supported by the Wave API! If it isn’t in the JSON you can’t access it in the robot.

Functions that use regular expressions to modify the text are the most obviously overly complicated pieces of code – patterns have to be matched one at a time because otherwise the String that you’re finding matches on and the internal representation of the contents of the Wave (the TextView) get out of sync.

Below a video of Igor in action (very impressive):

Igor is currently configured to grab references from PubMed, Connotea and CiteUlike. Click on there links to learn more about them.

What is great about this Robot is the way it really does highlight the power that Google Wave Robots could harness. Putting together any kind of technical or research paper just got so much easier.

Imagine being linked to a chemistry reference robot that gives you C2H6O when you type in the word ethanol. Or a quotation robot that gives you “To be or note to be” when you type in “quote hamlet suicide”, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. Basically Google Wave robots could give you very exact information to choose from based on very vague information. Thus, not only free up more time via collaboration but it also shows promise in its ability to drastically cut down on research time.

I’m sure that you can think of many other applications for these types of robots, please share below in comments.

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