A blog site that I read all the time called Where Does All My Money Go.com is giving away a free iPad. Here is his rules for entry into the contest:

I’m going to be giving away an iPad to a lucky reader. Specifically, a 16GB WiFi iPad. The good news is that you can earn up to 15 entries into this contest.

Why Am I Giving Away an iPad?

Because my readers are awesome. I also run ads on this blog which generate income and I’m a big time socialist (not really), so I’ve decided to re-invest in order to grow the readership. As you’ll see, some of the ways to earn extra entries involve spreading the word which hopefully will translate into more traffic, more ad revenue and more prizes down the road. But mostly because my readers are awesome.

What’s an iPad?

Seriously?

Well, you can read some of my musings on it. I’ve been using one for over a month now and it’s fantastic. Click on the following links to read what I’ve said about the iPad.

My new iPhone Macro

My iPad Review

How Do I Enter Already?

You can earn up to 15 entries in the following ways:

1. Earn 1 entry: Leave a comment on this contest post. Nothing in poor taste, and no using vulgarities (as per usual).
2. Earn 2 more entries: Be subscribed (and validated) to email updates from WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com. If you are already subscribed, you get the 2 entries automatically. “Validated” means that your subscription is active and you are receiving the emails. Click here to subscribe to the email updates if you aren’t already and get your two entries.
3. Earn 1 more entry: Follow me on Twitter. Go to my twitter profile and then make sure to “follow PreetBanerjee”. If you already follow me on twitter, you already get the 1 entry. Click here to get to my twitter page, and then make sure to follow me.
4. Earn 4 more entries: Tweet about the contest. Each tweet earns you 2 entries, and you can tweet the contest twice, but not within a 24 hour period. Also, your tweet MUST include “@preetbanerjee”, a link to this post, and some indication about there being a contest to give away an iPad (so people will be more inclined to click on the link!). Here, I’ll make it easy: click here to tweet about the contest.
5. Earn 2 more entries: “Like” Preet Banerjee on Facebook. This fan page doesn’t include the blog updates, but does include other updates (like about the TV show in development and upcoming media appearances). Click here to go to the fan page and then click on the “like” button to get your 2 entries.
6. Earn 5 more entries: If you have your own blog that has more than 25 posts on it, link to this contest post and you can earn 5 more entries.

Contest Rules

• Contest open to residents of Canada and the USA only.
• Entries must be earned or submitted before 5:00pm EST on Monday May 31st, 2010.
• Winner will be announced on June 1st, 2010.
• Winner must answer a skill testing question.
• For comment entries, you must submit a valid email address in the comment form. Don’t worry, it will not be visible to anyone but myself and it will never be shared or sold to anyone either.
• I reserve the right to delete or disqualify any entries for any reasonable grounds. For example, profanity will result in disqualification. Email addresses created specifically for entering contests will not be allowed and will be disqualified.
• Winner will be contacted using the email address provided or by direct tweet, or by any other reasonable efforts. The winner will have until 11:59pm EST on June 5th, 2010 to provide their full contact details in order to claim their prize.

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE! Go on over to Where Does All My Money Go.com and enter now. I hope you win!

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So, a funny thing happened on the way to Google I/O, Google Docs started to look like Google Wave. See the video below to get an idea of what I mean:

So, it seems that Google is moving forward in getting Google Docs and Google Wave merged together! I assume this was released in Google Docs as that is now in production whereas Google Wave is still in development. I gather that the next version of Google Wave (probably to be unleashed at Google I/O 10) will highlight the integration of Google Docs.

Of course, the Google Wave’ish qualities now available in Google Docs was not the only thing they upgraded. As shown in the video, they also announced the following (copied from the Official Google Docs Blog):

A better document editor
We’ve brought the responsive, real-time editing experience you’ve come to expect from our spreadsheets over to documents, which means you can now see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. We also added another popular feature from spreadsheets: sidebar chat, so you can discuss documents as you work on them with colleagues.

The new technical foundation also helped us improve document formatting, which means better import/export fidelity, a revamped comment system, real margins and tab stops, and improved image layout within documents. These improvements have been highly requested, but previously impossible to create with the older documents editor on older browsers.

A faster spreadsheet editor
With the new spreadsheets editor, you’ll see significant speed and performance improvements — spreadsheets load faster, are more responsive and scroll more seamlessly. We’ve also added a host of often requested features, like a formula bar for cell editing, auto-complete, drag and drop columns, and simpler navigation between sheets. And as always, real-time collaboration in spreadsheets is easy with sidebar chat and the ability to see which cell each person is editing.

A new collaborative drawing editor
In the year since we launched the Insert drawing tool, we’ve received many requests for the ability to collaborate on drawings and make them accessible directly from the docs list. The new standalone drawings editor lets you collaborate in real time on flow charts, designs, diagrams and other fun or business graphics. Copy these drawings into documents, spreadsheets and presentations using the web clipboard, or share and publish drawings just like other Google Docs.

I can’t tell you how excited I was to see Google Wave type functionality unveiled in Google Docs. This comes at a great time too. Microsoft is getting ready to up the ante with Office 2010 and venture into cloud computing with their Office Suite. Will Microsoft Web Apps Force Google’s Hand and hasten the pace of development in this area? I certainly hope so.

I am even more excited for Google I/O 10 now. I mentioned before I plan on attending and now am very excited in anticipation of big news.

What are your thoughts on the updates to Google Docs? Will this revitalize Google Wave? Are we on the cusp of an all out Office Suite war for our collaborative hearts and minds? Leave your thoughts and comments on the subject below.

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Ever wish there was a helpdesk that you could use to get feedback on the problems you are having with Google Wave. Well, there is. Fernando Fonseca started one and it works pretty slick. You go to the HelpDesk Wave, post your problem or concern and the folks there get back to you. Here is the description of the Wave that they give:

Wave Helpdesk – Wavers Helping Wavers

Please enter your help question below as a reply or look at unanswered questions to provide answers and to collaborate.

This wave is moderated.

Please refer to Moderating Your Waves to understand the guidelines for moderation.

Your question may be answered already at WAVE FAQ – check it out first.

Please use Spam and Abuse reports – Wave User Black List to report any spam and wave abuse (phishing/trolls).

In order to keep this wave manageable Q&As will be removed periodically.

New and relevant Q&As will be added to the FAQ.

For informal discussions or orientation on Wave features, please go here to chat with others: Newbies Chat Room (to be updated soon)

This wave is in no way supported by or associated with Gooogle, and is maintained by voluntary users.

The only problem with this Wave that I wish the owners would fix would be to archive some of the questions that have been listed rather then just removing them. Removing them is good, it keeps the Wave clean and fresh and ready for you to ask your questions. But, sometimes you may not have a problem and are just interested in reading some of the past concerns folks had.

One thing that has been happening with too much regularity lately on Google Wave is trolls and spammers doing damage to Waves. At the Wave Helpdesk they provide a link on how protect your Wave from these a**holes. Here are their instructions:

To protect your public content and also allow public participation, follow these instructions.

A troll/spammer’s actions may then break or destroy the public participation, but will leave the protected content unaffected, and the damaged discussion can be deleted leaving the wave clean and tidy to start again without having to abandon the entire wave.

• Create a new wave.
• Add the initial content (optional).
• Add only trusted participants to the main wavelet with full access.
• Add Public (public@a.gwave.com) to the main wavelet with read-only access.

If you want to allow open participation,

• Add a reply, then whilst editing the reply add a private reply (using the blip’s dropdown menu “Private reply” option).
• In the newly created private reply add Public (public@a.gwave.com). By default it has full access. That’s required.

Note: An inline reply could be used instead of a reply.

In case that the private reply including Public with full access be spamed or victim of abuse then:

• Change the access of the spammer/abusive user to read-only
• Delete the unwanted content or use Playback/Restore

In case that the private reply become broken (for example by a troll or spammer) then:

• Take note of the username used to spam or broke the private reply.
• Delete the blip containing this private reply and add a new one.

NOTE: When the blip is deleted, a refresh or re-open of the wave is needed, as the deleted wavelet will still look like it has not been deleted.

• Add the offending username and change its access to read-only immediately.

Visit the Wave for more other information and links that they also offer on this subject.

Have you used the Wave HelpDesk? Leave us a comment and tell us how they helped you.

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The Apple Wave Community is a Wave that engages folks to talk and share their thoughts about all the great technology that Apple continues to roll-out year after year. Whether you love Apple or hate them, this is the Wave to share your opinion about Apple….and a lot of folks have. It is an extremely popular Wave that has a section dedicated to many different Apple products, like:

Do you like the new Magic Mouse?

Are you happy with the new OS, Snow Leopard?

New iMac and MacBook touchscreens, what do you think about this feature?

Are you an iPhone user? Are-you happy with it?

New iPhones in 2010 – what’s next?

The MiLi Pro iPhone / iPod Video Projector, will you buy one?

The iPad, are you getting one?

Each section above has a Yes/No/Maybe gadget where you can, appropriately, answer Yes/No/Maybe and then share your thoughts on the subject. If you are an Apple fan you will want to get involved in the conversation.

It was kind of disappointing to see this Wave slow down around the December timeframe, it would have been great to have gotten everyone’s reviews regarding the stuff they got for Christmas.

However, like Google Wave itself, this Wave as again gained some momentum. Probably has something to do with a little know product called the iPad. Check out the 180 second condensed video from the Apple Keynote explaining he iPad:

One of the neatest things I saw on this Wave, that has my interest big time, is the Mili iPhone/iPod Video Projector. See the video below explaining this product:

So this thing has a big time cool factor going on. But, I would like to see it working before I buy it. I am sure there will be more on it in the future.

Anyway, if you are a Mac user, you will like this Wave. Make sure you visit the Apple Wave Community and leave your thoughts.

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Well it was only a matter of time before the trolls, spammers and phishers started becoming a nuisance on Google Wave. Because Google Wave is in Preview and does not have all the complete features to deal with these folks (losers, a-holes, etc), users of Google Wave have taken things into their own hands and started a Wave called Google Wave User Black List. The opening blip describes the Wave as such:

If you see someone enter your public wave and he/she is on this blacklist, it is recommended to mark them as read only as soon as possible.

If someone destroys your wave or other waves please ping me and give me all the information, after I investigate it I will add them to the list. If you are unfairly being blacklisted, please ping me with as much information as you have and I will investigate and possibly remove you from the list.

The the Black List has the following users listed thus far:

NeWnAr: newnar2010@googlewave.com
Gaute Huus: isenzation@googlewave.com
Reason: Added a bunch of robots to a wave resulting in the wave being destroyed
Waves Destroyed: the ULTIMATE Wave Guide

Tom L: tomhasninelives@googlewave.com
Waves Destroyed: googlewave.com!w+pTIm2gTuX

GodKira : charanwilliams@googlewave.com
Waves destroyed (partly restored since): Emoticons – No Bot Needed The Awesome List Of Uses For Google Wave 2.5! See also : Troll attack shows Google Wave’s Vulnerabilities for more reported previous attacks.

Recidivist guy – november 2009 troll attacks :
From http://thezargon.org/ : “A 12 year old, named Chris W., decided to start deleting content from as many as 7 waves, editing and counter-editing information inside blips and wavelets, in a live war watched by many”
See also : http://eliterate.posterous.com/ : “Over the past half hour – in a flurry of furious deleting, live-editing, dissappearing blips and random expletives – Google Wave met it’s first fully-fledged (well, fledgling, really – more on that later) troll.”

El’Nara M. : anulia7921@googlewave.com
Wave destroyed : The Awesome List Of Uses For Google Wave 2.5!

thewaveframe@googlewave.com
Simultaneous public waves attacks (including this wave) for a so called phishing-demo that certainly was a true phishing… Phishing Attempt in wave (gadget redirects browser to http:// hosting .gmodules…)

This Wave actually got the attention of Google Wave Developer Lars Rasmussen. He wrote to the folks in the Wave the following message:

Thanks all. I will alert our abuse team to this wave.

• Once you have added public with full access, making an abuse user read-only is more effective than removing them from the wave will be.
• We have begun testing remove participant internally and hopefully it will hit externally within a month
• There will soon be a way for you to report abuse directly to our internal abuse team
• The feature you are asking for: block a user from a particular wave and all future waves created by you is exactly right but it will take us many months to get there…

Andrew I was thinking we’d automatically make a special blacklist for each user, and automatically prevent anyone from my blacklist from contributing to waves I create. Should be as easy to add a particular user to your blacklist as it currently is to add them to your contacts.

I am not promising we will do this, but that’s the most favored design on my team.

Makes public waves a much less useful place. We are pretty short handed. Please have patience with us!


Lars Rasmussen

This type of direct response from the developer is so crucial to these types of problems and adds a level of comfort for all users knowing that this is top priority that the development team is working hard to address. Certainly will be interesting to see how they solve this problem. I think the blacklist idea is good but should probably be accompanied with a couple of levels. I.E. add to blacklist and report the user to Google for investigation and just add to your blacklist (i.e. you don’t like this person but they haven’t done anything nefarious).

Lars later added:

I know! Makes public waves in particular a much less useful place. We are pretty short handed on my team unfortunately, and have oh about a 1000 feature requests to deal with. Please have patience with us

Another very interesting comment made by ColorMyWaves.com was this excellent piece of advice:

Track Wave Vandals

Here is an example of how to track people who have vandalized or added unwanted Bot’s To your waves. Most of the time the wave tells you that someone has added a person or a bot but not all the times. Look for a pattern in the visitors list on top of the wave.

Example:

We are going to Follow this visitor (wikus.d9@googlewave.com) to see his or hers tracks through all the number of waves. To do this:

1). Just click on the (Public) in your contacts list then click on the (Group Waves) button.
2). After the (group:public@a.gwave.com) loads click behind (.com) add a space then add the person you want to track. Like so. (group:public@a.gwave.com wikus.d9@googlewave.com) Hit enter.
3). The list of all the waves this person has visited will appear .

Now you can use the play back to watch the wave activities unfold. Or you can see if there is a pattern of bots added to the next person on the visitors list. Let’s look and see at our example. Here is only a few of the places this person has visited:

Christian Wave
This Embeded Wave has a company logo, colored font and a image for a background.
【Link-Easy 指令集討論區】指令名稱：info
Go in Google Wave
Cooperative Extension Wave Directory

If you noticed that everytime this person apears (wikus.d9@googlewave.com) this one is right behind (testgooglewave@googlegroups.com) and (testgooglewave@googlegroups.com) has a link attached to it just like (Public) dose. See the 3 blue dot’s?

Plus (wikus.d9@googlewave.com) has a link to (testgooglewave@googlegroups.com) in thier profile.
So with all that said you can now track people any where on google wave.

Excellent tutorial!

The unfortunate thing is that the time has come for this type of Wave. The good thing is that the Google Wave developer team is taking notice and acting on information provided in this Wave. Please, please, please take the time to add folks that need to be added to that Wave. For the time being it is really the only recourse we have to bring attention to those folks that take pleasure in destroying Waves for whatever stupid reason.

Have you had a Wave destroyed? What do you think of Lars’ comments?

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I want to start by emphatically stating that I am not some Google fanboy! I don’t ogle over everything released from Google! I really couldn’t care less about Google Buzz, except that I think it will draw the “social media” junkies away from Google Wave and they can start to seriously market Google Wave as a real-time business collaboration tool.

But, let’s start with what Google Buzz is and what it allows you to do:

• No setup needed

Automatically follow the people you email and chat with the most in Gmail.

• Share publicly or privately

Publish your ideas to the world or just to your closest friends.

• Inbox integration

Comments get sent right to your inbox so it’s easy to keep the conversation going.

• Photo friendly

See thumbnails with each post, and browse full-screen photos from popular sites.

• Connect sites you already use

Import your stuff from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader.

• See updates in real time

New posts and comments pop in as they happen. No refresh required.

• Just the good stuff

Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip.

Also, they provided a video showing Buzz in action:

Ok, so Bravo! I think! I am not a big “Social Media” junkie. Not sure I need everything linked together like that or not. I will certainly give it a go, but I tend not to get to excited about this kind of stuff. Might find it useful, might not. I still don’t use Facebook..and won’t. Whatever that means or tells you about me.

Regardless, the real meaning of this post is that I think this will be a very, very good thing for Google Wave. Instead of comparing Google Wave to all the other social media stuff out there and whether it will replace Twitter or replace Facebook, folks can concentrate on defining Google Wave for what it is and what it does.

Google Wave, as I have said time and time again is the best real-time business collaboration tool available. Although, Novell’s Pulse and IBM’s Project Vulcan are going to battle for that marketplace share also. I expect and hope that at Google I/O 10 the Google Wave team will roll out Google App integration and start to spin this whole project as the must have Business collaboration tool.

They need a great “Steve Jobs-esque” type presentation – Here is your great problem…and here is your magical, mystical, futuristic solution that you will now never be able to live without.

They need a great “Steve Jobs-esque” type presentation – Here is your great problem…and here is your magical, mystical, futuristic solution that you will now never be able to live without. Because,…Google Wave could be that tool and live up to the hype….as they continue adding and tweaking functionality in the preview version and get ready for Alpha and Beta releases.

Google Buzz can deal with all the “buzz” that you get with the social media crowd. Google Wave can concentrate on the “I’m a big boy now” serious business crowd and offer them a serious business Web 2.0 product. I am also very curious as to how much Google Wave type technology might be present in Google Buzz. Moreover, if Google Buzz was conscious decision to try and deflect the social media crowd from Google Wave and to somehting that might more be what they want. Don’t know, just speculating…or, conspiring

What do you think? Will Google Buzz be good or bad for Google Wave?

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If you are a  fan you are not alone. In fact, it is one of the biggest communities and repositories of Waves that can be found. Moreover, each Wave has long threads of conversation and interaction.

So, if you are a fan, check out the Stargate Wave Repository.

The Stargate Wave Repository is described as:

(The repository of Ancient speculation)*

Here the Stargate community on Wave can drop a Wave ID to all Waves with the “stargatewave” tag. Happy \/\/aving!

It is clear that we talk far too much for just one wave so, if you create sub topic waves dealing with Stargate, please link them here! let’s make Stargate the first TIDAL WAVE !

Inside this repository you will find:

General Discussion Waves

• The Stargate Universe/SG-1/Atlantis US Wave!
• Stargate SG-1 / Atlantis / SG:U \/\/ave, Part II
• Stargate SG-1 / Atlantis / SG:U \/\/ave, Part III
• Stargate SG-1 / Atlantis / SG:U \/\/ave, Part IV
• Stargate SG-1 / Atlantis / SG:U \/\/ave, Part V
• Stargate SG-1 / Atlantis / SG:U \/\/ave, Part VI
• SG-U discussion: Do we hate the communication stones?
• Favorite Stargate SG1 episode
• Least favorite Stargate episode
• Favorite or Notable Character In Stargate Canon
• Best Villain In Stargate Canon
• The SGU EliPhone Wave
• Stargate Twitter List
• Stargate Wave Repository
• Stargate Wave repository II
• Stargate Worlds
• SG-U Soundtrack
• What Would You Do On Destiny?
• Probably Off-Topic Stargate Talk <– Off-Topic Conversation Goes Here (Except when it doesn’t)
• Stargate on Freebase
• Stargate Resistance
• Stargate: The Outrageous Things Fans Do

SG-U Individual Episodes Waves

Stargate SG-U Rating Thread Rate Individual Episodes Here

• SG-U Episode discussion: “Air”
• SG-U Episode discussion: “Darkness”
• SG-U Episode discussion: “Light”
• SG-U Episode discussion: “Water”
• SG-U Episode discussion: “Earth”
• SG-U Episode discussion: “Time”
• SG-U Episode discussion: “Life”
• SG-U Episode discussion: “Justice”

Stargate waves in different languages!

• Hungarian Stargate Universe
• (wave without title) (Russian)
• Die deutsche Welle für Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis und Stargate The Universe

So, if you are like me, and are a big fan of  you will love this Wave repository and waste a lot of time reading through the threads. As always, please share your thoughts and comments below.

Which Wave thread is your favourite? Mine is the the new SG-U episode discussions.

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co-founder, Mr. Lars Rasmussen gave a presentation and interview at TechFest 2010 in Bombay, India last week.

After his presentation he gave an interview to Only Gizmos where he talked about , Google Maps and his move from entrepreneur to Google employee. It was a very interesting interview, is only about 6 mins long and worth watching in its entirety.

He comments regarding IBM’s Project Vulcan was very interesting. It sounded to me that they were taken a little by surprise by this product. Lars indicated they had talked with IBM, but not particularly about Project Vulcan. However, I agree with him that we do not need multiple protocols in this field. Thus, I hope that future talks between IBM’s Project Vulcan team and the Google Wave team will lead so some sort of agreement on a joint way forward that will allow the two to co-exist and interact.

I was happy to hear that working on making more like email (i.e. have a Cc and Bcc functionality) is low on the list of priorities. Frankly, I hope they are working round the clock on nothing else but Google Apps integration.

Lastly, they have reported on Only Gizmos that during the speech Mr. Rasmussen announced that the Google Wave invites would soon come to an end and that they were looking to offer multi-language support in . They say:

While most of the actual lecture didn’t quite reveal anything substantially new, he did let the audience know that Google was working on about 40 languages for Wave- and proceeded with a demo for the same. He also let slip that the Wave invite process would come to a halt in a few months- anyone can then sign up for Wave on the website.

However, the most important part, I think, is that they will be talking with IBM regarding Project Vulcan and how the two will be able to interface together. With IBM and Novell now firmly entrenched in this area the window for Google to carve out the enterprise footprint is rapidly closing. They are going to have to “WOW’ again with Google Apps integration. I think Novell and IBM will have clear business models and marketing strategy on their product going forward. I hope Google will also.

I have advocated for a long time here on this blog that the real benefit for is in the workplace. I think the malaise you hear from the general population towards only emphasis’ that assertion. It’s real power and the no-brainer problem that solves is real-time workplace collaboration. Novell and IBM are presenting that…very effectively, I might add. Google is trying to define it as all things for all people. It may be…in the future. But, for now, concentrate on marketing it and developing it as a real-time workflow collaboration tool. That, in my mind, is the only market that will be profitable.

Now, I may be proven wrong. I hope I am. In fact, Google has a lot of really smart people working for them that probably have lots of great ideas on how this will make them a gazillion dollars down the line. But, the enterprise model for is a no-brainer and if they get by-passed in this market it will be unforgivable.

As always, please share your thoughts on this post. What do you think of Project Vulcan? What do you think about no more invites?

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I have seen a lot of tweets, posts and comments regarding what you can actually use the preview version of for…right now! Any posts that I have read on the subject seem to always focus on what you will be able to use for in the future. These have also concentrated on extensions that are not even released to everyone yet.

I am going to give a list of things you can do with today that you will find useful. There is some excellent examples out there of some very promising extensions…like Gravity….but it is not available to everyone yet. In fact, most extensions are not very useful and need more developing….as Daniel Graverson wrote in his excellent post Google Wave Gadgets Lack Quality. So, for that reason I am not going to talk too much about the extensions that are available to help you with these use cases. You can decide yourself if you want to bring in some of these extension to make your Wave more productive.

But,  here is my Top 10 Uses for Google Wave…Right Now!:

10. Inserting a Wave into your Blog. Many folks have done this and it works pretty good. If you want to give this a try you may want to think about a post topic that you want folks to collaborate on and build. Try to think beyond just using it for comments. I think it is best suited for an event post. Take note however, everybody needs to have a Google Wave account to see the post.

9. Public Wave Discussion. Do you have a topic that you are particularly interested in. Start a public Wave on the subject and you will get many others who will join in and start to take part in the conversation. Many may be just as passionate, or more passionate, on the subject as you. Make sure you do a public search first to see if that Wave topic has already been started.

8. Role Playing Game. This has been an area that has turned out to be a lot of fun for folks and has had a pretty good following. Moreover, there is some useful extensions that have been written for RPGs. See the post I wrote titled Google Wave + RPGs = Excellent Experience! on the subject to get involved.

7. Conference Waving. This is usually something that the conference would initiate usually. But if you find they haven’t. Maybe approach them the first day and indicate you want to start one and ask them to announce it so others at the conference would then join in.

6. Waving your own event. Perhaps you may want to set up a Wave to allow on-line users to attend you event. I plan to give this a try for our next hack-a-thon we will be having on Google Chrome Extensions. I am going to play with streaming video via wave or recording and then up-loading to the Wave.

5. Meetings. Google Wave is an excellent way to get folks together for a meeting that they can’t get together in person for. There are some telecom extension you can try. But they won’t work with everyone, so you may want to test them out before relying on them. I have had two Wave meetings  and both times we had a telecom going to support the on-line portion. We used Google Wave to work on something that we could change while talking via telecom. It was great and those involved thought it was a great, time-saving, efficient way to work on a something together…in our slippers.

4. Small Document Collaboration. Although Google Wave does not have document collaboration…right now. You can do some small collaboration efforts which you can cut and paste into your document application of choice. I would not recommend doing anything greater than 10-15 pages. Once you try this you find that you become very impatient for some real document collaboration ability to be added…because you will very much enjoy the experience.

3. Minutes. I have used it twice now in a meeting where I and three others collaborated on the minutes. It was a great experience. If you missed something, somebody else picked it up and we had some real kick-#%@ minutes that did not need anymore work once the meeting was finished.

2. Event Planning. For any of you involved in groups that have events you hold. Planning your agenda with your group on Google Wave is a great, great use of the application. I have done it now for 4 different groups & events I am involved with and it has been a great experience. You will find it quick. One word of advice is that you give the Wave a time-limit. I.E. no more comments/revisions accepted after (insert your date), for folks that maybe don’t check their Wave on a regular basis. I will talk about a way to help eliminate this below. Moreover, from this same Wave you do all the coordination for the event with folks. It really is a great way to do all the agenda and co-ordination planning for an event.

1. Coding. This is my number one use case for Google Wave right now. You have got to try it. You do not need to be ocean’s apart, in fact…being in the same room right next to each other works best. Try it…you will agree with me that this is the number one…by far…best use case of Google Wave right now! Also, there are some pretty good extensions out there you might want to try. Take at look at the extension list if you want to try one or two.

Once you start using for these types of uses you will find that it is kind of annoying if you don’t have some kind of notifier to let you know when your Wave got updated. I recommend the Google Wave Notifier for PC and WaveBoard for Mac to give you notification of an update to your Wave.

Are you using for something that is not on the list…right now! Let us know about how your using it below. Or, simply comment on the on the list if you are using it in some of what is listed. Or, god forbid, you don’t agree with the list.

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One of the most heard complaints about ™ is that people do not have as many contacts as they would like, or the difficulty they find meeting new folks with Google Wave™.

If you’re a female, you also need to be careful about the men you meet online and share information with, as do we all I suppose. One Wave idea that should be a hit and help women meet other like-minded women via Google Wave™ is a Wave titled Women on Google Wave.

This Wave is described by the owner, Kate Kendall, as:

Welcome to the #wow (and yes, not the game!) wave. I decided to open this wave conversation to women in similar industries to myself to encourage discussion around women issues. The intention is not for it to be a feminist group or exclusive to females, but to just have a space, where the ratio of women to men is tipped to be the other way. I don’t pose to discuss particular issues but rather have the opportunity for general chat and see where it takes us. Please invite your wave contacts that might be interested in conversing.

Kate asks that women share there fast facts file about themselves, which include Name, Twitter name, Industry, Interests, Education and Challenges, as per Kate’s info:

Name: Kate Kendall

Twitter: @KateKendall

Industry: Publishing/Digital

Interests: Strategy, social media, journalism, marketing, community, the web and tech.

Education: BSc MB (Mktg)

Challenges: Finding aspirational female role models, getting more females along to events such as @socialmelb, encouraging more females to get into (and succeed in) male-dominated disciplines (e.g. tech, programming/development, engineering, etc.) and finding female networking events that aren’t ‘fluffy’ or branded in pink!

This Wave is quite popular and has a significant number of women on it. If you are a woman looking to meet some like-minded women you are bound to find someone on here that share some similar interests, or experiencing similar challenges. Or, if you are just looking for more female contacts this is the place.

Many have linked there website in this Wave and there seems to be come effort to have a chat day when everybody tries to come on and they have one big chat-up.

For the most part this Wave has remained the realm of the ladies and there are very few guys. That is probably a good thing as others have mentioned that most of their Waves have been dominated by men (80%). I think this is good way for the Women on Google Wave to get together, without our noise, and try to figure out what Google Wave™ means (or doesn’t mean) to them.

So if you are a woman who would like to meet more Women on Google Wave. Go check this Wave out.

Make sure you come back here to tell is if it was helpful. Or, if you are already using this Wave give us your thoughts about how helpful you found this Wave.

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I read many blog posts and twitter tweets that talk about how difficult it is control a Wave…and they are right, it takes work to ensure you have an effective Wave. Nothing changes, when you invite a bunch of people to come to the same place and collaborate together on something…you need rules.

That led me to this Wave: Rules for Effective Waves, which was started by Jose I. Icaza, and is a “public Wave that attempts to put together lessons learned regarding rules for effective Waves and have them adapted to be features of Wave. At the same time, the Wave itself is an example of the application of those lessons.”

Here is their list of rules thus far:

Use separate Blips for document creation and for general discussion about the whole wave. For this wave that you are reading, you are requested to put all *discussion* and controversy about this whole wave’s contents at the General discussion blip. You are welcome, however, to edit blips in order to improve them. It is recommended that before you start editing a blip of the initial blip author, read all the sections referred in the table of contents included in the initial blip.

Pre-structure Waves: use separate blips for different parts of a document being created, and set up a blip table of contents. So you see that this wave is split up in separate sections, each of them in a different blip. This helps people add their content at the most adequate place. Combined with lesson 1, we need another lesson:

Preferably discuss a blip’s contents at the end of the blip, not in the middle of it. Wave does allow to reply in the middle of a blip, but this tends to create chaos. Replying in the middle of a blip may be adequate for email-like conversations in Wave or for Discussion or Chat Blips see later. It may not be necessary for pre-structured Waves since each main blip might be small enough.

Follow the rule: Wikipedia’s be bold in editing: do not be afraid to improve other people’s text. Be grateful of other people taking the time to improve “your” text.

Be sure to include your contribution at the most appropriate blip (section); at the most appropriate place within that blip; and do modify text surrounding your contribution so that the text flows easily and the whole blip becomes a better blip.

If you are sure of an improvement, go ahead, edit the blip and improve it. Don’t ask the blip initial creator to improve it, and do not set up a discussion. Go ahead and do it.

Ensure that the whole resulting wave has been improved as a result of your contributions. If all of us improve the whole wave continuously, the result necessarily will be a great wave, better than any of us could have conceived individually.

Pre-structure a discussion into separate blips. Each such blip must pose a discussion question that cannot be answered just with “yes” or “no” or any small set of categories, but that does require an explanation. Always include a blip at the end of these pre-structured blips indicating that people are free to add additional pre-structured blips. Example: see the General Discussion blip at the end of this Wave. Besides this general pre-sructuring, there are specific pre-structures that are commonly used in face-to-face discussions that may apply; for instance, a formal Debate pre-structure where each of two blips set up opposing points of view; an issue-position-argument pre-structure; and so on.

Ensure that your contribution does contribute to the general health of the discussion by first becoming familiar with whatever has been discussed so far, and then add a contribution that either establishes additional points of view for consideration, counter-argues another point of view, summarizes previous points of view or establishes a further question for consideration. Ideally, your single contribution might include all of these.

Ensure that your contribution is inserted at the most appropriate point of the discussion. If you are replying to a specific contribution from someone else, reply using Wave’s reply function just below that contribution; if your contribution is of a general nature about the blip’s theme, insert your contribution at the end of the blip; if your contribution is about the whole discussion wave, insert it at the end of the wave.

The discussion owner must ensure that someone becomes responsible for summarizing the whole discussion; and that “action items” are developed as the discussion progresses and are summarized at the end.

Establish and publicize a chat agenda before the chat date. This can be done in one starting blip for the chat wave.

Set-up a separate blip for each point in the agenda, and a final blip for “other topics” not covered in the agenda. This may get people focussed on the chat Wave’s theme

Rules 9, 10 and 11 may also be applied to the chat situation.

Don’t rely in Google Wave as your one-and-only communication and collaboration tool for projects with low tolerance for delays. As Google Wave requires a Google account you could consider other more mature and stable Google products or even use other platforms as alternative communication and collaboration tools in case that Google Wave is unusable.

Don’t rely in Playback to recover content in large waves or with too many edits. Sometimes even with only goodwill contributions some important content could be lost. You bear in mind that there is not an undo function, playback could demand too much time and computer resources to load than you have available, and that waves could came broken. You have to determine if your wave needs a disaster recovery plan or not.

That is how far they have gotten thus far with this Wave. There is an extremely interesting discussion surrounding all of those rules listed above. Not all agree with all the rules. If you want to join the discussion go to the Rules for Effective Waves and add your opinion. I look forward to reading what you post. Also, share below your thoughts with our readers.

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