I came across this very interesting presentation by Tish Shute titled “AR Wave: A Proof of Concept”. AR, incidentally, stands for Augmented Reality. I then found this video that shows AR Wave in action, check it out:

Trish adds the following in her presentation:

The main advantages of using a OT system like Wave for games is twofold;

1. For making simple games it takes far less investment as all that is required is basicbot-coding. You dont even have to run your own server if you dont want, provided theres a Bot-supporting server or something like Google App Engine you can use for your game code.

Wave takes care of accounts, transfer of information and the propagation of changes over the restof the infrastructure.

2. If you want to make a more advanced game (something like WoW or Secondlife), theres still some big advantages to using Wave. You can build your own custom-server to handle complex game events and actions, but by conforming tothe WFP standard for serverserver interaction, you allow anyone to both view or join your game with little to noeffort required. When users can just view or try your game with a single click, you stand a lot more chance of getting them hooked on it. Having to signup, login, and potentially download a client is often far too much effort for people that just want to try something quickly.

With OT you can even create multiple servers worldwide with a persistent and constantly synching world between them…all with no extra effort on your part. This means a faster experience for the end user, while still having a consistent game world for the user. (No need for separate worlds for the user to login too due to server load restrictions)You could even make your game support user generated content, or overlap with other game worlds…if you wish.

This is just a handful of advantages really (more that Markus suggested)

OT is what makes multiuser (or multiplayer) interaction possible. In Networked games you have a scene graph that is kept in sync between the clients by sending changes of its nodes states between the clients (or between the clients a a centralized server).

In Wave OT does this for the nodes of an XML document (aka a wave).The catch is that requirements for document editing and requirements for game scene graphs are somewhat different.For example regarding real time requirements vs. correctness.e.g, the way Googles OT implementation works, a client cannot send out a new change before the last change has been acknowledged. This is because OT has to guarantee consistency which isnt that important in a gaming scenario.

Also of course the scene graph example is rather simplified. Modern network games are a lot more sophisticated than that But the scope of Wave is much broader that game design, so a specialized AR Game Engine will most likely be able to offer more in terms of performance and possible gaming scenarios.

You can visit the ARWave.org site to find out more or to contact Trish with any questions you may have.

As always, please leave your comments and thoughts regarding the efforts of ARWave below. We love to hear what you think.

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There was an interesting article in Forbes magazine with Lars Rasmussen (Lars is one of the main engineers behind Google Wave) where they discussed how Google Wave could make money for Google.

Rasmussen was very careful to stress that Google is very focused on the development effort and getting Google Wave ready for prime-time. However, he did talk about some ways that Google could monetize the product. This was the three examples he gave:

Incorporate Google Wave with Google Apps for Business;

Contextual Advertisements with Adsense (similar to Gmail); and

Set up a Google Wave Apps Store for all the robots, embeds and gadgets being developed.

So, I am not sure about the last one being something they want look at. Given the huge headache the iPhone App Store causes Apple, and of course there “Do not Evil” line in the Google mission statement. I would think an App store would be considered by many developers as definitely “doing evil”.

The first two are of course very legitimate business opportunities that I think will naturally be available. Integration with Google Apps would be a no-brainer as the business model for that is off the charts.

Contextual advertisements they have mastered and I think any free use of a Google Wave server would definitely incorporate that.

One area that is not on this list, but I am sure their business folks are looking at is something similar to the whole Microsoft Enterprise Support. Provide Google Certified Consultants that can set-up your business Wave Server, integrated with Google Docs or whatever document software you are using, tie your wave servers together, set up all the accounts, etc, etc. Also, there is a whole training business that comes with that. Folks would line up go become Google Wave Certified Engineers.

I believe that this last area which I mention is where the biggest boom for Google will lie. Also, it will ensure wide-spread acceptance of the technology. Would love to here your thoughts or ideas on the subject. Leave a comment below.

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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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Firstly, the chief question I receive both via email and Twitter is “How do I get a Google Wave Account?” The second most asked question is “How long do I have to wait?”

Let’s start with – How you get a Google Wave Account:

Don’t ask for an account anywhere else but with the links below. You won’t get one!

Instead, if you’re a developer, fill out the form at
https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignupfordev/.

Or, if you’re not a developer, fill out the form at
https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/.

These are the only ways to get an account. Tweeting “Can anybody get me an account?” is just spam.

Also, some folks have had trouble when they sign up when they get there invite. Make sure you see the proper confirmation page after you fill out the form. If you see the same form again, fill it out again, pasting in the email address used for registration and the code embedded in your invitation link at the bootom of the page (you may have to scroll down to see it). Just make sure you get that confirmation page before you leave!

While your waiting for you invite (which could take a few week) you may want to try out PyGo Wave Server. The following about the PyGo Wave server comes directly from the Google Wave Code page.

PyGoWave Server – The Headstart

I couldn’t wait until the guys at Google released their reference server implementation, so I decided to build my own in the meantime.

This implementation uses Django – a well-known python web framework – as its backend and is in a very early stage. Just as Google, I want to release it to the public as fast as possible.

In the end, this will eventually be a full-featured server implementation for easy use, extention and integration with your web servers and applications.

Note: All of the code is directly derived from Google’s published Wave API and protocol specification

You can (should before signing up, so you know what to expect) read their Architecutral Thoughts about the server here. But this is a great development. The Google Architecture Team has always stated that Google Wave success is based on and requires independent Wave servers. Having this so fast out of the gate is a great development. See the YouTube video below.

I signed up at the PyGo Wave Test Server and had quite an enjoyable experience playing with it. Not to mention, the time from sign up to playing with PyGo Wave took approximately 5 mins. All of the gadgets currently used in Google Wave are available to play with. It really is worth trying out while your waiting. You definetly get the Wave experience and you get to play with the Gadgets.

UPDATE: 2009-09-05

The PyGo Wave Server has been updated here is there updated Blog post (actually dated 2009-09-02, I’m a little behind) titled:

New and Improved

Ok here we go, since yesterday our latest “major” release is live, which is Version 0.3. I think p2k managed to implement all those features we descriped in our Roadmap .

The coolest new thing is definitely collaborative editing within waves. It’s now possible to write stuff within a wave and edit it collaborative with your fellow wavers.

And we did some improvements under the hood. As you can see we changed our URL to http://www.pygowave.net , you will be redirected to it, and all this stuff is now hosted on a seperated v-server just for pygowave itself. So only pygowave is going down if something breaks and not our whole server.

Furthermore PyGoWave is under https://www.pygowave.net available with SSL encryption. The SSL certificate itself was created by us and is not trusted, due to the fact that we do not have the money to buy a trusted one. Nevertheless its better than nothing =)

And last but not least we are now on ohloh, which is kind of an Socialnetwork for Programmers and OpenSourceSoftware. You can get to our project page here. Feel free to add us to your “I use this” list.

Keep up the great work guys! Visit the PyGo Blog Page and subscribe to their RSS to make sure you get the latest updates.

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TwilioBot is a Robot Extension for Google Wave that uses Twilio. Twilio is basically a Voice-over-IP (VOIP) architecture that allows the user access to Twilio’s API, allowing them to make custom application extensions that meet their exact needs. As folks build things for Twilio they become available to the entire Twilio group. They can then use or tweak tht code as required.

So the Twilio folks have a Google Wave sandbox license and created a Twillio Robot for Google Wave: TwilioBot. The following is taken from theGoogle Wave Code page for TwilioBot and pretty much explains most of what you need to know to play with TwilioBot. For more info then what I have below, like the actual source code, wiki and known issues your should visit the code page.

Twiliobot is Robot extension for Google Wave demonstrating how to initiate calls from within a wave to normal cell phones or landlines using the Twilio phone API. The project is still in development and there are still several limitations.

CONCEPTS

This project shows how to integrate the Google Wave API with the Twilio phone API. While this particular project only implements click-to-call inside of Google Wave, one could think of many of interesting ways to integrate Google Wave and Twilio:

* Add call recording and transcription of all click-to-call initiated calls that can are appended to the wave
* Use Twilio to record voicemail messages and create a new wave for each message containing the audio and a speech-to-text transcription of the voicemail. Combining such an application with conditional call forwarding on your GSM mobile phone you could say goodbye to traditional voicemail and use Google Wave to manage all your messaging.
* Use Google Wave to set a status message that is heard by caller contacting your business. You could create a robot that monitors the last blip in a wave and reads the text of that blip to anyone who calls a business phone powered by Twilio.

LIMITATIONS

Twiliobot still has several important limitations.

1) The first limitation is in the process of initiating the call when a number is clicked. At the moment all phone numbers get transformed into URLs that point back to app engine and a web service to start the call. This is problematic for several reasons. The external link back to app engine puts up an annoying page that says you are connecting to an external site and the phone number to call is passed in the URL as a parameter so anyone could manually modify the url initiate calls outside of wave.

2) The second limitation is that the phone number for the first leg of the call (i.e. the phone of person reading the wave) is hardcoded into the bot. That means that if anyone other than the owner of the bot clicks a link the a phone link the call will be misdirected.

3) The third limitation is that phone number detection and outbound calling is currently limited to 10 digit US numbers.

USAGE

If you haven’t been dissuaded and still want to try creating your own instance of twiliobot, here are instructions for getting started.

1. sign up for a google app engine account and download and install the

python sdk if you haven’t already http://appengine.google.com

2. sign up for twilio account if you haven’t already

http://www.twilio.com

3. in the twiliobot code, edit app.yaml to reference your google app engine

application e.g. “application: mybot”

4. edit twiliobot.py and set APP_NAME to the name of your google app engine

application

5. edit index.py and

* set MY_NUMBER to your phone number
* set TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID to your twilio AccountSid (see Account page)
* set TWILIO_ACCOUNT_TOKEN to your twilio AccountSid (see Account page)

6. upload your app engine application to app engine

appcfg.py update twiliobot

7. log into google wave and add the twilibot robot to your contacts using

your app engine application name e.g. mybot@appspot.com

8. create a new wave and add the bot e.g. “Twilio” as a participant 9. create a new blip and enter a phone number and hit “Done”

10. if everything worked, the phone number should be transformed into a URL that can be clicked to initiate a call to your phone and the number written in the wave.

Here is the YouTube video for Hack-a-thon below that actually shows TwilioBot in action:

I think this is a fantastic little robot that could certainly have great appleal to service support centers or the folks that are calling the service support center. It could be great to aiding in putting together the minutes from a teleconference, etc, etc. I think the application of something like this is virtually limitless. I went to my sandbox to use this when I first heard about it. Unfortunately, it was then that I realized all the limitations. Regardless, if you have a sandbox, live in the US and are interested in getting a Twilio account I recomend giving it a try.

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I mentioned in a post yesterday titled “Industries Discussing How Google Wave Will Effect Sectors“, that in the weeks and months ahead we will see more and more industry sectors starting to talk about how Google Wave could be used in their particular sector. In the post yesterday I referenced a blog by Robert Cole titled “How Google Can Help Facilitate Travel Inspiration.” This obviously focused on the travel industry and gave a couple of examples of how Google Wave could be used to help folks working in that field.

Today I came across two new pieces. One by Mark Senak, who has a blog titled “Eye on the FDA“. His piece on Google Wave is called “Google Wave, Part 2 – What Pharma Should Be Thinking About“. This title, of course, indicates that there was probably a Part 1 to that story, and there is, and you can read it and all his posts at his blog. However, I was interested in Part 2 to the story because he gave some particular examples of how Google Wave could be used. They were:

Clinical Trial Recruitment Waves – It is a perennial problem for pharmaceutical companies to get a good balance of patients involved in clinical trials, particularly minorities.

REMS Support – Today when the FDA considers a particular risk to the use of a drug, they can require a REMS program – Risk Evaluation Management Strategy which encompasses the same tools as when the program was referred to as RiskMAPs or Risk Management Plans.

He goes into great detail on these examples in his blog and I encourage all to give it a read. I find it very interesting and encouraging that folks can immediately list concrete examples of how Google Wave can be implemented in there field to address long standing problem areas.

The second example I came across was a YouTube video with Stephannie Hannon (Program Manger for Google Wave) where she address how Google Wave could provide opportunities in the journalistic industry. What is neat about his video is that she is being asked questions by the journalist about how Google Wave can help them (journalists) with this or that problem. You can hear his excitement with the answers she provides.

Stay tuned, as I said yesterday, many more industries will start looking very seriously at what problems Google Wave will solve for them. My hunch is that they won’t have to think very hard to come up with quite a few.

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Google held a Google Wave Federation Day last month. Below is some videos that Google made during the conference and released today.

First is the Introduction

Second is the Architecture Overview

Third is the API Overview (including API roadmap)

Lastly, as a bonus they included a Google Wave Hackathon

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