For long time readers you may think by reading the title that I a doing a “best of” edition already in the short life of this blog. But, you would be wrong. Yes, the  very first Developer Spotlight that we did back in September 09 highlighted the folks at Wave.TO. The fact is, they have earned the honour once again…and in a big way.

First, I just want to say that there was a lot of developers to choose from this month. My sentimental favourite was the MindWave gadget because it works with a 3rd party application that I use on my laptop seamlessly and that, for me ,is a huge, huge step in the right direction for Google Wave extensions. Plus, Mashable has a big developer contest going on, so some really excellent extensions are being released for the competition.

I don’t know if the Wave.TO folks are entering or have entered the contest. But, if they haven’t, they should. Because in my mind they have the hands down winner!

The Robot that I want to bring to your attention is called Mr. Ray. Below is a video describing the problem Mr. Ray is trying to solve, the Wave.TO description of the robot and a video of Mr. Ray in action:

Mr-Ray provides a way to include non Google Wave users in a Wave. When a Wave changes an e-mail is dispatched to all e-mail participants with a link. When they follow this link they can view the Wave and interact with it. It’s almost as good as having a Wave account! To get stuck in use the extension installer and select “New Wave with e-mail participants” from the New Wave menu or add mr-ray@appspot.com. To give Mr-Ray a go you can use the sample wave or if you’re not sure what to do and want to see it in action watch the following video…

So you have to agree these folks have done a great job at designing something that the whole Google Corp couldn’t do (or at least, haven’t done up to this point). Integrate Google Wave with Email (GMail). Now perhaps Google is working on something much more elegant. We have to wait and see. Perhaps they will just buy the Wave.TO folks…that would be a good start if they are not working on something else.

Regardless, this excellent work by Wave.TO earns them the March Developer Spotlight honours, and this month that has a little extra meaning, as the competition is extremely stiff. Great job by the great developers over at Wave.TO. Keep up the good work….even if  you become the next Google purchase (they are kind of in that mode lately).

Have you been using Mr. Ray? Let us know how it worked for you. Leave a comment below. Also, visit the folks at Wave.TO and leave a comment on their site and show your support for their great efforts.

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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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On code.google.com, there is a special area called Google Code University. This area lists resources for educators on web technology and software development.

As of Friday, 5 Mar 10, it also lists resources on teaching Google APIs & tools, like codelabs and workshops: http://code.google.com/edu/googledev/index.html

If you have not been to the Google Code university before, the below is a synopsis of what it offers:

The website provides tutorials and sample course content so Computer Science students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.

The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:

• AJAX Programming
• Algorithms
• Distributed Systems
• Web Security
• Languages

In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases.

The CS Curriculum Search will help you find teaching materials that have been published to the web by faculty from CS departments around the world. You can refine your search to display just lectures, assignments or reference materials for a set of courses.

One of the offerings I found under the API presentations was the Robots v2 presentation done by Pamela Fox. This Prezi shows how the Robots API works inside Wave, and shows the new features of the Robots API v2.

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I am a big, big fan of the ConceptDraw suite of apps. I was sooooooo happy to hear that they have developed a MindMap robot for Google Wave called MindWave!

I immediately visited the Sample Wave and installed the robot. I am currently collaborating on Google Wave with a work project and was really excited to start using the MindWave robot right away to help us map out our thoughts. The great thing about this is that all us working on this project have the ConceptDraw suite of apps and will be able to download the finished map and use it as we need too. I understand many folks do not have this suite, or even just the MindMap app, but if you do, you can understand the title of this post. Because many, many gadgets and robots made for Google Wave at this time are really working prototypes, or have been developed during a hack-a-thon or by somebody just fooling around. It is so nice to get something that can be used immediately professionally.

However, this robot does still need some work. Regardless, it is one of the best robots I have worked with…because I can use what I work on outside of Google Wave seamlessly. This is just a tease of how great Google Wave will be with integration with Google Apps.

Ok…., enough about all that. Let’s introduce the MindWave:

They explain the MindWave as follows:

To get started with a mapping session create new wave via “New Wave” button in the middle pane, then in the right-hand panel, on the first line type the main topic name of your map. Then click on the green light bulb icon. A mind map will be inserted into the frame.

Now you can invite others to collaborate with you, by using the plus sign at the top of the wave. As people type content into the map their name will appear in the area they are typing. Once they hit “Enter” the contents of what they typed will immediately appear.

The playback function built into Google Wave is an excellent tool to see how a map was sequentially constructed and who added what content. This is a great way for new participants to your map to familiarize themselves with the content.

Maps built by using ConceptDraw MindWave may be downloaded to desktop ConceptDraw MINDMAP for Mac OS X or Windows, where it can be further developed and used.

Helpful Tips

You can easily move around within your mind map as it is created.

• To stop editing a topic, press Enter.
• Shift+Enter adds a new topic.
• Double-clicking on a topic adds a sub-topic.
• Paste a word or phrase to add a new topic.
• Paste a column of words to add many topics at once.
• Drag and drop organizes your mind map.
• Press Delete or Backspace to remove a selected topic.
• Arrow keys navigate you through the map.

Enjoy riding the Wave.

We welcome any suggestions and feedbacks you may have. Use this sample map to share your opinion with other ConceptDraw MindWave users. Your opinion will be valuable for us.

My hat really goes off to the folks over at ConceptDraw. If they continue to develop excellent robots for Google Wave I will be the happiest guy around! Their developer, Danil Somsikov, is my new best friend. He is already talking about developing something for their Project Management app. Fantastic! Please, please, please keep up this great work! You’re a rockstar!

Have you tried this robot out yet? Please leave your thoughts below, we love to hear what you think.

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The great folks over at WithWaves have added a contribution to the Google Wave community by providing their internal tools to the public to help others build Google Wave extensions. You may remember the WithWaves guys from our Developer Spotlight: WithWaves post. They build some really great EBay & Amazon extensions.

Using their extension generator you will get the following:

Runnable Hello World project ready to be modified and added to a Wave

Spring integration in your robot / gadget back-end project compatible with Google App Engine

Ant tasks to test your gadget locally and deploy to App Engine from the command line

Access to our API core components, including an open source implementation of Named Entity Recognition for blips based on theAlchemy API

Gadget server handlers for communication from your gadget to the server with JSON / Spring

jQuery integration for your gadgets

Common gadget JS classes to handle Wave callbacks and state modifications

Simple Wave JS emulator that allows you to view your gadget locally for testing HTML/JS/CSS before deploying

Locale based language support for your gadget

Metadata to expose your robot / gadget as a extension installer

Eclipse / Google plugin ready project to run and update to app engine from Eclipse

They provide the following information and video to guide you through the process:

If you already have Java, Ant, Maven and the Java App Engine SDK installed, simply execute the following command in your console:

mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://mvn.withwaves.com

After entering the values for your project, you will have a running Google Wave robot & gadget ready in no time.

Use the same command to generate extensions in the future and you will have the option to enable new features as we release more extension generators.

Check out the videos below for a demo creating a simple “Hello World” robot and gadget, and optionally running it inside Eclipse and the Google Plugin for Eclipse.

WithWaves Extension Generator Demo from Derek Punsalan on Vimeo.

If you need more information about getting started with Eclipse and the Google Plugin for Eclipse see our post and detailed powerpoint presentation that we used at our Google Wave Hackathon we held in October.

If you need more information about Java, Ant, Maven and the Java App Engine SDK you are going to have to visit the links provided for those products and do a little reading. If you are a complete beginner, you should probably be prepared to dedicate a full day to getting yourself started.

Hope any of you wanna-be developers find this useful. It should help you get started much quicker with a product. Look forward to hearing from anyone who found this useful. Also, drop a thank you off over at WithWaves.

Leave a comment below with your thoughts, we love hearing what your thinking. Have you used their tools?

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Our January Developer Spotlight shines on Daniel Graversen of Mastering Wave. Daniel has been developing for since it has been released and his latest gadgets have been some of his best work yet. Those of you that are regulars to this blog will recognize Daniel as a frequent contributor here. However, it is only his great work as a developer that has earned him the Developer Spotlight, lets take a look.

There is the Strategy Planning Tool Gadget, described as:

When you are working on designing your business or a product launch, it requires the use of some of the strategic tools. It can be the SWOT, PEST or PESTEL or the BCG growth matrix. Normally work on those tools is done in a room and on a whiteboard. The whiteboard is a really great way to work and it can make people work together and create a lot of interesting content. It though has some challenges for teams that are not sitting together or are difficult to get in the same room.

There is also the Scrum Task Board gadget:

We have produced a new Taskboard gadget, created in flex where there is spend some more time on the interface to make it look wave-y. The gadget lets you assign users to tasks and view which tasks are unassigned.

Next is the the WordPress publishing robot:

The robot works by adding the robot wp-bot@appspot.com to your wave. First time you add the robot it complains that you need to give credentials for a WordPress blog. Next time you add the robot to a wave, it will publish the blog to your own site with out any hassle. Remember to have the plugin Wavr installed on your blog.

On the Mastering Wave site Daniel offers a lot of information to help out developers for . Daniel is truly a very enthusiastic Google Waver and has  been offering excellent advice, reviews and extensions to help and support the community.

Go check out Mastering Wave and offer Daniel your support and appreciation for his great efforts developing for .

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Google updated the Google Code Labs Wave API with a bunch of articles from developers. See the list of new articles below:

Creating a Google Wave robot that responds to blips

Shows how to set up a basic Python robot, and then add the ability for it to respond to blips and insert inline blips based on matching patterns in the blip text.

Google Wave Java Robot Tutorial

Gives a detailed explanation of creating a basic Java robot, and then shows how to extend the robot to respond to commands.

Google Wave Robots in Netbeans

Provides a step-by-step walkthrough of setting up a Google Wave Java Robot in Netbeans 6.7, and using the open-source WADRobotFramework.

Writing Your First Google Wave Robot

Provides a step-by-step tutorial of developing a Java robot in Eclipse.

Developing Simple Robots using the WadRobotFramework

Demonstrates using the WadRobotFramework to create a basic Java robot.

Writing an Advanced Google Wave Robot using WadRobotFramework

Demonstrates using the WadRobotFramework to create a Java robot that responds to patterns in a blip.

Spring Robot Tutorial

Provides instructions and sample code for creating a Java robot using the Spring MVC framework.

Debugging a Wave Robot by Inspecting Incoming Messages

Shows how to set up a Java robot to log useful messages to the App Engine console, then gives tip on viewing those logs.

Wave Robot Using Groovy and Gaelyk Part 1

Provides instructions on creating a Java robot using Groovy and Gaelyk.

Creating a Salesforce Robot

Shows how to create a basic Java robot, and then how to connect that to the Salesforce API.

These new articles will certainly be welcome by developers. It is interesting to see the Google Wave team supporting (or, at least, bringing to our attention) development in languages other than  and .

Also, although this is good and will be appreciated it is not an update to the original API documents that many developers have been asking for. Hopefully, that is in the works and will be forthcoming soon. Certainly before Google I/O 10.

Have you used any of these articles? Do you have one that you think should be added to the list? Share your thoughts below.

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It is that time of year again. Time to register for Google I/O 10. The early discounted registration is now open through April 16, 2010. The cost is:

• Early bird price (until 4/16)     $400 USD
• List Price (starting 4/17)          $500 USD
• Academia (Student, Faculty)   $100 USD

The event is being held at the Moscone Center in San Fransisco (same as last year) on 19-20 May 2010.

If you are not familiar with what Google I/O 10 actually is, this is Google’s description:

Google I/O brings together thousands of developers for two days of deep technical content, focused on building the next generation of web, mobile, and enterprise applications with Google and open web technologies such as Android, Google Chrome, Google APIs, Google Web Toolkit, App Engine, and more.

I/O will feature over 80 sessions ranging from introductory talks to deep dives on the nuts and bolts of a particular technology or product. Fireside chats will also return this year, where you can ask questions to Google engineers in an informal, intimate setting.

One of those deep dives will be Google Wave. They have 60 of the 80 sessions listed and four of those 60 sessions involved Google Wave. Here are the sessions listed for Google Wave:

• Open source Google Wave: Building your own wave provider

Learn how to build your own wave service. Google is open sourcing the lion’s share of the code that went into creating Google Wave to help bootstrap a network of federated providers. This talk will discuss the state of the reference implementation: the software architecture, how you can plug it into your own use cases — and how you can contribute to the code and definition of the underlying specification.

• Google Wave API design principles + anatomy of a great extension

Google Wave is all about collaboration, and the most successful extensions are user-friendly and collaborative. Wave robots should be as intuitive to communicate with as a human, and play well with other robots; Wave gadgets should extend the metaphors of the textual collaboration into the visual. In this talk, we’ll discuss the design and privacy principles you should consider while building extensions, and show examples of extensions that demonstrate these principles.

• Making smart & scalable Wave robots

A smart robot must be able to store persistent data. Wave robots can store data in wave structures, like wavelets, datadocs, and annotations, instead of traditional data-stores. A scalable robot must perform operations with minimal bandwidth. Wave robots can optimize by selecting the appropriate amount of context, the optimal events, and narrow filters for events. In this talk, we’ll share best practices on data storage and scaling.

• Google Wave and the enterprise environment

Google Wave provides enterprises with an opportunity to streamline a variety of communications. One of the main ways this occurs is through building generalized and custom extensions. This session will cover some of the existing enterprise extensions that have been built as well as give a sneak peek as to what’s in progress. If you’re wondering how Wave can be used to help build your business, you’ll want to attend this session.

Two of these four sessions are of great interest to me. The “API Design Principles” because I think they need to spend some time talking about what is a great extension, how to make a great extension and how to make your extension interact with other extensions. This is a must. There are not a lot of extensions (none that I am aware of) that use info or enhance another extension.

Secondly, of course, I am very interested in the “Enterprise Environment” session. I am hoping that this will coincide and build upon the “Building Your own Provider” session and some kind of document application integration announcement that I am expecting for I/O 10.

I’m all registered and ready to go. Very excited for what will be an awesome event. Check out @googleio , on Twitter, for the latest updates on I/O. (official hashtag: #io2010)

Are you going? What do you think about the Wave sessions scheduled? Do you anticipate another big Wave announcement at I/O 10? Share your thoughts below.

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As most developers are aware you can currently develop extensions in  using Java™ and Python™.

See the following links for the Google™ released toolkits for:

• Java™
• Python™

Also, because Google™ requires robots to be on Google App Engine, a robot can only be written in either  Python™ or Java™… or another language that can be implemented on the JVM.

So folks have been hard at work developing some APIs for other languages.

Take for instance Ruby on Rails™…which has . there is a number of efforts to develop an API for :

• Sam Ruby’s Wave Robot Ruby Client
• Jack Danger’s Wave
• Mike Sofaer’s Wave Robot Sinatra Template

If you would like to try to write your first robot in  for Google Wave™ visit:

Rave: Google Wave™ Robots on Ruby™ and it will walk you through developing our first Google Wave™ robot using .

If you are interested in doing something with visit:

Wave Robot Using Groovy™ and Gealyk™ Part 1 UPDATE and it will get you started using  to develop a robot.

Finally, if you would like to use ™ (because GAE now supports Java™) visit:

Google Wave and Clojure™ as they walk you through building your first robot for using ™.

If you know of any other languages that are being used to develop robots please let us know below in the comments. Moreover, if you are using any of the above languages drop us a line about your experience.

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As somebody who has been…well overly evangelistic about Google Wave I find Google’s complete disregard in describing where and how they expect this product (Google Wave) to evolve rather discerning.

I have mentioned many times on this blog that I think the real market for Google Wave is the business community. If we agree that the definition of Web 2.0 “is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.” Google Wave then, in my mind, is the first real Web 2.0 application that truly meets that overall definition and the first that promises to deliver real-time Web 2.0 to the business world.

Problem is, business doesn’t know what you talking about with you speak with them about Google Wave. I have now spoken with many business owners and professional communities. All of who had no idea what Google Wave was.

When I explained it to them they all had the same three questions:

• Can you collaborate using Google Docs?
• Can you collaborate using Microsoft Office?
• Do I have to do everything in the cloud?

To those questions I say:

• I hope that soon Google will announce what they are doing with Google docs.
• I know of a few online companies, that support cloud computing using Microsoft Office, are working on a Google Wave extension.
• There should be no reason that you cannot host your server and have Google Wave for your company Intranet.

Then they ask:

• So is it available?
• When will it be available?
• Who makes this robots and gadgets and how much will they cost?

I reply:

• It’s in Beta testing and you need an invite.
• I think next year it will be open up to the public.
• You could make your own robot or gadget that supports your own collaborative flow.

For the businessman and professional this is interesting news. But that is pretty much all it adds up to. Until it becomes real, until there is a clear business use case mapped by Google with a timeline for some important functionality or milestones in the development of Google Wave, this technology will remain a wait and see for almost all businesses.

So Google, if you listening, this is what you must do:

• Develop your Google Wave strategy for the way ahead.
• Release your vision of Google Wave and you vision for what you will be further developing for the product.
• Release some milestones that you have for the product.
• Talk about document support and how it will evolve and when you think it will be available.
• More info about a robot/gadget store would be wonderful.
• Outline a clear business support model. – Accreditation and/or certification credentials, building an appliance, etc, etc

Without any real information on those points listed above anything I share with folks is purely speculation. Business does not support or pay too much attention to speculative IT. When it is available and when it works then they might take an interest.

In the meantime, Microsoft will be releasing it’s new Office line and it’s new SharePoint product. Many, many businesses will be signing up to upgrade their business’s collaborative workflow processes with something tangible. Unless, they know about something better (like way, way better) that is coming in the very near future.

Google, don’t do an Apple, share your plans for the Google Wave product. It may be able to do all things, that will be clear to most when they start using it, but share the areas of development where you will focus your efforts.

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Google’s Campfire One is a series of sessions where they invite certain developers to their campus to talk about their ideas and news surrounding their developments. A few nights ago they had the Google Web Tookit 2.0 developers on hand.

Google Web Tookit 2.0 is the development kit offered by Google for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. GWT is used by many products at Google, including Google Wave and Google AdWords. It’s open source, completely free, and used by thousands of developers around the world.

At Google’s Campfire One the developers unveiled the Google Web Tookit 2.0:

After a year and a half of working with teams like Google Wave, AdWords, and Orkut (as well as many others inside and outside of Google), Google Web Toolkit 2.0 has emerged with new tools in its toolkit and more features in its core SDK to meet the demands of today’s web applications.

The video below is from Google’s Campfire One and shows the developers showcasing their new product (it is actually a series of  6 videos, just like being at the real thing):

Two of the big improvements they made in Google Web Tookit 2.0 is:

Faster Apps

Google Web Toolkit now offers a new tool called Speed Tracer, a performance profiler for Google Chrome that allows developers to see what’s going on in a whole new way by enabling diagnosis of hidden problems. Developer-guided code splitting is another new feature that allows developers to split up their application into multiple pieces for much faster startup times. Users download only the JavaScript they need to get started while the rest can be loaded at a later time.

Faster Development

Google Web Toolkit 2.0 also introduces UiBinder, a Declarative UI framework that enables rapid design iteration and a clean separation between presentation layer and application logic. Team projects will benefit from an improved workflow that provides smooth collaboration between designers and developers.

Here is the Speed Tracer Tutorial:

These updates will be well received by Google Wave developers. I think the UiBinder will be a big hit among all developers. If you are not too familiar with GWT but want to be check out some of the GWT Books to help you get started.

Love to hear thoughts from the developers on what they think of the latest update to the GWT.

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