Google Wave Basics

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While most blogs are posting tips, tricks, new addons etc.. many readers remain confused about the basic features of Google Wave. Here is an attempt at clarifying the a,b,c’s of Wave.

Add contacts

Google Wave being a collaboration tool, one needs contacts on it. By default all Gmail contacts who are on wave are added to your contact box. To add any other contacts you have to click on the ‘+’ shown in the pic.

Start a Wave

Once you have your contacts in place, you can start a Wave to collaborate and interact. There are two ways to do this.

- Ping a particular contact or start a new wave with them. I don’t think there is any difference in the two options as yet, maybe later there will be.

- Start a new Wave from Inbox.

You can add contacts to an existing Wave, by the add contact tab in the upper area of that wave. The search box feature is quite helpful when you have to sift through a lot of contacts.

Reply

Once you start Waving things get real cool. Unlike IM’s where the conversation flows only in a single thread. Here the conversation can bifurcate into various channels. So while the Reply button on the top bar in the wave will let you reply only at the end of the entire stream.

You can simply click at the end of any chat from a user and continue that particular thread in an inset… as shown.

- Once you open a chat box in a Wave to type into, you can see a huge array of icon where you can change your font type, size, make it bold, italicize, put a header, strike through or underline. You can also add a link, google search results, apps, file attachments etc. from here.

These are the wave basics. Once you get the hang of these features you can explore wave further!

This is a Guest post by Priyanka who writes at Priyankawriting. If you ant to write for Shoumeloud, do read Shoutmeloud revenue sharing program.

Tagged as: basics, Google wave, guest author, guest post, tutorial

{ 1 trackback }

You are now listed on FAQPAL: December 22, 2009 at 16:11

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Shivaraj December 22, 2009 at 16:09: Nice post but it must add some more points .

2 RRH December 22, 2009 at 17:13: Thanks for the tips, as shivraj says you must added some more hidden tips, the about tips is general and almost eveyone knows.
Join me on Google Wave razarahil@googlewave.com
How Google Wave Useful for Blogger | Razzil.com http://bit.ly/49Dssg http://bit.ly/yA7ln

3 Sriraj December 22, 2009 at 17:22: The worst part of G Wave is that the invites aren’t real time. I sent out all my 8 wave invites a long time ago, but apparently none of them seem to have received the invites.
Now I’m left with no one to wave with me

4 Rajesh Kanuri @ TechCats December 22, 2009 at 17:47: The post is slightly unfinished I think you will mention more about the basic, IMO reading, writing, replying, adding need not be discussed as the basics,

5 Dana @ LetUpdate December 22, 2009 at 18:09: Thanks for this, i am one of many people that still confuse of google wave basic.

6 Ankit December 22, 2009 at 18:32: Nice tutorial for starters, anyways I created: How to embed Google Wave on Blogger or Wordpress blogs http://bit.ly/4yG0re

7 Chethan Thimmappa December 23, 2009 at 07:18: What is a “Blip” in Google Wave?