How to use Extensions in Google Wave

Written on October 19th, 2009 at 5:56 amby Arun Vishnu

An extension is an application which is used to add extra functionality to the the main application. So wave extensions are mini-applications that works within a wave.
Two types extensions are available in Google Wave - Gadgets & Robots.

Robots

A robot is an automated participant on a wave. They can talk with users and interact with waves. For example "bitly-bot@appspot.com" is a robot which automatically convert a long url to short bitly url. So if you send a long url to a wave and if the bitly robot is present, it will take that long url and generate a short url and when you press done – you and others will see only the short url.

Now a robot can perform actions such as the following:

modify information in a wave
interact with participants in a wave
communicate and synchronize information in a wave to the outside world or to other waves
access or modify state in a third-party (such as a database)

So How can I add a Robot?

Very simple. Just add them as a contact, then add the robot-contact to a wave.

Testing

Sometimes two robots might not work in the same wave. For example i tried to use both flippy and hangman in the same wave. But to play hangman, i have to send “play hangman”. But flippy flips that text to “uɐɯƃuɐɥ ʎɐlԀ” so the hangman will not detect “play hangman” text. So I have to remove flippy. Or you have to change the order of those robots so hangman robot will be called first and then flippy.

Gadgets

Gadget extensions provide a shared program which runs within the wave, and to which all participants have access. A good comparison would be iGoogle gadgets or Facebook applications.

How to use a Gadget?

To add a Gadget to a wave- J st click on the green puzzle piece, and enter the url into the bottom text box.

I added Vector Editor Gadget to my wave

Google wave Extensions List: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AdY6WUNA7GnbZGZ0aGhqeDNfMGNmNndwcWhn&pli=1 .

Google wave is not much interesting without these extensions. You can create your own extensions and submit to wave, just like iGoogle gadgets or Facebook applications.

extensions, gadgets, google, robots, wave