Howdy Group A.5’ers! Note: If that didn’t make sense to you, no worries; head over here to find out what you missed in Part 1 of this series.

Today we’ll continue down the road to making Wave your next-generation communication tool of choice. We’ve already examined some of the basics to making the most out of your invitation, now we’re going to take our waves to the next level by extending the basic functionality of Google Wave. We’ll be doing this through extensions.

Wave’s extensions fall into two broad categories: Gadgets and Bots. Both do useful things within your waves, but go about it in different ways. To test these extensions, I recommend you start a new wave, with just you as a participant, that way you don’t annoy anybody or embarrass yourself while you’re figuring out these things!

Gadgets embed rich media within your replies. The most common examples are the two preinstalled gadgets: the yes/no/maybe gadget and the Google Maps gadget. You access these by clicking their respective buttons while creating or editing a blip (which is a fancy way of saying an individual reply or message within a wave.)

Yes/no/maybe is a quick, lightweight tool for getting a simple response from the participants on a single question. Think more “Do you want to come eat grilled cheese sandwiches?” or RSVP’s than “What would you like to eat? A…B…C…D…”  To embed yes/no/maybe in your blip, simply click the button that looks like a three-color traffic-light and type your question above the gadget. Note: for more advanced polling check out Wave-poll.

yes/no/maybe insert button

The Google Maps gadget is also preinstalled in Wave and allows participants to add “pins” marking locations to the map, just like on the full fledged app. However, what sets the gadget apart from http://maps.google.com is that all wave participants can add pins to the map, and all participants can see the points that have been added. Why is this useful? Well, say you’re setting up an office carpool. It would be trivial to add all of the rider info to the map gadget and then, at a glance be able to divvy up the pick-up schedule, determine who picked up whom, etc. Another would be lunch spots around town, as anyone participating in the wave could simply add their own pin. To add the map gadget, click the stick pin icon in the toolbar. Note: For a really cool implementation of this gadget, check out Trippy from Lonely Planet.

maps gadget insert button

We’ll cover advanced gadget-ing in next week’s post, for now, check out these four!

This bot is built to kill. (Currently unavailable in Wave)

Bots, unlike gadgets, are automated participants that you can add to your wave. If you are familiar with IRC this concept is nothing new. However for the uninitiated, it may be a little confusing. Essentially, each bot has a specific task, like the robots on a assembly line. On an assembly line, you have robots that weld, robots that twist bolts, and robots that hold things. Wave is no different, except here, we have bots that automatically clean up empty blips, automatically link to Wikipedia, and seek out Twitter accounts when a Twitter username is mentioned with an @ prefix. Let’s take a look at these examples.

Cleantxt manages formatting, spelling and basic grammar in blips. I’m of the opinion that this bot should be included in EVERY wave, but especially in any wave that is open to the public. To use Cleantxt, add cleantxt@appspot.com to your wave’s participants.

Wikify adds either links to entries in or inserts definitions from Wikipedia. To link to an entry simply type <wikify topic> and the link will be generated. To insert a definition type <wikidef topic> and the definition will be automagically inserted. To use Wikify, add wikifier@appspot.com to your wave’s participants.

Finally, there’s TwitUsernames. This bot auto-links to a Twitter profile when an @prefixed username is mentioned in a blip within your wave. To use Twitusernames add twitusernames@appspot.com to your participants.

There are myriad bots available for an idea of what’s out there take a look at this list. Chances are, if you have an automated task you’d like to see in your wave, there’s a bot for that.

Alright, A.5’ers, or should I say A.6’ers? Yeah, that’s right! You gained a point! You should be proud of yourself; I’m proud of you!

Until next week when we cover more advanced gadgets, Happy Waving!