Extending Google Wave Terminology
For the last few days, I’ve had the chance to get my feet wet in the developer sandbox of Google Wave. My first impressions are very positive. I am as awed now by the scope and potential impact of Wave as I was after watching the hour long video from Google I/O.
As consolation to those itching to try it already, bear in mind that the sandbox is in a very raw state right now. Performance issues aside, informative text such as:
This wave is experiencing some slight turbulence, and may explode. If you don’t wanna explode, please re-open the wave. Some recent changes may not be saved.
and
“Everything’s shiny, Cap’n. Not to fret!” Unfortunately, you’ll need to refresh.
Wanna tell Dr. Wave what happened?
appear quite often. Of course, this is totally expected for pre-alpha software — I’m merely pointing out the humorous messages!
For a more intimate look into Wave, especially some of the deeper, more social issues, here is part of an ongoing ha-ha-only-serious joke from the internal wave-discuss group about extending existing Wave terminology. The list is really telling, since indeed, I have read many ridiculous Drips and most of my fresh waves Surge only to get Borked by rickrolley.
Wavejack — To hijack the contents of a wave to where it no longer resembles the original idea
Drip — Stupid question no one answers
Bork — To add useless, noisy or destructive bots to a wave. (aka The Swedish Chef or rickrolley or the borkforceone bot)
Surge — The effect of a fresh wave that elicits the chaos of mass editing
Drown — To have so many waves to follow that one can’t keep up with them
Sea Sick — A state of dizziness induced by an overly active wave
Tuna/Noise/Herring — Wave speak for Spam
Fishnet — Spam filter
Despite instabilities and widespread antisocial behavior, the wave sandbox is alive with a flurry of activity. People are busy creating annoying bots, forming role playing communities and writing collaborative books such as this one. So Google has a lot of issues to work out, not in the least how to stop us all from Drowning 
So far, I haven’t had a chance to write any interesting wave extensions, but it’s in my things to do!
2 comments:
Hey guys, I was searching the web today and came up on a few corporate websites that I was able to get in quite easily. I’m awesome! So I went in and found a bunch of Google Wave invites for their employees just sitting there. I gave away 13 of these to all my friends already and there are a few left. I don’t want to get in trouble by listing the steps up here, if you want one, shoot me an email to stevencruisest@gmail.com. BTW, it’s not that easy to do this, I’ll have to talk you through it. But I can only do a few, so when you get one then you need to go on and help others in getting another. Spread the goods around.
Here is the above in one sentence, “I broke into a website and stole invites and if you give me your credit card number I’ll get you into Google WAVE!”