This morning, Google launched an "extensions" gallery for their real-time communications product, Google Wave. Within the new gallery, you'll find the tools and add-ons that have been created by the developer community to add additional functionality to the Wave service. Among the extensions are those some Wave users have probably seen before - like the popular "yes/no" voting gadget, for example, which lets you create polls via Wave. However, there are others that you may not have seen yet - like the "iFrame Gadget" that lets you embed webpages into a Wave or the "Likey Gadget" that provides a "like" (and "dislike!") button for showing support for a particular topic, similar to those found on Facebook or Google Buzz.
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According to the Google blog post, developers interested in submitting their extensions for inclusion in this gallery can do so by first submitting them for approval here. Google has also released a new Google Wave robots API (v2) for developers to try.
The complete list of extensions includes the following:
- Wave Sudoku (play Sodoku with friends in a Wave)
- Extension Installer (for developers only)
- Colcrop (game)
- Yellow highlighter (highlight text)
- Napkin gadget (for doodles)
- Waffle (date-picker)
- Iframe gadget (embed webpages in a Wave)
- Yes/No/Maybe gadget (for polls)
- Map gadget (insert maps)
- Video Chat Experience (chat in Waves)
- Phone Conference (call your friends)
- Mind Map gadget (collaborate on diagrams)
- Likey gadget (like/dislike a topic)
- Pollo gadget (for surveys)
- Take-out gadget (for ordering out)
- AccuWeather (weather forecasts)
Will Extensions Bring You Back to Wave?
With Google Wave soon becoming a member of the Google Apps family of products sometime this year, it's good to see development work continue on this innovative, if somewhat confusing, real-time tool. Although members of the tech community have expressed mixed feelings about the product in its current state, what Google has presented is definitely a unique service and one that may still be useful in several niche scenarios, if not as the email replacement some hoped it would be. For example, small teams in the workplace needing to collaborate with one another may find Wave a better option than sending multiple emails back and forth.
That being said, traffic to Google Wave has been declining sharply since November or December of 2009, depending which analytics service you use. Looking at the numbers, it's clear that Wave has been abandoned by many of its earliest adopters - users who were once clamoring for invites in ways that haven't been seen since Google first launched Gmail. (On that note, we actually have several spare invites sitting around - if you want one, comment and ask.)
Will extensions actually bring those one-time Wavers back? Probably not - at least, not for longer than a quick look at most. On the flip side, however, Wave advocates feel that there's great potential in this experimental project. Still, even most of those folks have to admit there's a lot of work that needs to be done before Wave could attract a mainstream audience.
So will Wave ever replace email? Perhaps not. But we wouldn't be surprised if some of the innovations developed in the Wave playground ended up in our Gmail inboxes one day. And for that, we'll keep one eye on Wave...even if we're not entirely embracing it just yet.
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