Testing Wave in WordPress

So I finally got my developers sandbox account for Google Wave! …Only problem is that the sandbox accounts (username@wavesandbox.com) are apparently different than the preview accounts (username@googlewave.com), and they don’t connect yet, so it won’t let me find or chat with the only people I know who have accounts. :)

Anyway, I’ve been spending last night and today trying to figure out how to embed waves into WordPress, so I can experiment with the liveblogging that I mentioned in my last post. It took awhile just to figure out how to add robots like Bloggy or WP-Bot so that I can publish the waves

Luckily I found the WordPress plugin Wavr, which doesn’t require any extensions within Wave at all. (Though I did have to upgrade WordPress to 2.8.5 for it to work, and finally found the instructions on how to use it buried within the notes on the file list at Sourceforge.) The actual wave I’m using is embedded below this post…for those without Wave accounts, here’s a screenshot:

Still, while Wavr is cool and works beautifully, there are a couple of problems I see right off the bat that seem to be consistent across these Embed APIs, including WP-Bot and Bloggy:

• Only those with Wave accounts can see what is in the wave. This sort of defeats the purpose of using it as a publishing tool.
• In order for a wave to be seen on the blog, it has to be marked as public. If it’s marked as public, anyone can go in and edit the content or comment on it. (I could be wrong about this one, but so far I haven’t seen a way for a user to publish a wave publicly, and still keep it protected.)

My hope was that Wave would give bloggers a way to update posts dynamically in real time while readers watched. I’m not sure if this is possible without a Wave account on the part of the audience…and even if it is, I wonder if it’s possible to customize the wave in such a way that it appears more like a blog post?

I could see one way to build an extension that would potentially accomplish this goal: build an extension that interfaces with the WordPress install, but doesn’t embed it. Rather, it reads the title of the wave and makes a new blog post with that title. Then it reads each blip, and adds those as paragraphs to the post. When the writer is done, they publish the wave and the extension publishes the content as a post. If the writer goes back to edit the wave later, the extension goes back to that original post and edits it accordingly.

Of course, the problem with this is that you have to wait until the wave is “finished” before the post is published. And even if you were to set up the extension so it updates the post every time you finish a blip, not only would it not be updating character by character (which is way cooler)…but the reader would have to refresh their browser before seeing any changes. Lame.

Maybe it’s a moot point, as within the next couple of years it’s very possible that most of the technologically-savvy world will have Wave accounts anyway. Though honestly, that’s a bit optimistic. Another hope is that Google will open up waves so that everyone can see them…they just can’t interact with them (this would make more sense IMO).

Regardless, my “live novel” won’t be ready for the start of NaNoWriMo I don’t believe. Though I did find a cool extension called CountColon (countcolon@appspot.com for any wavers who want to add this bot to your contacts), which lets you count lines, words, characters etc. by adding it to the wave and typing “[count: words]” in a blip. (It doesn’t dynamically update though, so if you go back and edit, you have to re-insert the code to get a fresh count.)

Also, I’ve found a couple of pages that have been a big help as far as finding extensions for Wave…apparently there was supposed to be a welcome wave in my inbox when I first logged in that had this kind of info, but I never got one. So I’ve been spending a lot of time browsing forums and trying to glean the simplest of info on how to use the service…such as how to make my avatar appear publicly. Anyway, here are a couple of those resources:

The complete list of Google Wave Gadgets, Robots and Servers
Comprehensive Google Wave Extensions List

And for the wave-savvy, here is my test embed of Wavr!

[wave id="wavesandbox.com!w+pqCcr5FeC"]

3 Responses to “Testing Wave in WordPress”

1. HaiColon says:

   November 5, 2009 at 4:16 pm

   Normally a user would be able to see an embedded wave without having a Google Wave account. The only reason why this is not true right now is because Wave is still in preview.

   At the moment making a wave public means everyone can edit it like you said, but that’s also just temporary. Google plans to add access control features to Wave so that you can control who can read and write. They mention that in nearly every official wave they write so it’s just a matter of time. They do have trouble with people editing their waves themselfs so it should be a priority :)

   As for CountColon not updating statistics automatically after an edit.. I just uploaded version 0.4.0 which does just that :) It doesn’t work for commands you used before this update so you will have to replace the statistics with the [count: words,lines,chars,paras] command one more time. But then you will never have to do it again ^^ Unless you want to change what’s being displayed, then you can just swap the statistics with a new command.
2. sam says:

   November 12, 2009 at 2:19 pm

   hello,
   well i have a wordpress account (and recently wordpress plugin ) and would like to know how u got a wave in wordpress blog. I’ve read the ‘read me’ file when u download wavr and the information on the page where u download it and i am completely lost.lol. i’ve never worked with API or if i did i’ve never realized it. and while i dont mind playing around with something until i get it, some of the terminology and lack of any experience on my part is annoying me .So, only if u have time, if u could give me a step by step help that would be amazing. FYI i have the preview wave and i already have bloggy (though i dont know how to use it). Thanks!!!!!
3. Eldon Schneider says:

   January 14, 2010 at 1:12 pm

   It seems you quite have had a hard time dealing with google wave? Or not. I’m just curious if the same principle is applied with the wave extensions featured in firefox.