Do you remember Google Wave? After a lot of hype around the initial launch of Wave – which some pundits billed as an “email killer” at the time – things have been rather quiet around the service. The latest update to Wave, however, could push the service back into the public eye. Publishers can now easily embed waves on their sites and readers can see them without having to be logged in to Wave, which makes Wave a great live blogging platform.
Wave for Live Blogging (and more)
At first glance, this looks like a minor update, but for the first time, you can now easily embed waves on your own site. Google notes that you could use Wave for real-time RSVPs with the Yes/No/Maybe gadget and to publish documentation via embedded waves. For us, however, the real potential here is live blogging with Wave.
The interesting thing about using Wave as a live blogging platform, of course, is that readers can see what a blogger is writing in real time. Live blogging doesn’t get more real time than that.
Wave allows users to easily style text and embed images and videos. Adding additional writers to a wave is also as easy as adding another contact to the wave.
Wave Elements: Embedding Waves Made Easy
Until now, embedding Waves took a bit of work and users who weren’t logged in to Wave weren’t able to see your updates. Thanks to the newly released Wave Element tool, however, embedding a wave is now simply a matter of copying and pasting a snippet of JavaScript into your site or blog post. To make a wave public, you also have to add the [email protected] account to your wave.
You can see an example of what an embedded Wave looks like below.
One Caveat: Doesn’t Work With Internet Explorer Yet
The Wave team, however, also points out one major deal-breaker: the embedded waves don’t work with Internet Explorer yet (even with Chrome Frame). The team plans to resolve this issue soon, however.
