Which applications would you like to see integrated with Google Wave?

Question

Google Wave has some very interesting features in it, mostly the integration ones. Which applications (web or not) would you like to see integrated with it first, when it launches?

Answer 1

I personally would like to see stackoverflow, dzone and wordpress blogs integrated with it. Much easier to see it all in one place (IMHO RSS feeds almost do the trick, but they are read only, whereas google wave allows you to feed back).

Answer 2

AFAIK there is no support for Skype-type voice / live video communication. Maybe that could be added by simply connecting Wave with Skype, or it could be made into a native feature of Wave. There are definitely problems associated with that, but it would be a huge plus for businesses, I think.

Answer 3

When I watched the wave demo video, particularly the bit about the federated architecture and open protocol atop XMPP, I was struck by how Wave could be a unifying technology for many of our disparate media.

I would like to see Wave used as both an aggregator for conversations taking place on other technologies (twitter, blogs, email, flickr, IM, irc, etc), but also an easy way to promote a conversation or content on one of those media to a wave.

If we assume every addressable piece of content on the web has a (implied until first used) wave associated with it, and it's possible to compose waves from other waves, we have the potential for some pretty compelling Wave integration. I can aggregate email conversations, tweets, photos, and blog posts pertaining to an event or subject into a unified wave where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Separately, I was struck by the flexibility of Wave, not just technically in terms of the open technologies or the extension model, but that it doesn't appear to prescribe much in the way of user behaviors. I am eager to see what sort of innovative conventions and use cases emerge organically once a large community of users begin to use it day to day.

Answer 4

• listserv
• touring musicians' schedules
• tweets, especially tweets discovered through hashcode searches
• links into Portable Document Format (pdf) pages
• links to Amazon Kindle format texts
• links to Google Books
• links to Gutenberg Project documents
• all comment threads
• Yahooo Groups & Google Groups
• MSDN documentation
• alt.sysadmin.recovery (and other usenet groups)

Answer 5

Exchange and Office FTW.

This isn't the sexiest answer or the most "different and new", but it would be the biggest Game Changer. Microsoft's been moving a lot in the right direction with openness in the development division, open source projects, SOA solutions, cloud solutons. If they took the next 24 months and made Exchange the best Wave federated server a small or medium business could buy, and made Office the best set of tools and editors for your formatted Waves, they could really change the landscape of the computer industry. They could stop defending their shrinking data silo and lock-in and instead lead the charge towards our connected future.

Microsoft has already shown they can make excellent tools that don't rely on their proprietary technology: Windows Live Writer is such an awesome Blogging Client that Mac Users will run a virtual copy of Vista just to use it. If they were to ditch MAPI, COM, Sharepoint and all the other Cruft, Outlook 2012 could be the best Waves client ever, and prove once and for all that an HTML 5 app might be neat, but it can't compare to a first class Smart Client application.

Answer 6

SharePoint! SharePoint is all about collaboration, this would just enhance the experience.

Answer 7

I'd love to see code-review functionality implemented in Google Wave. The ability to load up some source code (perhaps pulled straight from a source control repository like git), and then comment on specific parts of it.

These comments could be committed back to the repository as TODO: items for the original coder to respond to, or otherwise address.

Of course, some cleverness would be needed to ensure that indentation is retained, and that code is syntax highlighted.

Answer 8

I agree with sanity. The ability to do code reviews possibly in real time has huge potential. It's similar to Code Collaborator, and if it got Wave integration that would be sweet. It would make it easier for Agile/XP programming to be better extended for remote developers not in the same office but still do pair programming. Also it would be nice to have a plugin that could test the code right from Wave while you're collaborating on code! Syntax highlighting based on your language.

Eclipse integration or whatever flavor of IDE(Visual Studio, VIM, Emacs, Source Insight) you prefer to be integrated with Wave, so you can collaborate either from Wave or your IDE.

Microsoft Visio or some UML tool for hashing out software design ideas in realtime.

Answer 9

Visual studio, it would be great to see live updates of others code - live pair programming (with developers physically separated across the globe) would be really good!

Answer 10

I would like to see Waves as an interface to Stack Overflow questions. Typing a question and watching a dozen replies appearing in real time before you've even finished asking it would be awe-inspiring :)

Answer 11

GMail integration. I want Wave to replace GMail so I don't have to keep yet another thing open - which is half the point of Wave.

Answer 12

Not necessarily an application, but I would love to see a phone with the core contact/IM/email system based on Wave.

Answer 13

I love Google latitude, so if they could expand on local search and stuff like that, especially if wave will work nicely with mobile.

Answer 14

Desktop Sharing - like Crossloop, Vyiew.com, Adobe Connect Pro, & similar

Answer 15

Project Management - like Project, Basecamp, & similar

Answer 16

Allow me to be a true nerd:

I'd like it to be a Role Playing Game server.

They showed a chess board, and I started thinking about it being a gaming table, like Dungeons & Dragons Insider was supposed to have. I don't particularly care about 3D, just a nice 2D table that keeps track of positions, distances, visibility, and initiative order.

Answer 17

I'd like to see an IDE built on wave technology. This is taken directly from my blog (June 4):

Would it be possible to host the entire development process online? If someone could create a Wave-based code infrastructure, we could have an online IDE:

• Each Java code file could be a Wave, which could be edited collaboratively--by multiple users at the same time, if necessary (hello Extreme Programming!).
• A spell-check-like plugin could be created to provide real-time compiler feedback and intellisense.
• A bot could be granted access to the code tree in order to compile and deploy changes to a cloud-based service in real-time, provide debugging services, and even run unit tests.
• Developers could "check out" the waves into their own framework instance, and once a set of changes is ready, they could be merged into the "stable" set of Waves.
• Waves have a built-in, extremely powerful version control system built in already; you can visually and immediately step back to each point in a file's revision history to watch its evolution.
• The Google folks already showed how useful Waves can be in bug management; bugs and tasks could be handled and passed around within the same Wave framework. They could probably even be linked to the code changes that were made to fix them (and vice versa), for future reference.
• A plugin similar to the bug management one could be used to tag a spot in code for colleague review. A Wave thus tagged would appear in the colleague's inbox, where they could see the changes made in the context of the entire Java file. They could start a thread inline in the code to ask questions and make suggestions, which would all be immediately visible to the original programmer. They could even have an entire chat session right there, inline with the code! Both the original programmer and the colleague could make and see the changes in real-time. Once the colleague is satisfied, they could use the plugin to sign off on the changes.
• Documentation (both internal and external) could also be managed by the same system. Code for a particular feature could be linked to that feature's documentation.

And perhaps the best part about the whole thing is that developers don't even need to install anything on their computers. They can log in from any web-enabled computer, anywhere, and all the same capabilities are at their fingertips. With Wave, Google has laid the foundation for a new generation of Internet technologies. I'm excited to see the many ways that this sort of technology will be leveraged in the years to come.

Answer 18

Integration with major social networking sites like Facebook, StackOverflow, BeBo AND integration with MSFT Word and Excel.

Answer 19

Bugtracker, Version control (SVN) and build server integration

Answer 20

1. Issue Trackers like JIRA, Issue Tracker in Google Code Projects, Visual Studio TFS, Trac etc. Currently I have a lot of issues spread around the web in various open source and private projects. Ability to see and manage all these issues from one single location would be extremely valuable.

2. I would love to have RSS feeds of software blogs I follow, comments, forum discussions and mailing lists in one place, so that it would be easy to get updates and communicate back.

Answer 21

I would like to integrate MediaWiki into Wave. However, there will probably be not much left of MediaWiki when it's done, and we'd have a speedier and better Wikipedia!

Answer 22

"Integration with major social networking sites like Facebook"

Unless Facebook jumps on boards I doubt this will happen. Or actually, it will and then it will be shutdown. Most major social networking sites have pretty well defined and stringent caching policies. That coupled with how data in streams is saved and hosted on Google's servers indefinitely would be a problem. Facebook has a 24hr caching policy.

Answer 23

Anything related to collaboration:

• A minutes of meetings editor (specialized text editor, maybe even some others)
• A project management tool: WaveProject. People would add tasks, update them, ...
• And much more.

I think that a desktop app with caching may be much more responsive than doing it over the web, BUT, internet speeds are scaling up to a desktop-like experience.

Answer 24

Answering the proposal of Rinat Abdullin 224team.com is already working on connecting Google Wave with JIRA and other products from Atlassian. I am inviting to discussion on wave.