Grâce à Luka de Zorgloob, j’ai pu tester avant hier la Dev Preview de Google Wave. Le délai entre le test et le billet s’explique notamment par un emploi du temps chargé, et des priorités qui n’étaient pas celles de faire ce billet. Mais ça n’est pas le sujet. J’ai donc pu tester Google Wave, et me rendre compte que même si cette preview est encore assez bugguée, elle en reste à mon goût relativement assez avancée, et tout à fait prometteuse.

Comme vous pouvez le constater ci-dessus, la page principale de Google Wave est constituée de plusieurs box que vous pouvez faire disparaitre ou non, selon votre bon vouloir, ce qui vous permet de constituer votre propre interface. Parmi ces box, vous avez les menus (box « navigation », le listing des mails/conversations (box « inbox »), les contacts (une box de chat) mais également les conversations elles même, que l’on appelle les waves. D’ailleurs on peut voir sur la photo ci-dessus que l’on peut créer de nouvelles waves avec le lien « New Wave » tout à droite de l’image. Sur l’image ci-dessous, on voit ce que cela donne quand vous ouvrez une wave : en cliquant sur une des waves dans la liste à gauche (la box au centre en fait), la wave s’ouvre à droite. Notez que j’ai fait disparaitre la box « contacts » (rangée en haut).

Sur l’image ci-dessous, j’ai fait disparaitre les deux box de gauche (celle du menu et celle des contacts), ce qui ne nous donne que deux waves : la liste des waves à gauche et une wave à droite. Notez aussi que dans la wave de droite, les vidéos Youtube sont reconnues directement et s’affichent dans le mail (cette fonctionnalité existe déjà dans les chat sur Gmail).

L’API ouverte et les gadgets

Une des facettes fondamentales de Google Wave, c’est son aspect open-source (à vérifier). En effet, une API ouverte sera développée, qui permettra à tous de développer des gadgets et robots pour augmenter les possibilités de Google Wave.

Ci-dessous, une liste des gadgets présente visuellement ceux qui sont d’ores et déjà disponibles :

Les gadgets et les robots, ai-je dit. Oui, mais les robots, késako ? Voilà ce qu’en dit Google Wave lui-même :

Google–Wave Extensions List

(If you want to start a deeper discussion about an extension, create a new wave and link to it from here.

(Feel free to edit this wave to include your own extensions, so that all the extensions can be found here)

When adding a new extension, use this format:

<name linked to demonstration/discussion> – <status, gadget path, or bot contact> – <description>

Don’t forget to sort alphabetically!

Do not place gadgets or robots into this wave!

(This wave is not for testing, keep it clean and concise.)

Robots

(To use robots, add them as a contact, then add the robot-contact to a wave)

Chatbots

Eliza – ogenex@appspot.com – An implementation of the Eliza chatbot borrowed from the NLTK.

Elize – elizarobot@appspot.com – Is one of the first robots that was created by non Googler and is very useful if you are feeling alone in your Google Wave client.

Rude chatbot – notatory@appspot.com – An obnoxious chatbot borrowed from the Natural Language Processing Toolkit.

Conversion

BotURL – boturl@appspot.com – A URL Shortener – Replaces full URLs with a tinyurl.

Dice Bot – dice-bot@appspot.com – Dice-rolling bot. Dice Bot will replace XdY (X is the number of dice; Y is the number of sides) with the results of those rolls.

Flippy – flippy-wave@appspot.com – Turns text upside-down.

Hearty Emobot – hearty-emobot@appspot.com – Replaces ASCII art with wingding characters.

IPA Bot – ipa-bot@appspot.com – Changes normal letters into special characters used for phonetics.

Swedish Chef – borkforceone@appspot.com – Changes english into Swedish-Chef Speak. Bork! Bork!

Shortee – Wish – Change « c u l8r » to « see you later » etc.

Games

Hangman – wavehangman@appspot.com – Play Hangman.

Roshambo – roshambowave@appspot.com – Play Roshambo (Rock / Paper / Scissors).

Speedy – Wish – Track the words per minute of all participants, competitive typing!

Groups

Groupy – groupy-robot@appspot.com – Robot to manage groups.

Integration

drop.io – mikeswaverobot@appspot.com – Creates a drop and puts the info into the wave whenever the robot is added as a participant.

OpenAustrailia – In Progress – A robot to allow interaction with the OpenAustralia web site.

PlonieBot – In Progress – ploniebot@appspot.com – Brings wave document editing capabilities to the Plone CMS

Tweety the Twitbot – tweety-wave@appspot.com – You can access your Twitter account.

Twiliobot – twiliobot@appspot.com – Transforms phone numbers into click-to-call links. If user clicks a link, a call is placed to his phone and to the number in the link. The call can be transcribed and inserted into the wave as text with a link to the audio.

Language

PhilBot – Wish – A suggested solution to the problem of waves with languages you can’t read.

Rosy the Translator – rosy@wavesandbox.com – Translator (40 Languages).

Polling

Polly the Pollster – polly-wave@appspot.com – Poll Bot.

Search / Aggregation

Dr Weather – shiny-sky@appspot.com – Gives the weather for a City

Embedded Search Results – wave-sandbox@appspot.com – Web and Image searches inline.

Grauniady – grauniady@appspot.com – Searches the latest items from The Guardian for a given phrase.

Stocky – stocky-wave@appspot.com – Detects stock symbols from a wave and updates it with the live stock price.

Wavethingy – wavethingy@appspot.com – searches Amazon for DVDs and books, and gives the author a cut of any purchases made off the links.

Utilities

Databot – Wish – Will start as soon as the GData interface is published.

JBREAKOUT BOT ADDED – jbreakout@appspot.com – Debug utility that reports event triggers.

Multi – multi-wave@appspot.com – A quote collector. Reply a blip you want to quote with ‘quote this’ and randomly display a quote with ‘quote <wave@account.com>’. The bot is still being under development but you can try playing with it.

Style Chart Robot – stylechart@appspot.com – Inserts a chart into a wave.

Wave Management

Linear – Wish – Enforce all replies to be to the main wave. If a user replies to a reply, remove it and place it as a reply to the main wavelet.

Sweepy – sweepy-wave@appspot.com – Remove empty, whitespace-only blips.

Taggy – taggy-wave@appspot.com – Recognize #hashtags and add them as tags to the wave.

Tocgen – tocgen@appspot.com – Table of Contents auto-generated and updated based on the h1,h2,h3,h4 in a wave.

Gadgets

(To use these goto Debug > Extensions > Add Gadget > Enter the url into the bottom text box)

Utilities

Bidder – http://wave-api.appspot.com/public/gadgets/bidder.xml – Simple Auction.

Checky – http://wave-gadgets.appspot.com/checky.xml – Basecamp-like checklists with drag-and-drop.

HTML – http://wave-ide.appspot.com/html.xml – Embed any HTML into a wave.

<iframe> – http://wave-ide.appspot.com/iframe.xml – Embed ane web page (as <iframe>) into a wave.

Licensing – In Progress – http://wave-license.appspot.com/license_gadget.xml – Creative Commons RDF Embedding – Planning Stage.

Maps – http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/101415471413908368316/mappy.xml – Embed Google Map.

Napkin – http://my-wave-gadgets.appspot.com/wave/NapkinGadget.xml – Example of Flash/Flex Wave Gadget, similar to Whiteboard gadget above – source on Google Code.

QuakeBot – In Progress – Server information on the Quake 3 protocol.

Ratings – http://google-wave-resources.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/extensions/gadgets/ratings/ratings.xml – Lets participants rate and review a topic (movie, restaurant, etc) in a wave and shows a tally of the result.

Whiteboard gadget – http://vps.michaelrose.id.au/canvas.xml – Draw on a virtual whiteboard.

Who is Coming? – http://wave-api.appspot.com/public/gadgets/areyouin/gadget.xml – Show a list of all people that have said whether they will come or not.

Games

Backgammon – Wish – (from wikipedia) Remove all of one’s own checkers from the board before one’s opponent can do the same.

Battleship – Wish – Displays different board based on user.

Boxes – In Progress – Connect lines to make boxes and win.

Connect 4/Four-in-a-row – In Progress – sdunster@wavesandbox.com – http://www.sdunster.com/wave/four.xml – 2 users + observers, turn locking, just waiting to write win-detection code.

Floodit – http://gadget.wave.to/floodit/game.xml – 2 player race to fill a board with colors.

Magnetic Poetry – http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107558585548952247431/fridge-11.xml – Re-arrange random words to form poetry.

Othello – Wish – Play Reversi.

Sudoku – http://blah.appspot.com/wave/sudoku/sudoku.xml – Play Sudoku.

Hooks

CVS integration – Wish – CVS history can be converted into a wave with playback.

Pour le reste : Google Wave est à l’heure actuelle disponible via l’URL wavesandbox.com qui redirige vers une page de chez Google.