Inside Look at the Google Wave Extension Gallery

Earlier this month, Google Wave announced the new extension gallery that organizes and features the latest and most useful extensions for Google Wave. You can access the extension gallery in the navigation pane. You can view all listed extensions or view the featured extensions. For some extensions, you can even try them out before you install them.

The nice thing about the gallery is that any extension submitted into the gallery is subjected to a review process that ensures quality and continuity within the Wave interface.

This means that some extensions are not included in the gallery. For example, we’ve talked about Rosy the translation bot and WavePlayer, but these extensions are not included in the gallery.

My complaint earlier on with extensions and gadgets was that there was a chaotic nature about them.

In-depth Review of Google Wave Translation Bots

We’ve talked before about how to use the Aunt Rosy bot to translate your waves into another language. Truth be told, Aunt Rosy is not the only translation bot out right now. I also don’t know what everyone else’s experiences with Aunt Rosy are, but I’ve experienced some problems with it glitching and then filling up the wave with a bunch of repeated translations. So I thought we’d review a couple other translation bots for Google wave and see what they have to offer too: Translatey and Multilingual.

Aunt Rosie translation bot

Because I already explained how to use Aunt Rosie in another post, I’ll be brief here. It seems like Aunt Rosie is one of the most popular translation bots used right now. Unlike some other translation bots, Aunt Rosie gives you the ability to translate in realtime. Your words are translated as you type them underneath your blip.

How to Use Poll Gadget 2.0 in Google Wave

Google Wave has a basic “Yes/No/Maybe” gadget but this can be a bit limiting when you have a question for participants in a wave that goes beyond a yes, no, or maybe answer. However, Poll Gadget 2.0 allows you to create a custom poll with custom options and settings. It’s one of the best customizable poll gadget that I’ve used so far.

Here’s how you can add it to a wave.

How to Add a “Whiteboard” in Google Wave

The Napkin gadget allows you to insert a “whiteboard” right into Google Wave so you can collaborate with live, handwritten drawings. You can customize brush color and size, and you have options to undo or clear your drawing.

Surely, this won’t necessarily allow you to create any artistic masterpieces, but it is a good way to share visual ideas if you happen to think that sort of way.

It’s really easy to add to your wave. Here’s how you can do it.

How to Embed a Remote MP3 File into Google Wave

Google Wave is meant to be a platform that allows collaboration on a variety of different levels. When you wave, you’re not just limited to an exchange of text like traditional instant messaging, but you can even include elements like video and audio.

WavePlayer is a gadget that allows you to embed MP3 files in a wave. You’re embedded MP3 will appear in an embedded audio player like this:

Here’s how you can do it.

How to Embed a Web Page into Google Wave

Google Wave gadgets add increased functionality to Wave. The “<iframe>” gadget allows you to embed a web page into Google Wave.

This can be helpful if you want to share a website with participants in a wave without the extra step of having to click an external link outside of Wave. I also know some people will create a public wave around the topic of their website and then embed their website into the public wave as a form of sharing it with others.

In order to embed a web page into Google Wave, you’ll need to click the “Add Gadget by URL” button in the toolbar of the wave.

Video: Exploring Maps in Google Wave

Google Maps has been powerfully integrated into Google Wave. Like everything else in Wave, maps can be edited and manipulated in real time and all other members of the wave will be able to see your changes instantaneously. Thus, the Maps gadget in Wave is useful for, again, collaboration; this time, you can share locations, routes, and points of interests, all inside the beautiful Google Maps interface. Watch the video below for a brief, complete rundown of the Maps gadget.

How to Use “Aunt Rosie” the Google Wave Translation Bot

Google Wave largely appeals as a collaboration tool. This is really helpful for businesses and organizations who need to brainstorm, communicate, and bounce ideas off of each other in real-time. Thankfully, Google Wave promises to have a variety of tools available to make collaborating as easy and natural as possible.

One of these tools is “Aunt Rosie” the translation robot. Aunt Rosie gives you the ability to communicate with someone who might even speak a different language than you. Whatever you type is translated into the language of your choice. Here’s how you can do it.

How to Add Twitter to Google Wave

You can even integrate your Twitter account into Google Wave by using a Twitter extension. It’s really easy. Here’s how.

First, you’ll need to add tweety-wave@appspot.com to your contacts.

Secondly, you’ll need to create a new wave and add Tweety to the wave. When you do this, you’ll want to make sure that your pop-up blocker is turned off because the Tweety extension will be added to the wave and a window will pop-up asking you for your Twitter login details.