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.

While this might not necessarily allow you to create any artistic masterpieces, it is still 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.

First, click on the “Add Gadget by URL” button in the toolbar of the wave you want to insert the Napkin gadget into.

Once the prompt comes up, enter in the URL “http://my-wave-gadgets.appspot.com/wave/NapkinGadget.xml” and then click “Add.” The Napkin gadget will load up into your wave.

You’ll notice in the upper-left corner of the gadget, you can change the color of your brush and the size of the brush. You can also undo any additions to the whiteboard or clear it if you’d like.

Overall, the gadget works well. It does exactly what you would expect. The obvious difficulty is that it’s pretty hard to draw with the mouse (at least for me). Depending on the type of work that you need the Napkin gadget for, I could see this working really well with a digital pen and tablet rather than trying to draw a picture with a regular computer mouse. As you can see, my picture above looks like a 1st grader drew it. Other than that, this is a great tool for bouncing quick drawings back and forth between people–or for playing some tic-tac-toe.