With the new Robot API version 2 is it possible to interact with the gadgets using robots. This will allow for some interesting integrations and will mean that the gadgets can be used to show the graphical information that needs to be displayed by a user. By using the robot to fetch and populate the data, you are also able to make the requests update other information than is possible using the social API.
I have created a small demo that shows how this can work out. Look at this video.
It is really nice to see that a lot of new features has been delivered. It is a long time since the last release of any updates on the API, so it looked like the development or patching had stopped. But this new release solves many of the problems that have exists. I have written my comments to all to all of the functions.
Active API: In v2, robots can now push information into waves (without having to wait to respond to a user action). This replaces the need for our deprecated cron API, as now you can update a wave when the weather changes or the stock price falls below some threshold. You can learn more in the Active API docs.
This features is really useful for enterprise contexts, where it is required that you will be able to update the wave based on external events. With this features you can get a new Wave, when something happens that you need to react to. From the SAP perspective there is Universal Worklist where all events that you have to process are. With this Wave you can achieve some of the same ideas.
Context: Robots can now more precisely specify how much information they want to get back from a particular event. If only the contents of the affected blip needs updating and you want to reduce your robot’s bandwidth, then you can specify the new ‘SELF’ context. On the flip side, if you do need all the information in the wavelet, you can specify the new ‘ALL’ context. You can learn more in the Context docs.
With this enhancement it will be much easier for robots to interact with the wave, because they can get a much better control of what the data is need in each instance. This will make the development easier because you got the date that you need and it will specify the data you need.
Filtering: In a similar way, with this new API, the robot can specify what events it needs to respond to, conserving valuable bandwidth — and ignore all those that don’t apply. You can learn more in the Filtering Events docs.
With this function you will only get the events that you need in your robots. Simply create a regular expression and then only the entries matching the expression is sent. This is quite useful if you only want events, when a large number of capital letters is written.
Error reporting: Robots are now able to register to receive errors about failed operations, such as insertion on non-existent ranges. You can learn more in the Error Reporting docs.
This function will make it possible to make better and more stabile robots. The use requires that you work, how the robot should interact when an error is created.
Proxying-For: Robots can now convey to Google Wave that their actions are actually on behalf of a different user, via the proxyingFor field. For robots like the Buggy sample, which connects with the Google Code issue tracker, this means that the wave can be updated with attribution to users on non-wave systems. You can learn more in the Proxying-For docs.
I can see that this function will be really interesting when working with one place to monitor all of your solution. It will also make collaboration with external partners much easier.
With all of this information it looks like the robots have been much more decentralized and acts as regular clients. So in the principle the new features will allow you to create a client to Wave using the robot API and some proxy functionality.
There is still room for improvements in the API. This is the two things that I see that currently are missing.
Better form handling and the ability to apply styles to the forms, so they don’t look as 90ish.
UPDATE: This is also possible. Integration with Gadgets, so the robots can update the gadgets with new information. With the Active API is this even more interesting. It is now possible to update the statistic gadget when you get a new expression.
Pamela Fox has created a great presentation describing what how the features connect.
For the Google Wave meetup we in Copenhagen today, we did all the planning regarding the meeting in a wave. It did not work out. It was only three participants how showed up to the meetup, and it was all the presenters or organizers. I hope that it is just the weather, but think there could also be some part of the wave usage that could be different.
We did some mistakes that I will probably do again, but at least try to avoid.
First we did a survey about when to have the meeting, and we had to change the time because it did not fit with the schedule of university where the event should be held.
I also asked people to contribute and participate in create an agenda. Most people are not interested in giving presentations, but instead what to learn. Which is why the meeting is taking place.
We did not send out reminder mails. It would probably be a good idea to send out reminder mails to all the involved participants in the wave a day or two before. Many people may have mute the wave so they don’t see it as a reminder that an upcoming event is taking place.
Did not have a clear RSVP where people could indicate that they were going to attend.
So next time we are going to plan a meetup. We will create an agenda and a place a head of time and then add people to sign up to the event. I if they want then people can contribute to the agenda if they want more topics.
I will also send an email to all persons how have indicated that they would like to come or are coming. That will for me sometimes make it easier to attend.
Planning meetings might be something that will be much easier to do in 12sprints, since you have a much more controlled environment for creating decisions.
I talked with Jacques Holst about planning, and he said the web never had been a one communication strategy. I think we have to remember that there are many other forms of communication to look for.
For the month of February I was selected to the developer spotlight on theshinywave.com. It is a great honor that David Cook has selected med to perform his feature about. I was quite thrilled when, I got a mail with the piggy back on my blog. The thrill did not get any less when I found the blog.
I really appreciate that David finds my applications useful and they latest gadgets are the best.
If you want to try out our newest flash gadgets, all you need to do is to sign up to our newsletter on the right.
When you are working on designing your business or a product launch, it requires the use of some of the strategic tools. It can be the SWOT, PEST or PESTEL or the BCG growth matrix. Normally work on those tools is done in a room and on a whiteboard. The whiteboard is a really great way to work and it can make people work together and create a lot of interesting content. It though has some challenges for teams that are not sitting together or are difficult to get in the same room.
With Google Wave can collaborate on creating the same result. But then you will have to use different blips for managing each cell and this can lead to some unstructed content. With the help of a gadget there can be more structure on the content. See the following video to see what the gadget is able to do.
I’m looking forward to see when the Appstore for Google Wave will be released, so it is possible to sell the gadgets and spend more time on development of the applications. At the moment the gadget is only avaible for subscribers of our newsletter. Signup to the newsletter today and get access to the gadget.
Are there any other models that you will propose we implement?
