Embedding Wave

Google Wave is the cool new tool to help you collaborate and communicate online and you might have seen lots of videos online that show you how Wave helps you work better. Check out this video for a fun overview:

Back already? Great! So now you know what makes Google Wave the preferred communication tool online. But most of the online resources do not mention one, most important, feature that Wave has. And that's what I'm hear to tell you about.

With Google Wave, you can embed the waves you create into your website, blog, iGoogle page, or any interface that allows you to add custom script. Now why is this important? With other communication tools, you'd have to log in to a separate interface to use the tool. If you want to email someone, you log into your email account. If you want to chat with someone, you need to install a chat client. So if a reader on your website wants to contact you through these means, what you are asking them to do is leave your website, log in to some other interface, type in your email address/chat ID and then contact you.

What Wave does is cut down on these extra steps and allow your reader to interact with you right then and there. No need to open another browser window or install new tools/software. An additional advantage is that once they interact with the wave on your website, it also shows in their Wave inbox reminding them to check out your website whenever there's an update on that wave.

So how do you embed waves?

First, click on the "Link to Wave" option in the Toolbar. You can view this option only when you are not in the Editing Mode.

If you can't view the "Link to Wave" option in the toolbar, click on the ... or the More Options button.

Next, you should see this dialog box. Copy the contents from the second text box and paste it in your website/blog code to embed the wave. That's all there is to it!

There are two more options in the Link to this Wave dialog box:

One, the dialog box also displays the Wave ID which you'll need when you use plugins in Wordpress and other platforms to embed waves.

Two, the configure option which allows you to customize the code further.

When you click on the Configure option, it opens the Google Web Elements for Wave page. Here are options available to modify the embed code:

1) Enter the URL of the wave you want to embed. You can copy the URL of the wave from the address bar of your browser or the Link to Wave option

2) Select the size of the embedded wave

3) Choose whether you want to display the Header and Footer in the embedded wave. Header displays the list of participants and the toolbar allows the readers to Follow the wave or use the Playback option. Footer displays the tags for the wave.

4) Check the Preview and make changes to the above if necessary.

5) Copy the code and paste it in your website or blog. And you've got yourself an embedded wave!

Remember you need to go to Web Elements/Configure only if you want to display the Header and Footer of the wave. If you don't need that, just copy the default code from the Link to Wave option.

embeddingwave.com