14 DAY TRIAL // Google Wave may be dead as far as Google is concerned, but its components are getting recycled and the technology behind it repurposed for other projects. One of the latest examples of this is also one of the stranger ones. Google Shared Spaces is a Labs experiment which provides a platform for all of the gadgets created for Google Wave.
There are now over 50 different gadgets which were initially designed for Wave but can now be used as standalone apps.
Shared Spaces doesn't do much beyond providing a platform for the gadgets to run on and add a chat tool.
"Google Shared Spaces allows you to easily create a space with a collaborative gadget and a chat box in it. The gadgets are based on the Wave gadgets technology, so there are already more than 50 gadgets across different categories, like games, productivity, and event planning," Google describes the new product.
"Anybody can create a new space by going to the gallery and clicking on one of the featured gadgets. Spaces can easily be shared by just pasting the URL into a chat window, an email or a content sharing platform like Google Buzz or Twitter," it adds.
At this point, Shared Spaces is pretty bare bones, which would explain why Google is not making too much fuss about it. Everything around the gadgets is austere and there seem to be plenty of bugs.
In fact, Shared Spaces is not even listed in Google Labs and searching for it leads to a link which just redirects you to the Labs homepage. Even if you manage to access Shared Spaces, via the direct link, you can't log in with your Google Account. Twitter is working though.
But the idea seems solid. You can easily create a shared workspace and then share the link with anyone you want to join in. You can also create your own gadgets to run on Shared Spaces.