14 DAY TRIAL // Since Google Wave was announced at the Google I/O 09 Conference in San Francisco almost two months ago, there hasn't been that much new information on the communication system that aims to replace email, instant messaging and just about any other form of communication and collaboration online today. Development is moving along behind closed doors at a fast pace, though, but only a handful of outside developers have been accepted to the sandbox version available now. But, if you aren't one of the lucky developers, you may just get your chance soon, as 100,000 more testers will be accepted in fall.
“[We] plan to start extending the Google Wave preview beyond developers on September 30th. This will take place on wave.google.com rather than the separate ‘sandbox’ instance we are currently using, and we plan to involve about 100,000 users. In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com,” Dan Peterson, product manager, Google Wave, wrote.
Only about 6,000 users have been accepted in the private sandbox, most of them developers working on various Wave apps, with a further 20,000 expected to be invited over the next month. Most of the development since announcing Wave has been on stability and performance, but also on offering a solid set of APIs that will be crucial for the service. Up to the September launch, the focus will continue to be on the basics, speed and stability, with very little work on new features in true Google fashion.
Meanwhile, the developers that do have access to the sandbox are hard at work taking advantage of the Wave APIs with creations like a WordPress plugin that allows users to embed an entire Wave in a WordPress post to provide an interactive experience to their blogs. There is even a RickRoll app, aptly called Rickrolley, which embeds a YouTube video and then automatically reposts it to the Wave if other users delete it. Many apps are mostly tech demos for now, but, as the date Wave becomes available to a greater audience nears, we're bound to see much more polished apps.