The Google Wave Developer Community Will Be Vibrant

After the initial euphoria upon Google Wave's arrival there has been a backlash of sorts against the enthusiasm in the pretense of not knowing what Google Wave actually is, or will do. But that has been among the chattering classes. The enthusiasm, if anything, has heightened within the budding developer community.

I suggested at the Google Wave API Google Group that code and culture/community are both important. I stand by that assertion. But that is not to say I want to focus on community talk and not code talk. Actually my primary motivation for joining the group has been to follow, and to an extent contribute to the code talk primarily to be able to spot trends in the developer community as Google Wave readies for the masses in a few months. Code talk is important to me.

One can but imagine what the Google Wave developer community will look like as it grows. I think some of that community's characteristics are going to be as follows.

1. The Google Wave developer community will be global.
2. Many top developers will make big money.
   
3. Google Wave's development will have an element of unpredictability. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no telling what twists and turns the developments will take.
   
4. There are going to be major social, political implications of Google Wave.
   
5. Google Wave MeetUps might sprout all over the place and might become the primary socializing tool among the Google Wave developers.
6. The Google Wave developer community will be numerically huge.
   
7. The community will have many corporate members.
   

In the mean time I want to do my homework to be able to participate in the code talk to the extent that I am in a better position to be able to spot trends.

Five Blind Men And Google Wave
A Little Trouble At The Google Wave API Google Group
Google Wave Developer Community: Asking For A Culture?
The Google Corporate Culture
Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy
Google Wave: Enormous Buzz
Possible Google Wave Applications And Innovations
Google Wave Architecture: Designed For Mass, Massive, Global Innovation
The Google Wave Architecture
Google Wave Ripples
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Of Waves And Tsunamis
Google Wave: Wave Of The Future?
Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today

From The Google Wave Developer Blog

TwilioBot: Bringing Phone Conversations into Waves One of the powerful features of Google Wave is the ease with which developers can integrate it with existing APIs. ...... At the Post-I/O hackathon, I used the Twilio API to extend Wave into the world of telephony. ....... "voice waves." When a user adds twiliobot to a wave, the robot automatically finds and transforms the phone numbers in that wave into click-to-call links. .......... The subsequent phone conversation can then be recorded, transcribed, and automatically inserted into the wave as text with a link to the audio of the conversation. ........ Google has provided an amazingly powerful API, and I bet you'll have real code running in Wave in under an hour.
1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos on the Friday after I/O, about 60 developers assembled down at Google HQ for the very first Google Wave API hackathon. ....... Evan Cooke kicked off the demos with an amazing app that showed off the Twilio API by calling a phone number from a Wave, transcribing the conversation to text, and pasting it back into the wave. Andres Ferrate, who had never before programmed in Python or App Engine, showed off the first monetizing extension: a robot that searched Amazon for DVDs and books, and gave him a cut of any purchases made off the links. ........... At the end of all the demos (too many to describe here!), Lars thanked all the developers and said, "I was so happy after seeing the first two demos, I nearly cried." ....... If you're a developer that's eager to hack on Wave, read through the documentation, check out the various samples, and make sure to request sandbox access.
The Making of the Sudoku Gadget
Google Wave API Office Hours
Google Wave team heads to Google Developer Days in Asia
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?

From The Official Google Blog

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

In The News

Will You Be a Slave to Google's Wave? eWeek

Will Google Wave revolutionise free software collaboration? Free Software Magazine Where Android is an open system on closed hardware — and thus become semi-closed in the process — we have a chance here to develop Wave into a host of free and open tools based on the Wave API and using the Wave protocol. ........ imagine having a wave for the developers of a software project. ....... Hack-fests could include those unable to attend the live venue by having everyone use a wave — no longer need the best minds be excluded because they couldn’t book a flight ...... Google Wave could outstrip Twitter and Facebook by 2011.
Jargon from Hell Rides in on Google's Wave Gawker The open secret about Google's forthcoming product "Wave" is that no one knows what the hell it does.
Google Searches for Ways to Keep Big Ideas Wall Street Journal

Google looks to fast-track employee ideas CNET News Google is being forced to adapt to life as a big corporation with structure and processes ....... It's also grappling with the notion that it's no longer the automatic destination for Silicon Valley's most skilled engineers and marketers who are looking to do cool work and get rich. Companies like Facebook have lots of ex-Google employees within their ranks, and start-ups through the Valley are headed by those with a stint at Google on their resume.
Adobe Launches Online Spreadsheet, Web Collaboration PC Magazine

Adobe launches competitor to Google Docs ZDNet UK estimated real-time collaboration to be a two-billion-dollar opportunity for Adobe. ........ collaborating on documents directly in a fluid online environment
Is Opera Unite a Good Idea Done Badly for Google to Do Better with ... eWeek Opera is attempting to take advantage of the rise of social networking (the verb) and bake it into the browser ........ their desire was not to own the network, but to compete on it. ...... we don't know exactly what Google Wave will turn out to be

Web Semantics: Google Wave Jargon Wired News Wave .... Wavelet ..... Blip ..... children .... Document ...... Extension ...... Gadgets and Robots ..... Embeded Wave

Google Hunkers Down on Software Projects with 'Innovation Reviews' eWeek Eric Schmidt told Jessica Vascellaro he is afraid Google's normally hands-off approach to managing product teams is letting good ideas stagnate or slip out the door in the mass exodus of frustrated Googlers whose mental seeds can't find purchase in the giant Google garden. ....... The corporatization of Google continues. ....... Until now, Google has been pretty lackadaisical regarding the 20% projects and has treated employee defections with a shoulder shrug. ...... It will almost certainly scare off those who expect a "startup environment." Those halcyon days appear over

Google Scrambling After Launch of “Decision Engine” GigaOm Sergey Brin is personally leading a team inside the company to analyze Bing’s search engine and make changes to Google’s search results as necessary. ....... Microsoft is no startup, and has plenty of talent, money and marketing muscle to throw at Google — plus, for now, maybe a better product, too.

Why Bing is not Wave of the future ZDNet Asia Bing is a competent search engine that looks like Google search. Wave is an experiment in merging identity, data and messaging that looks like nothing on Earth. ...... the excitement is all Wave's. ...... Wave is pointing to the future, Bing to the past. ....... Microsoft talks of innovation, and it invests in research, but it defaults to stasis and duplication.