Would You Like with:public with your Wave?
Absolutely, Emphatically, Yes! To make a public wave you simply add the public@a.gwave.com user to your contact list, then drag that user to the wave. You gotta hand it to Google to make creating public waves infinitley more complicated than adding a public button.
Since the 100k release of Google Wave out into the wild, I had yet to get much use out of it. For the most part it appeared to be an incremental email release with targeted "waves" as message threads. Robert Scoble and Louis Gray shared their feedbacks in well thought out posts describing some limitations compared to existing tools, as well as potential areas of promise. Robert gave a thorough list of utilities required for collaboration and went through each feature and how Google Wave lacked in that area compared to something like email.
To say Scoble was dissappointed would be putting it lightly. I believe he didn't play with:public enough, he loves virtual omniscience at least as much as I do. Louis commented on the attention splitting nature of multiple waves. His expectation is that initial buzz will die down, to be naturally replaced by more externally focused collaboration. I'd sum up Louis' take as one of reserved but hopeful expectation. Of course he just got more work, since he can't pull in all directed waves to one client yet, and diligently tracks all web signals aimed at him. Don't sweat it Mr. Gray, you'll be offered many choice aggregators of wave info shortly, I suspect less than a month or two once the initial shakedown is complete. In case you didn't know, I'm a huge fan of the genuine coverage Robert and Louis share daily.
Neither of these fine social media titans pointed out the simple search feature, with:public. Using that conditional string I discovered multiple wave communities sprouting up around topics and services that are of great interest to me. Reddit, HackerNews/Ycombinator, and Robot design using Java all sprung to life before my eyes. I met a handful of people at once, each connected to a topic I follow but bringing their own unique perspectives and expectations of wave. On the developer side there are many fertile areas that users want covered.
1) Calendar and email integration was a hot topic for one poster (I'll include his ID later if he's cool with me sharing it).
2) Tyson Key an 18 year old wiz kid of web software and communication created a new public wave to track and share bandwidth usage for the tool as well as share some great feedback on what could easily be done with wave bots. (I invited him to wave, then he quickly educated me how to use it ). Ah, to be young and instant tech friendly again.
3) I diligently looked for lift/scala robot starter code (4 second search). I quickly found a java robot wave and added my sample lift/scala template setup bat files using maven and the Google app engine, where robots live at the moment. Very nice of Google to give robots a home, now kindly set them free :).
4) In the Reddit wave I came across Louis Castrogivanni (a new commenter here and fellow tech fan) who just happened to have the inside scoop on why businesses should be like Panera bread (Panera is lucky to have a summer employee like Louis, and he loves working there).
The more people I connect to, the greater value I discover by using Google Wave. The file attachment/sharing, video embeds, and other utilities are nifty but for me the immeasurable value of any social web service is in the discovery, engagement, and connection with people. We want to share, collaborate and build better stuff and the with:public "pipeline" is an extraordinary value point for Google Wave.
Can't wait till I can pull in my other rss streams and push out discoveries from robots to external sites.