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The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a collaborative user manual for Google Wave written and edited by Gina Trapani with Adam Pash. Launched one month after the Google Wave preview release, this guide is the most current, comprehensive, independent user resource for the most ambitious (and confusing) web application ever created.

In the spirit of Google Wave, this guide is a bold experiment in collaboration and public iteration, as well as independent book publishing.

Release Early and Often: A Collaborative Work in Progress

This guide's web site launched October 31st, 2009, exactly one month after the Google Wave preview became available to a limited number of users. At launch, the guide contained eight fully-written chapters and two appendices (about 90 pages printed).

However, like Google Wave, this guide is an unfinished work in progress. With the help of volunteer contributors, this guide's contents will be written, rewritten, and refined in public on completewaveguide.com, as Google Wave changes and improves and rolls out to more users. Find out how you can contribute to The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

An Independent Resource

This is an unofficial guide to Wave written by two Wave enthusiasts and a community of contributors. This guide is not published by or affiliated with Google, Inc.

While Google's official Wave Help pages[1] are fantastic, you want tips and insights from fellow Wave users. In this guide, you'll get step-by-step instructions, commentary, and criticism that you won't find in Google's documentation.

An Experiment in Independent Tech Publishing

From a tech writer's point of view, the process of publishing a time-sensitive tech book via traditional means is fraught with problems.

After an author finishes writing a book for a traditional publisher, the book takes too long to make it onto bookstore shelves. The electronic versions can take even longer, and when they do become available, they are usually limited to proprietary formats like the one for the Amazon Kindle. Often, they also come with some kind of publisher-enforced DRM.

Once a traditionally published tech book is available, it doesn't take long for its contents to fall grossly out of date as new versions of its subject come out—with no way for the author to update the book. At that point, the author has to negotiate an offer from the publisher to create a new edition. If the offer doesn't work out—and it often doesn't—the book dies a sad, pathetic death in the bargain basket at a used bookstore, while readers are forced to search the web for the current information they need.

The authors of this guide have published technology how-to books this way.[2][3] This time, we're trying a different approach.

Instead of a locked-in, static text doomed to an early death, this book is a living thing that will grow and change in parallel with its subject, in public on the web.

You always have access to the latest and greatest version of this guide's contents in its entirety at completewaveguide.com. In addition to the web site, this guide will be available as a DRM-free PDF (forthcoming) and an independently published softcover print book (coming early 2010). We'll continuously update the pages on the web site as we become aware of corrections and additions to its contents.

Because Wave is still very early in its development and adoption, we've committed to four editions of this book that will become available as Wave grows throughout 2010.

Publishing Schedule

Our tentative publishing schedule for the PDF and print versions of this book is:

  • November 2009: The preview edition of the PDF will be available for purchase and download
  • March 2010: The first edition will be available as both a PDF and softcover print book

New editions will follow throughout 2010, depending on Wave's release cycle and development milestones.

Licensed for Reuse

Information wants to be free. We're licensing this guide's content under a Creative Commons, Attribution-Share Alike United States License. This means you can share and remix its contents, as long as you attribute it to completewaveguide.com and re-share it under the same license.

Note: Video clips and quotes attributed to external sources remain copyright their original creators.

Press and Reader Reactions

"The Complete Guide to Google Wave [...] does an excellent job of explaining what Google Wave is and how it can be used."—NY Times[4]

"A super-handy reference if you’re still stuck on how to get the most out of Wave."—Mashable[5]

"The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a straightforward, well-organized volume that goes a long way toward demystifying a new and complex tool."—Download Squad[6]

"Truly a future of publishing."—Neiman Journalism Lab[7]

"I understand Wave because of you."—Reader Eric Booth[8]

About the Authors

Gina Trapani fell in love with Google Wave the moment she logged into the developer sandbox in June of 2009. A co-host of the popular This Week in Google podcast and the founding editor of Lifehacker, Gina has done extensive coverage of Google Wave at Lifehacker,[9] appeared on FOXNews.com[10] to discuss Wave, and did a keynote presentation on Wave at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City on November 16, 2009.[11] She's authored another book based on the Lifehacker web site, which is in its second edition: Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, and Better. Wave her at ginatrapani@googlewave.com.


Adam Pash is the editor of Lifehacker. A technology enthusiast, Adam was eager to dive into Wave after the first demo. Since its preview release, he's worked to introduce new users to Wave, toyed with bots,[12] and tinkered with gadgets for hours on end. Adam co-authored a book on the iPhone called How to Do Everything with Your iPhone. Wave him at adam.pash@googlewave.com.


Credits

In late October 2009, this project came together in a matter of weeks, thanks to a tight team of capable and forward-thinking technology lovers in sunny Southern California.

Roll the credit reel:

  • Conception, Project Lead, and Web Site Administrator: Gina Trapani
  • Product Development Lead: Kelly Abbott at 3ones
  • Design: Patricia Forest at 3ones
  • Web Site Design/MediaWiki Skin Development: Adam Pash
  • Technical Copy Editing: Marian Gallagher at 3ones
  • E-commerce Development Lead: Jon Gallagher at 3ones

Acknowledgments

Thanks to our friends and heroes for their inspiration, support, and suggestions, especially:

  • All the readers whose suggestions, critiques, corrections and case studies greatly improved the contents of the book
  • Mark Pilgrim for inspiring us with his book, Dive into Python, and for offering advice on this book's license
  • Richard Garfinkel for helping us test Wave and correct the text (especially details regarding Firefly and Serenity)
  • Mitch Wagner of InformationWeek for editing advice and suggestions
  • Lars Rasmussen and the entire Wave team for their creation

Thanks also to Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow,[13] and 37signals,[14] whose work and example inspired us to independently publish this book and license it for reuse.

Finally, thanks to you for taking the time to read the book. Please do let us know what you think.

References

  1. ↑ Google Wave Help, Google.com
  2. ↑ Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Faster, Smarter, Better, by Gina Trapani (Wiley, 2008), LifehackerBook.com
  3. ↑ How to Do Everything with Your iPhone, by Adam Pash and Jason Chen (McGraw-Hill, 2007), Amazon.com
  4. ↑ What Is Google Wave, Anyway? New E-Book Explains, NYTimes.com via Web Worker Daily
  5. ↑ Google Wave Guide: User Manual Released for Wave, Mashable.com
  6. ↑ Confused about Google Wave? Now you can read the bleeping manual., DownloadSquad.com
  7. ↑ Nieman Journalism Lab, Twitter.com
  8. ↑ Eric Booth, Twitter.com
  9. ↑ Google Wave feature stories by Gina Trapani, Lifehacker.com
  10. ↑ FOXNews.com Gadgets and Games Appearance, Smarterware.org
  11. ↑ Making Sense of Google Wave by Gina Trapani, Web 2.0 Expo
  12. ↑ The Wave Invitation Donation Thread, Lifehacker.com
  13. ↑ Doctorow's Project: With a Little Help, Publisher's Weekly
  14. ↑ Getting Real, by 37signals


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