

Google Wave Aha moment, with:public is Awesome - messel
http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/10/13/google-wave-aha-moment-withpublic-is-awesome/

======
vegashacker
I feel like you already have to know what with:public is before reading this.
I got 1.5 paragraphs in and stopped since I had no idea what was going on.

~~~
messel
Well then I owe you a better explanation. If you haven't used Google Wave
before I should first state that there is a search box in the center window.
Simply by typing in with:public it searches all public waves and displays
them. Then you can scan through waves of interest and join in where you like.

Additionally you can add extra qualifiers like with:public HackerNews and get
waves like the HackerNews wave.

Nothing Earth shattering yet, but there is definitely some potential for
people connecting which is always fun (at least for me) as well as building
tools (robots) for automagic wave processing.

------
pohl
I get the impression that public waves were a quick hack that Google created
to give new users someone to interact with while the network is new & small.
(If you just got onboard, it's likely that you only have one friend, and that
could get boring very quickly. Furthermore, enabling mass public interaction
would give theme some stress situations to test how their infrastructure
scales, and how their GWT client scales in the browser.) The strange fake
contact that one has to add as a wave participant is one indicator. Another is
the fact that with:public is undocumented.

Once the service is completely open, it's unlikely that this hack will be
needed any longer. I wouldn't be surprised to see the public@a.gwave.com user
retired after a while, anyway.

~~~
messel
I hope that the public pipeline is maintained as long as possible. The
searching power available from such a stream is quite rich with opportunity.

------
Goronmon
I find public waves to be too much like a message board, but harder to follow.

~~~
messel
Good point, thanks for chiming in.

While they do resemble other forums, the drag and drop connections, and
potential utility addins, as well as lightning fast search are drop dead sexy.

I can't normally think up a new tool for a forum I hang out on, and have them
host it.

It's a distributal protocol. We can host our own servers which may require
search like status propagation. I wrote it up not too long ago, but messages
like "hey have you seen this string?" would aid decentralized search.

------
bastian
I have to say this is pretty awesome. I just created a public wave with a
question in regards to the Reuters Newswires pricing structure, and the first
people already replied.

~~~
messel
Now that's a quick response. Monitoring the public channel for information
relevant to your interests is a great way to use it.

------
messel
Followed up with embed example and how to:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=883551>

------
TrevorJ
I found it akin to having 100 IRC chatrooms open at one time. It was a bit too
overwhelming in that new conversations kept being found/updated/changed.

~~~
messel
Oh my. The full pipeline could be a litte much.

I added additional words to filter by like HackerNews and reddit.

~~~
secret
I just got my invitation today- there is no way with:public will be usable
once anyone can join. I can't even keep up as it is. Maybe it needs a pause
button.

~~~
messel
I believe the data pipeline will be quite valuable, and strong filters (Google
can search like a bandit) will help you find information relevant to your
interests.

------
DannoHung
Where was documentation on with:public hidden? I perused the starter waves,
but didn't see anything about that or the group: prefix.

~~~
messel
I never found any Danno. Someone else pointed me to it.

------
hoffmabc
that is sick, thanks for the tip.

~~~
messel
anytime

