Los panelistas son de Comcast, Starbucks and KogiBBQ

A public marriage proposal can be a nice gesture. It shows the other person that you are vulnerable, confident, and extremely happy to be with them. The use of signs in your proposal can be an interesting way to pop the question (as seen here). Unfortunately for Jennifer, things didn’t go so well.

more info about the proposal can be found here.

• via topcultured.com

Google Wave has arrived. The real-time communication platform has been one of the hottest and most anticipated products in the tech and social media space for months. Soon around 100,000 people will be messaging each other in one of Google’s most ambitious projects to date.

So what if you’re one of the lucky ones to get an invite, or just want to understand exactly how this new tool works? While we cover the basics in our Google Wave Guide and have explored its game-changing features, we haven’t really written about exactly how to use Google Wave (

) and how to navigate it.

So that’s exactly what we did. While not comprehensive, our guide on getting started with Google Wave will help you quickly learn the interface and important keyboard commands that will open up the full potential of Wave. Don’t forget to check out our extensive Google Wave coverage when you’re done for more tips and insight.

General Interface

The Google Wave interface is divided essentially into four boxes: Navigation, Contacts, Inbox, and your current Wave. Here’s a rundown of each of these core pieces of Wave:

Navigation: This is not your standard left-hand navigation bar. Yes, it has similarities to Gmail (

), but navigating Wave is definitely a new experience. Each of the items essentially filters your inbox for waves that fit what you’re looking for. “Active” refers to waves that have new activity, “History” checks for old, archived waves, and “Settings” lets you manage things like your extensions. You can also add custom searches (i.e. waves that discuss your company) and add folders. Adding a wave to a folder is as simple as drag-and-drop.

Contacts: Your contacts are more prominent in Wave. That’s because you drag and drop them to add them to waves, rather than type in an email address or a username. You can search through your contacts and manage them via your Google (

) account. It’s still a bit buggy – Wave will tell you some people don’t have accounts when they do – but overall it’s smooth.

Inbox: The inbox in the middle of the Google Wave interface doesn’t work like an email inbox. The key to navigating the inbox are search and search commands. It’s the easiest way to filter different waves. We have a list of key search commands below.

Wave Box: This is the box on the right hand of Wave. This is where conversations happen. Add participants, discuss what you’d like, and add multimedia through Google Wave gadgets and extensions (for more on Wave Extensions, check out Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look).

This is the pure overview of the interface. However, if you want to learn more about the features and the terminology, we suggest checking out Google Wave: A Complete Guide. Google also created a quick YouTube (

) video tutorial of Wave, courtesy of Wave’s mascot, Dr. Wave:

Starting a Conversation

Getting a conversation started in Google Wave is rather easy – it’s understanding all of the available conversation features that’s difficult. Let’s explore a few steps to get started with a new wave:

1. Click on the “New Wave” link. This will start a new conversation.

2. Drag and drop friends you’d like to have join your wave from your contacts box into the top of the wave.

3. Start typing.

Remember, Wave is different than email. You can reply to messages as threaded conversations and, more importantly, you can edit the text of anyone in the conversation. These options become available when you click on the downward facing arrow at the top of any message (a blip) within a wave.

Also note the top bar, with “Reply,” “Playback,” “Archive,” “Mute,” “Spam,” and “Read.” While most of these are self-explanatory, the feature you should be using liberally is “playback.” If you join a wave in progress, always start by playing back the wave to see how the conversation transpired.

Wave Search Commands

A big part of navigating through your Wave inbox are the search commands. They help you find public waves, your archived messages, or just waves related to work. Here are some of the most important commands to keep in mind:

is:read and is:unread: This will help you find all of the waves you have or have not read. is:active is the same as is:unread currently.

is:mute and is:unmute: The same type of deal – This helps you find conversations you may have muted or unmuted.

title:(keyword): This command helps you find waves with a specific word in their titles.

caption:(keyword): This helps you find waves with a keyword in the captions of attached images and files.

from:(address): This command will help you find waves from specific people. On the same token, from:me finds waves from you. to:(address) finds waves where it’s just you and the person you’re searching for.

past:(date), previous:(date), after:(date), and before:(date): These four commands help you search for waves in time periods, based on days, weeks, months, and years. Use “d” for day, “w” for week, “m” for month, and “y” for year. So, if you want to find something from before 3 months ago, you’d type “before:3m”. Yes, it’s complicated.

has: The has command will search for whether a wave has an attachment, a document, an image, or even a gadget (has:gadget).

There are actually a lot more commands. To read them all, we suggested checking out Google Wave’s advanced search terms list.

Wave Navigation

There are an abundance of keyboard shortcuts that make using Google Wave a more streamlined experience. Thanks to a list first created by Google’s Greg Dalesandre in the development version of Google Wave, we can bring you a full list of keyboard shortcuts, which we’ll update periodically.

First, here are the commands for Wave Navigation:

Up/Down Arrows: As you might expect, use the arrows to navigate messages.

Tab/Shift-tab: Same functionality as the Up/Down arrows (outside of edit mode).

Home/End: Moves you to the first or last message.

Space: Go to next unread message (note: it doesn’t have to be within the same wave).

Left/Right Arrows: Switch focus between digest panel and wave panel.

Page Up/Down: Currently doesn’t work properly due to a bug.

Ctrl-Space: Marks all messages as read.

Messages in Wave

Enter: Replies to messages. Your reply will appear just below the selected message. If it’s the first reply, it will not be indented (but otherwise it will be).

Ctrl-R: The same as enter.

Shift-Enter: Replies to messages at the end of a thread. Replies of this nature appear at the bottom with the same indentation in almost all cases.

Highlight Text + Enter: Creates an inline reply. Your reply will be indented inside the current message.

Ctrl-E: Edit a message.

Ctrl-Enter (while editing): Inserts an inline reply at the caret.

Text Editing

None of these commands will really come as a shock, but they’re still good to know.

Ctrl-B: Bolds text.

Ctrl-I: Italicizes text.

Ctrl-G: Adjust the color.

Ctrl-L: Currently links to another wave if you hightlight the text and put in the URL or Wave ID, but the keyboard shortcut will be changing soon according to Google.

Ctrl-C: Copies text.

Ctrl-X: Cuts text.

Ctrl-V: Pastes text.

Structural Formatting

Once again, not too many surprises here:

Ctrl-<#>: Changes the current line to a different-sized heading – 1 is biggest, 4 is smallest.

Ctrl-5: Adds bullets.

Ctrl-6: Normalizes text/removes bullets and headings. Does not remove italics, bold, or text edits.

Ctrl-7: Left alignment.

Ctrl-8: Right alignment.

Much, Much More to Come

Google Wave is far from a complete product. They will add new features, tweak the interface, and change entire chunks of it based on user feedback and the data they gather from this initial release. Because of that, we will continue to add to this guide and tweak it. It’s also why we suggest staying tuned to our Google Wave coverage for the many updates that are coming.

More Google Wave Resources from Mashable

- Google Wave: A Complete Guide

- Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal

- The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave

- Google Wave: 5 Ways It Could Change the Web

- Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

- Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?

Google continues to work to address the threat posed by the real-time search capabilities of services like Twitter and Facebook.

In May, they launched “Search Options” to allow users to refine search results by content type and time (within the past day was the timeliest you could get), but today, they’re launching a “past hour” filter to make its index even fresher.

Along with this key update, Google is rolling out 8 other search options which should be available to everyone at some point today. Those include the ability to search within a specific date range, shopping site filters, a visited pages filter, and an option to see only results from Google’s book, blog, and news search tools.

The “past hour” filter is certainly the most interesting addition, though. While Google offers other timely ways to get information – Google News and Google Trends being atop that list – the vast majority of users simply turn to its search engine.

By giving users the option to filter results from the past hour, they’ll see more current news and information as opposed to the Wikipedia (

) entries and other high ranking content that dominate the top of many results in regular search. Earlier this week, Google (

) also added “hot trends” to search results, a move that might portend Twitter (

)-like trending topics being integrated throughout at some point down the road.

Google is playing catch up here – not in the sense of market share, but in the sense of making their results as timely as those found on social media sites. To see how they’re doing, we’ll need to put the “past hour” filter to the test next time there is a major current event breaking. Stay tuned.

Technology

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from the L.A. Times

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How Google Wave could transform journalism

September 30, 2009 |  4:26 pm

Google Wave lets users collaborate live on documents.

The tech world is awash with excitement for today's scheduled release of 100,000 invitations to preview Google Wave.

Seems like everyone is buzzing about how the collaborative Web tool will revolutionize how we do business, organize parties, manage projects with friends, cheat on homework and market brands (trust us, we've seen the news releases, plural). The term "Google Wave" has been on Twitter's top-trending list all day.

For the last two months, while we've been testing the Google Wave developer preview, we have been talking amongst ourselves about how this thing could change (or add to) what we do. So, here's a list of a few wild ideas we had for using Wave.

Collaborative reporting: You may notice that double bylines aren't very common. That's because trying to co-author a news story stinks.

The process usually involves one reporter talking to and researching a few things and another following a different set of sources and finally combining their findings toward the end. This can result in a mess of incompatible and unrelated research that gets either thrown out or somewhat-awkwardly wiggled in.

We're not going to e-mail our co-writers with every new lead and minute detail we dig up. But if we're sharing a virtual notebook, we can scan through ...

... or search the newest findings as they're logged, make comments and highlight our favorite bits.

Then, when it comes time to write, we can rearrange and discuss the story's flow in the same software. Thanks to the openness of Wave, collaborative pieces between bloggers could become more common.

Record and archive interviews: As reporters conduct interviews and frantically jot notes day after day, we start to develop our own shorthand. To outsiders, it looks like some sort of alien language.

If Google connects its Voice calling service to Wave, we might be able to easily insert call recordings, voicemails and text messages into our notes. Wave's founders, brothers Jens and Lars Rasmussen, have indicated in a past discussion that Google was looking at ways to connect many of its products with the Wave platform.

A third-party Wave extension called Ribbit lets users initiate conference calls inside of the program as well as the ability to call a designated phone number and have audio transcribed into the document.

Live editing: We love our editors (really, we do). But sometimes crucial things get changed that we miss in the final read-through and in rare cases, tweaked to inaccuracy.

Google Wave clearly marks updates to documents and lets you view a timeline of changes. Eventually -- once Google adds the feature -- users will be able to revert to a specific point in time. And the most passionate writers could watch live as editors tweak documents and respond to questions or changes.

Smarter story updates: Take a look at a breaking news blog like L.A. Now or the New York Times' The Lede. Scrolling down the page, you'll probably see the word "updated" in bold again and again.

Instead of creating a new post for each piece of news that's later uncovered on a breaking story, the blogs post an update to clarify which paragraphs have been changed or factually corrected.

That timeline feature could allow users to intuitively view previous versions of a post and see exactly what has been changed and why.

Discuss while you read: All of the Times blogs and many of stories on the website have areas where readers can log comments. These are just static message boards.

We get a lot of comments, saying, "That's stupid" or "You're totally wrong." That leads us to wonder, Uh, which part?

Wave lets users leave comments on particular paragraphs, sentences or words. This would allow readers to discuss passages as they're reading along and clarify which sections they're addressing.

Transparent writing process: Many readers say they're genuinely interested in how reporters string together a story. That fact was perhaps best evidenced on Sunday when curious readers gawked at the Associated Press' accidental publishing of a reporter's notes on the Roman Polanksi story.

What if we let readers watch the text as we write it? In our own testing, we found it to be a really fascinating peek into the writing habits and minds of our associates. It's also comforting to know that we're not the only ones who have trouble spelling the word "etiquette."

Maybe we can go one step further and let the observers comment throughout the writing process. Readers could help shape a story.

Instant polls: Every once in a while, bloggers like to poll their readers on topics. But gathering a decent sample size takes a while.

Presumably -- maybe once Google turns on compatibility with standard e-mail platforms -- people will practically live inside of the Wave software. We could blast out a poll using Google's Polly extension and instantly begin pulling in feedback.

Wiki news aggregator: Now we're drifting a little far out, but allowing readers to rearrange our homepage would be an interesting experiment. Of course, there's always the worry of a few unsavory links getting injected in there. Even Wikipedia isn't prone to destructive tricksters.

Got any ideas for how Wave could be used to change news gathering? How could it change your work? Let us know in the comments. (Sorry, no fancy in-line comments on this blog.)

-- Mark Milian

Follow my commentary on technology and social media on Twitter @mmilian.

More in: Applications, Google, Mark Milian

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Comments

I wouldn't read a writters corrections or shape the story. Useless information for me. I could spend my time elsewhere,doing other things instead. However for projects for school or work it will revolutionize the process to a faster cutting edge pace. Props google!

Posted by: Gaby M | September 30, 2009 at 06:34 PM

Hurrah, a tech writer/journalist who has vision. Great post Mark.

Posted by: Dave Nattriss | September 30, 2009 at 09:44 PM

Straight away I can think of two scenarios where Google Wave and journalism seems perfect for each other, both of them which Mark came across above:

¤ Number one has to do with the transparency part; if you're being interviewed by the "jottlers", you can then check what's actually being added and edited as news, live as it happens, and comment on anything you feel is being slightly misinterpreted or completely erroneous. No more of the misquoting.

¤ Number two would be those cases where you as a reader simply know a lot more about the subject than the journalist(s) at hand. Again, with this tool of openness you can comment and basically help the writers getting their facts straight. Heck, if successful this could actually be a type of freelancing to some people.

As always with these new gadgets and internet-stuff, things tend to become a little over hyped. This time however, not only the geeks and the techs seem interested. Maybe this IS the Next Big Thing.

Posted by: Edvin Beerman | October 01, 2009 at 03:22 AM

Great Post... really great writting.!!
Wave is going to revolutionize our world..

Posted by: Ujjwal Kanth | October 01, 2009 at 03:24 AM

Hi,
I did a video interview with Stephanie Hannon (Googel Wave Project Manager) about "the newsroom in the cloud"

Posted by: Damien | October 01, 2009 at 03:46 AM

Just like a lot of Google's ideas this one will fall flat.

We have Myspace, Plaxio, Facebook, Twitter, iReport, make your own blog and post comments, email group, and there are other programs that let you do the same things. What's new, not a whole lot.

Just like Google groups, about 10 people will use it. They may get a big kick from people first signing up to use it, then it will fade away into the sunset.

Posted by: FlatWave | October 01, 2009 at 06:41 AM

Great piece. In addition to redefining how existing newsrooms function, I'm excited to see if we'll see any news startups that exist completely in the cloud because of this tool.

Seamus
Community Manager
mediabistro.com

Posted by: Seamus | October 01, 2009 at 08:05 AM

Good stuff. Would love to be a BETA for it (and myself as a past Usability Engineer for some of the big players, I'm particularly intrigued).

Posted by: SpC | October 01, 2009 at 08:52 AM

Nice article, Mark. Two questions:

Google Mail user accounts have been hacked many times now. Will security not be a concern that will dissuade some reporters from using Google Wave as a tool?

When you write about transparent writing: do you mean the public would somehow have access to the notes on Wave. Would a newspaper (who is a type of content owner) not reflect on this as contrary to its interests?

Posted by: Online Design Bureau | October 01, 2009 at 10:06 AM

@ODB Wave lets you select which docs are open to the public and to whom. I don't expect these ideas would translate well to stories with anonymous sources, but I wouldn't have a problem with posting my notes for most stories.

Posted by: Mark Milian | October 01, 2009 at 10:17 AM

Great info, i hope in a near future be able to post a comment directly in the paragraph :P

Posted by: David Sibaja (twitter.com/sibajad) | October 01, 2009 at 10:28 AM

"We have Myspace, Plaxio, Facebook, Twitter, iReport, make your own blog and post comments, email group, and there are other programs that let you do the same things. What's new, not a whole lot."

You seem to misunderstand what Google Wave is and does, but I can give you at least one reason why it isn't anything like those services- Google Wave is also a **protocol**, not just a piece of software that runs on Google's servers. So it's more like a replacement for e-mail, since anybody that wants to can host their own Wave service, build any Wave client they like, and have it be interoperable with every other Wave.

In fact, Google Wave could end up being the end-all be-all open stream protocol that Facebook and all those guys have been after. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the services you mentioned built in compatibility with Wave once its released.

Posted by: Matthew Gerring | October 01, 2009 at 10:28 AM

This article is about how Google Wave could transform journalism into a more collaborative process. What is interesting to me is how much this echoes what I have discovered in writing fiction with EtherPad – http://www.etherpad.com

The process of writing a story together, with characters owned by respective authors, used to be a morass of writing half the dialogue and sending it back and forth for insertion of respective characters' words, or writing it ourselves and hoping our lack of famliarity with the other person's character didn't lead to us making them act out of character.

With EtherPad (and, presumably, with Google Wave), collaborative fiction writing becomes akin to an act of structured role-playing, where we actually write together at the same time—and unlike normal role-playing, if we decide something came off wrong we can easily go back and tweak it.

Of course, I'm not in the Google Wave trial yet, but I can't wait until I am. It will be very interesting to try it out.

Posted by: Chris Meadows | October 01, 2009 at 10:57 AM

Artículo de lifehacker, que ya están probando Google Wave. Lo quiero lo quiero lo quiero...

Cómo cambian las cosas, la cultura, la visión de lo políticamente correcto... en unas pocas décadas