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it's pretty clear that Google Wave is the online giant's social networking play, an attempt to wrestle away some usage share from services like Twitter and Facebook, obviously, but also with Microsoft's surprisingly popular SharePoint.

Waves can consist of any combination conversations (such as email and IM) and documents (collaboration). They provide for rich interaction via text, photos, videos, maps, and more, according to Google. From a usage standpoint, a wave is sort of like an email thread except that it can happen in real time (like IM), is always considered live, and participants can jump in and out of the conversation at any time. A playback capability allows participants to "rewind" the wave at any point and review what's already happened. Edits can be made to any part of the wave at any time, and it's always possible to see who did what. If you think of how an email thread and an IM conversation might be combined into a single entity, that's pretty much a wave.

It's based on HTML 5 and Google Web Toolkit

Wave extensions are a way to augment the functionality of waves and the wave client. Currently, the Wave API supports the following extensions: Robots: Robots are applications which can be added to waves as automated wave participants. Robot extensions commonly automate tasks, but can also participate in the wave as a participant, interacting with the conversation based on their capabilities. For more information, see the Wave Robots API Overview and Developer Guide. Gadgets: Gadget extensions provide a shared program which runs within the wave, and to which all participants have access. For more information, see the Wave Gadgets API Developer Guide.

Each extension has a specific use case, noted below: A robot is an automated participant on a wave. Robots are programs which run on an application server and can modify state within the wave itself. A robot can read the contents of a wave in which it participates, modify the wave's contents, add or remove participants, and create new blips and new waves. Robots perform actions in response to events. For example, a robot might publish the contents of a wave to a public blog site and update the wave with user comments. A gadget is a small application that runs within a client. The gadget is owned by the wave, and all participants on a wave share the same gadget state. The only events a gadget responds to are changes to its own state object, and changes in the wave's participants (for example, participants joining or leaving the wave). The gadget has no influence over the wave itself. Wave gadgets typically aren't full blown applications, but small add-ons that improve certain types of conversations. For example, a wave might include a sudoku gadget that lets the wave participants compete to see who can solve the puzzle first.