Google Wave on your desktop (Mac OS X)
If anything has caused a stir online in the last while, it’s been Google Wave. Just like Gmail before it’s launch, it’s a scramble to get in and find people who have invites – no matter what cost (almost).
Luckily for me, I was given an invite by Ben (who also has a good post on his blog about Wave).
Instead of waxing lyrical about the service, what it does, etc. – I’m going to explain how you get Google Wave to operate on your desktop using toolkit. This only works on Mac OS X at the moment, and functions by having Wave on your machine as a stand-alone app that works just like Mail – giving you a little blip on the icon when you get a wave, etc.
First step is to download the toolkit-enabled app; Fluid…
Settings for wave
Next step is, you guessed it, install and run the application. Now see the image on the right? Use those settings to create a brand, spanking new app based on Google Wave which will appear in your apps folder.
Now just jump on into your apps folder and run the application. You can call it anything, incidentally.
OH NOES, WRONG BROWSER!
Just like iPhones, Google Wave does not apparently run on the browser you’re using. Except your using webkit to access wave – so just continue without having a care in the world.
Next, just login and enjoy!
Login screen
Once you’re logged in, you need to activate a script by devthought (link to script .zip) which will allow the app to show you when you’ve received a new wave.
Just go to the script drop-down menu in your menubar and drop the .js script into the folder when you go to “browse” it.
After that, you’re good – enjoy Waving from your desktop!
*Waves*
Alex Leonard
October 17, 2009
2:46 pm
That looks very similar to using Firefox or Chrome to ‘create application from webpage’ – is there much difference?
That’s how I’m running Wave at the moment – figured Chrome is probably the best thing to run it from so just created an “application shortcut” using Chrome and it’s reasonably handy.
I am quite interested who’ll be the first to make a mail client style application to work with Wave.
Ben Licher
October 17, 2009
3:53 pm
Looks good! Now I’m prepared and waiting for an iinvite
Kevin
October 17, 2009
4:45 pm
@Alex Same idea except it’s rendered directly from webkit rather then via Chrome or Firefox. Some have been reporting slowdown from certain browsers on large waves.
@Ben I’m waiting to GET invites to hand out. They seem like gold dust. It’s Gmail all over again!
Neil
October 17, 2009
4:54 pm
Kev,
I’m pretty sure you only get invites if you registered interest with google. If you got invited to google wave then you don’t get any…yet, i assume they’ll give us all 999 eventually.
Kevin
October 17, 2009
5:48 pm
Yeah that’s what I’ve been lead to believe, though I did originally put my name down for invite from Google (on day 1 of registrations I might add), I never got one in the first “wave” (as it were).