Waveboard: Google Wave client now available for iPhone

You may have already figured out that you can use Google Wave in Safari on the iPhone, but now there’s a better alternative. Waveboard, one of the early attempts at a desktop Wave client, now has an iPhone app. The Waveboard app will run you 99 cents, but it’s a much faster way to check your Waves than loading them up in the built-in browser.

Waveboard basically gives you the same thing you get on the mobile web version of Wave, but also adds some additional features. You can shake your device to logout and reload your Waves, and push notifications are apparently coming soon. It sounds like right now is the time to jump on Waveboard, in case future features come with a higher price.

If you have 40 seconds to kill, and you want to see Waveboard in action, check out the demo video after the jump.

[via TechCrunch]

Confused about Google Wave? Now you can read the bleeping manual.

Google Wave is an innovative new communication tool, but part of innovation is that it’s not always intuitive to use. Early adopters have been jumping into Wave with little guidance on how to take advantage of all its features. I guess you could watch the 90-minute Wave video, but that’s not exactly a quick-start guide.

Well, there’s a saying almost as old as computers themselves, and it goes: RTFM. Read the, um, flippin’ manual. Now Google Wave has a flippin’ manual that you can read, but it’s not from Google: it’s from Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani and Adam Pash. Sounds a lot better than “watch the frickin’ 90-minute video,” eh?

Gina and Adam’s guide is quickly making the rounds on the web, being promoted by the likes of Mashable. I’d like to add Download Squad’s endorsement to the list. The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a straightforward, well-organized volume that goes a long way toward demystifying a new and complex tool. It’s available to read online for free, but you’ll be able to buy it as a DRM-free PDF soon, and in print in January.

Still don’t have Wave? Go throw your name in the hat for Download Squad’s Great Google Wave Invite Giveaway.

The great Google Wave invite giveaway!

If you haven’t heard of Google Wave yet — a) wake up! and b) watch this tech demo. It’s long, but if you’re a nerd, or someone who uses the Internet a lot, you’ll find it more exciting than the latest Harry Potter film. And at only 80 minutes, it’s not a potentially-bladder-exploding endurance event, unlike the bespectacled wizard wannabe.

And with that said, the goodies: Download Squad are giving away Google Wave invites. We’re going to start giving away invites whenever we have them to give away and today, to get the ball rolling, we’ve got 20 up for grabs! If things heat up, we’ll scrounge under the couch cushions until we find more!

Wave is just starting to pick up steam, with more gadgets and gizmos and robots appearing every day. With reports of Google Wave server federation (the ability for anyone to run a Wave server) coming soon, and the sandbox walls being torn down, now’s your chance to get in on the action.

Google Wave

According to the official Google blog, 100,000 invitations to Google’s most hotly-anticipated new service, Google Wave, are going out today. Wave is being touted as a communication tool that reimagines the way email should work. When Download Squad took a look at Wave back in May, Lee explained it this way:

Create a Wave, add people to it, toss in some gadgets, feeds, and photos, and mix with a rich text editor. You’ll see new content in near-real time as your friends add it, and you can even hit the rewind button and watch your Wave evolve from scratch.

So, who’s getting invited to use this next-generation communication tool? Well, it helps if you signed up early for an invitation and wrote the Wave team a message offering to give feedback. If you’re a developer who’s been using the developer preview of Wave, you might also get an invitation, and some are going out to paying customers of Google Apps.

In their blog post, the Google Wave folks stress that – if you do land an invitation – you’re not going to be playing with a finished product. Wave is still missing some crucial features, and bugs are going to be par for the course until the team starts using the feedback from these 100,000 new users to start identifying problems. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to directly invite friends to Wave, but you will be able to nominate them for invitations.

Do you have a Wave invitation yet? What do you think of the service so far?