Google announced that it will expand upon the 200,000 lines of code that it has open sourced already, to "flesh out the existing example Wave server and web client into a more complete applicatino or ‘Wave in a Box’".

The project will include:

• an application bundle including a server and web client supporting real-time collaboration using the same structured conversations as the Google Wave system
• a fast and fully-featured wave panel in the web client with complete support for threaded conversations
• a persistent wave store and search implementation for the server (building on contributed patches to implement a MongoDB store)
• refinements to the client-server protocols
• gadget, robot and data API support
• support for importing wave data from wave.google.com
• the ability to federate across other Wave in a Box instances, with some additional configuration

Google stresses that the project won’t have full Google Wave functionality, but it will give developers and users a way to run Wave servers and host waves on their own hardware. This should please some IT departments.

It still remains to be seen what other Google products Wave technology will appear in.

What do you think has been the most interesting announcement from Google I/O so far? Let us know in the comments!

Update Google I/O

Google has launched Google TV, which is based on the Android platform and runs on the Google Chrome web browser.

Google TV expands video choice from the hundreds of channels available via a pay TV provider to a storehouse of video content available through the web and streaming video. Users will be able to watch streaming video from Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, and YouTube.

Google TV features integrated search to allow users to find relevant content across over-the-air and pay-TV channel listings, DVR, and the Internet, as well as a picture-in-picture layout to access multiple windows simultaneously.

Google has introduced Android 2.2 (codenamed Froyo short for frozen yogurt). New Android 2.2 features include portable hotspot functionality, support for Adobe Flash within the Android Browser and a preview of an upcoming web-based version of Android Market.

"The growth of the Android ecosystem continues to exceed our expectations," said Andy Rubin, VP, Engineering.

"Every day, 100,000 new people start using Android-based handsets. There are now more than 180,000 active Android developers who have contributed over 50,000 apps to the Android Market. Froyo is another step toward making Android an even better platform for developers, enterprises and consumers."
 

Oringinal Article

Google Wave

Google announced it is making Google Wave open to everyone and dropping the requirement of an invitation. Google said Wave is now much faster to use and easier to navigate to unread parts of a wave. The company has also added permission management options and extension gallery to Wave.

Google App Engine for Business

Google launched its App Engine for Business, which gives organizations the ability to manage all apps in one place using the same infrastructure that powers Google applications. Google has also been working with VMware on cloud portability to make it easier for Java developers to use tools to develop and deploy rich web apps.

PayPal introduces Mobile Payments Library for Android

The Mobile Payments Library for Android allows people to make in-app purchases directly from their PayPal accounts, without having to leave the app. PayPal said this allows to developers to not have to store people’s personal financial information, definitely a good feature for all parties involved.

Chrome Web Store

The Google Chrome Web Store will be available later this year and the company described it as an open marketplace for web apps. Google says the Chrome Web Store will make it easier for developers to reach a larger audience, which obviously means a chance to generate more revenue.

WebM Project

The announcement of the

WebM Project , a new open codec for web video with support from Mozilla and Opera, was well received.

Key features of WebM include:

VP8, a high quality codec with a BSD-style, royalty-free license
Vorbis, an open source and broadly implemented audio codec
A container format based on a subset of the Matroska media container

Preview of Google Storage for Developers

Storage for Developers

is a RESTful cloud service built on Google’s storage and networking infrastructure. The RESTful API allows developers to connect their applications to reliable storage replicated across a number of U.S. data centers. Google Storage for Developers is currently open to a limited number of developers.

Are you excited about the news from Google I/O? Let us know in the comments!

"Some of you have asked what we mean by preview," says Google. "This just means that Google Wave isn’t quite ready for prime time. Not yet, anyway. Since first unveiling the project back in May, we’ve focused almost exclusively on scalability, stability, speed and usability. Yet, you will still experience the occasional downtime, a crash every now and then, part of the system being a bit sluggish and some of the user interface being, well, quirky."

The company also says there are some key features that have yet to be fully implemented, such as removal of participants from waves, defining groups of users, and permissions configuration. These things will be rolled out in the coming months.

According to Google, over 27,000 developers have been prototyping with the Google Wave APIs since Google I/O where it was introduced. "Amazingly, these developers persevered, found work arounds, and advocated for new features when our APIs didn’t do what they needed," says Google Wave Product Manager Stephanie Hannon.

Google is featuring a few extensions that are ready to use today. These include extensions for Sudoku puzzles, telephone conferencing, real-time video chat, maps, and weather forecasts.

Google tells sandbox developers that they will get Wave accounts tomorrow at wave.google.com. They will get instructions for logging in from their sandbox accounts. They will also get invitations to bring on people they want to "wave" with. Below are some prototypes of extensions from SAP, Salesforce, and MediaWikiWave:

 Wave 3 Study

In South Korea, Taiwan, and China, over 70 percent of all participants supposedly write a blog.  Social network participation has stalled in the U.S., but on the whole, penetration is up to 58 percent (an increase of 21 percent over 2007′s levels).  And Universal McCann says RSS consumption has risen from 15 to 38 percent worldwide.

Some of the data is a little hard to swallow; as David Scott Lewis writes, "These numbers border on the fantastical."  Still, even if the 17,000 respondents weren’t quite representative of the average, it seems likely that growth of some sort is taking place.

The next Wave study is scheduled for late this year; it should be interesting to see what sort of stats it provides.

As for the current Universal McCann report, the company concluded, "Social media is established everywhere there is an internet connection and it has to be considered for all advertisers, marketers and content producers as a core part of their communications.  Social media has impacted every part of the internet and transformed the role it plays in our lives."