Google Wave Book

If you've been using Google Wave for a while, then you likely already know about public waves. These waves are viewable by anyone, and most people know that they can find public waves by entering the following terms into the search box at the top of the inbox pane: with:public [keywords] The search above essentially gives you the "river" of public waves, and it displays a bunch of different types of waves. Searching by keywords is nice, but to truly leverage the search capabilities of Google Wave, you need to use some additional operators and expressions.  Below are some search terms that you can use to find interesting waves that are more relevant to a specific topic or audience.

1. Search for public waves in which your friends are participants

This comes in handy if you know that some of your friends are using Google Wave and you want to find out which waves they are following. with:public with:(friend1@googlewave.com | friend2@googlewave.com | etc...) You could also use the same search but with another expression to find waves in which friend1 is a participant, but in which friend2 is not: with:public with:(friend1@googlewave.com | -friend2@googlewave.com) Did you see the expression? It's the dash (-) before the user name friend2@googlwave.com. This means that waves should not contain that participant.

2. Search for public waves in which a title contains specific keywords

Searching for public waves using the implicit keywords method returns waves in which either the title or the wave content include the keywords. Typically, a better way to find topical waves is to look for keywords in the title: with:public title:[keywords] Note that you could use an even more specific search by enclosing multiple keywords in double quotes. So if you want to find public waves that contain the phrase "World Cup", you would use this search: with:public title:"World Cup"

3. Search for public waves from the last seven days

By combining a set period of time and keywords, you can find "fresh" waves about a specific topic. In this case, you can use the past operator to limit time: with:public past:7d Again, we could add a title keyword expression to refine even further: with:public past:7d title:"World Cup"

4. Search for public waves with cool photos

Did you know you can search for waves that contains elements, such as images, in addition to keywords? You can use the has:image expression. The search below will find public waves with photos that include "photography" in the title. with:public has:image title:photography

5. Search for public waves with specific tags

Ideally, if participants in a wave are savvy, the wave has been tagged with terms relevant to the wave's topic(s). You can use the tag operator in conjunction with the | (or) expression to find all kinds of interesting waves. This search will find waves tagged with "python" that contain either "app engine" or "django": with:public tag:python about:"app engine" | django Stay tuned. Some more on search expressions and further refining results next week.