Wave - Email Integration That Allows Non-Wavers to Participate in Wave

Wouldn't it be great if there were a way to enable people who don't have a Google Wave account to participate in Google Wave? That has now become a reality thanks to a new robot that was announced yesterday by the WaveDOTto team. The robot is called Mr. Ray (mr-ray@appspot.com).

An extension installer for Mr. Ray adds an item to the drop-down menu just to the right of the "New Wave" button on the Search panel. The item reads "New Wave with e-mail participants." This enables you to start a new wave with Mr. Ray as a participant and to add people by e-mail address to the wave. You can also add the Mr. Ray robot to your contact list and then add it as a participant in waves you have already started. The robot will then invite you to add e-mail participants by means of their e-mail addresses. Those added to a wave as e-mail participants will receive an e-mail with a link that will allow them to view the wave. They will not be able to edit blips in the wave. But they will be able to reply to any blip in the wave. Thanks to Mr. Ray, their replies will automatically appear in the wave in Google Wave. E-mail participants will also receive a fresh e-mail in their e-mail inbox whenever a wave they are participating in is updated in Google Wave. The Mr. Ray webpage has two helpful videos that illustrate the use of the robot.

This is a fine robot, which should make Google Wave more widely useful. I am looking forward to using it with some of my less tech-savvy friends!