Google Wave Development

Woah! Looks like your using our old site!

Visit our swish new one and update your links!

Wave Live Messenger

(Added 9th September 2009)

Wave Live Messenger allows you to log in to your Windows Live Messenger account from within Google Wave and have conversations with your messenger contacts right from within a wave. Even if you leave the wave and start reading a different wave, Wave Live Messenger will keep your conversation up to date so you can return to it at any time and continue chatting.

Please note there may be occasions when the server is not available and thus the robot will report an error. If this does happen please contact us and we will try to get the server up and running again as soon as possible.

How does it work?

The robot that you add to Google Wave connects to our proxy server which forwards requests to the Windows Live Messenger servers using the Java Messenger Library. The robot continues to request new events from the proxy server using cron and when new events are available the proxy server forwards them to the robot. At this point the robot can update the feed with these new notifications.

This may seem like an awkward way to implement this system, however there are reasons for this. We set up a proxy server as the Google App Engine limits and restricts access to some methods. For example robots are not able to spawn new threads or open sockets, this meant we would not be unable to run the Java Messenger Library on the app engine.

The system that the robot uses to inform you of new notifications may also seem a little cumbersome. At present when a new event occurs the robot posts a new blip with these details, you must then press refresh to see these changes reflected in your contact list and conversations. Ideally the robot would update these automatically, however when the robot is called by a cron event it is unable to modify any blips in the wave, only append new blips to the wave. In the future when Google implement more advanced scheduleding of events we may be able to implement this system differently so that it can update the wave directly, removing the need for the user to continue pressing refresh.

APIs: Google Wave Robots, Java Messenger Library

Language: Java

How do I use it?

New! Use the extension installer at http://www.wave.to/botinstaller/wlm_bot_installer.xml to add Wave Live Messenger to your new wave menu. Select Wave Live Messenger from the drop down list to make a new wave. Sign in using your Windows Live Messenger details. The wave will be updated when new Messenger events occur. To load your contact list press refresh. Updates will continue to be posted to the wave, you will need to press refresh to load these changes. For more information watch the demonstration video below.
Add wavelivemessenger@appspot.com to Google Wave. Sign in using your Windows Live Messenger details. The wave will be updated when new Messenger events occur. To load your contact list press refresh. Updates will continue to be posted to the wave, you will need to press refresh to load these changes. For more information watch the demonstration video below.

Source code

Google-wave-Wave-Live-Messenger on github

Screenshots