Starting with Google Wave development

Let me just give you a short list of articles you should read and software you will need to install. This is how I started and should be enough to get you going:

• For a general overview, you should start here: Google Wave API - questions like What is Google Wave? and What is the Google Wave API? are covered here. Be sure to watch the video of the Google I/O Keynote Address, this is the demo which got us all excited. :-)
  
• Developers should head right here: Google Wave API Overview - this is where the basic concepts of Google Wave are explained. Generally speaking there are two ways to extend Google Wave: by robots -- programs which are participants of a wave -- or gadgets -- small applications which can be embedded into a wave.
• If you're thinking about developing a bot, you should read Google Wave Robots: Overview and the excellent Google Wave Robots: Java Tutorial.
  
• You will of course need to have a recent version of Eclipse installed, at least version 3.3 (Europa).
• You will need the Google Plugin for Eclipse, which allows you to upload your applications to AppEngine. See the Quick Start Guide for installation instructions.
• Wave robots are web applications and must be hosted on Google's AppEngine, for which you will need to create an account before you can upload and test your robot. Beware that you can only create a maximum of ten applications of which you can't change the name later! Every application has a unique URL, such as http://my-wave-bot.appspot.com, therefore it is a good idea to (A) think wisely when choosing a name and to (B) reserve at least one application for testing and on-going development!
• Finally you'll need to download the Google Wave API and related libraries, which you'll need to put into your WAR's lib directory. Be sure to visit the download page from time to time and update your libraries. Especially during the preview phase the API is still being changed and bugs are fixed continuously.
  

That's what it took me to get started. More on my first robot in the next post ... happy waving!