As excited as some of us still are about Google Wave, Wave’s biggest problem remains: “What would I use it for?” With the app’s new wave templates, Google wants to guide you toward answers.

Now when you visit Wave, the New Wave panel (and the new wave button) offer options for starting waves using templates for common use cases. Gina and I highlighted some of our favorite, creative Wave use cases over at The Complete Guide to Google Wave, but the new templates offer a really helpful jumping off point for collaborating in Wave for common uses, like discussions, task tracking, meeting notes, document creation, and brainstorming. You can still stick with the default blank wave, but it’s seems like a step in the right direction to help new users get familiar with the tool.

One of Google Wave’s more powerful features is its extensions—small gadgets and doodads you can embed or include in waves to add great functionality. They used to be particularly difficult to hunt down and install, but no more.

The new Extensions gallery (found by clicking Extensions in the navigation panel) takes a lot of pain out of finding and installing a new Wave extension. It doesn’t have all of our favorite gadgets, but it’s a good start. Unfortunately there’s still no easy way to install a gadget that isn’t included in the gallery, but this method should still work if you want to install such a gadget. In the meantime, it’s good to see Wave making it easier for regular users to find and enjoy new gadgets.