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At Google Developer Day 2007

I'm at the San Jose-based Google Developer Day, hearing more about the news that's been getting the blogosphere and media pretty excited, especially the news of Google Gears - their first foray into the Occasionally Connected Computing space (or RIA), a model that's getting more and more interest by those wanting a piece of the developer hearts and minds.

Philipp Lenssen was at Hamburg's Google Developer Day event earlier today where he has written up his reaction to the news and Robert Scoble has a useful summary of the various Google announcements.

Gears is definitely interesting, but the Google Mashup Editor story provides further clues as to how the "widgetsphere" wars might play out over the next couple of years.

Google Mashup Editor

In the scenario they demo'd of Google Mashup Editor they showed how are mashup can built a mashup can be created that consumes a feed from an external source, overlays that data's feed over Google Maps, how a simple UI interaction be defined (click and focus on map) and then lets a user search Google Base. You can then deploy the mashup on Google infrastructure that will then serve your app from their servers. It's a text-based programming UI (coding in html + JavaScript + CSS + "extended XML tags") - all through the browser. You can see the product tour here.

 

As Tim Heuer notes, it's in beta.

The session closed with Sergey Brinn making a brief appearance - no announcements, no news - more of a "thanks for being here".

Let me know if you're also here at San Jose.

Update 6/3/2007:

I missed this bit of news on the day - Google launched a Directions API, allowing third-party sites to offer directions directly on their site. Via Mashable:

"The API features include the ability to request directions between a pair of points or a longer sequence of points, and multiple language support like English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Japanese.

Google has launched a Directions API at its Developer Day, allowing third-party sites to offer directions directly on their site.

The API features include the ability to request directions between a pair of points or a longer sequence of points, and multiple language support like English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Japanese."

Also, Stephen O'Grady of Redmonk has written up an excellent analysis on Google Gears.

Posted: May 31 2007, 12:09 PM by alexbarnett | with 3 comment(s)
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Comments

BillyG said:

"they showed how are mashup can built created that consumes a feed from an external source" == 'huh'

# May 31, 2007 1:24 PM

alexbarnett said:

BillyG - thanks for pointing out the screwed up english in that paragraph - have fixed.

# May 31, 2007 2:20 PM

Don Campbell said:

Nice writeup Alex - but the Google Mashup Editor doesn't look anywhere near as nice as the Bungee environment;)

I'm at the show - I'll look for you here.

# May 31, 2007 5:06 PM