Fridaygram

AUG. 12, 2011

By Scott Knaster, Google Code Blog Editor

Back in June we launched GoogleCL, an open-source utility that provides command line access to Google services. For our friends who live on the command line and think mice are something cats chase, GoogleCL provides a handy way to perform various tasks, such as posting to Blogger or creating an appointment with Google Calendar. Sample commands look like this:

$ google blogger post
      --blog "Lemurland blog" --title "Latest Madagascar trip" --tags "vacation, ring-tailed"
      trip_post.html 

$ google calendar add "Order palm tree tomorrow at 10
      AM"

GoogleCL works with various other Google services, providing access to YouTube, Picasa, Docs, and Contacts without having to deal with that pesky graphical user interface. And now, thanks to Google intern Michael Sittig and our APIs Discovery Service, GoogleCL supports all Discovery-based APIs – a list that includes Tasks, Moderator, Books, URL Shortener, and many others. For example, you can use the URL Shortener API to create a new short URL like so:

$ google urlshortener
      insert --longUrl www.example.com

As long as our fingers are firmly on the keyboard, let’s talk about words for a moment. The folks who make the Oxford Dictionaries have created Save the Words, a way to preserve wonderful but little-used English words. At Save the Words you can see these words, read their often-hilarious definitions, and agree to use them yourself to help obstrigillate this trend.

Finally, spend a moment taking a look at this article and then ask yourself: have explorers really found the Millennium Falcon at the bottom of the sea? (Spoiler alert: no.)

Even when they cover serious topics like Google APIs and purported spaceship wrecks, Fridaygram posts are just for fun. Each Fridaygram item must pass only one test: it has to be interesting to us nerds.