Code Review: "I/O, I/O it's over now you know"

JUN 02, 2008
By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

Phew, I am still getting over Google I/O. It is interesting to be on the inside and see the build up to the event itself. We were getting excited to hold our largest event with the developer community to date. It didn't dissapoint, and I was very happy to see developers from all walk of lives and companies. I met programmers from Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo!, MySpace, and I could keep on going.

You can check out the keynote below, and videos of the sessions are coming very soon, so check out the Google Developers YouTube channel.



The show started well for me as I got to see a project that I have been passionate about launch, the AJAX Libraries API which has us hosting popular open source Ajax libraries on the Google infrastructure. This release is the first step and we look forward to pushing forward with the goal of aggressively getting libraries that many developers use in browsers as fast as possible. If we are successful then we can start to think of these libraries as a standard library of sorts. The community has already started to build interesting tools around this new service. For example, you can now install a Wordpress plugin that rewrites your page to use your library of choice on Google's servers.

Gears was launched at last years Google Developer Day, and the coming out party for this years birthday was a debranding of "Google Gears" to "Gears" to reflect the community effort. Talks by the Gears engineers showed new APIs in the works, how we are working with HTML5 and standards, Gears for Mobile demonstrations, and the MySpace Messaging launch that uses Gears to enable a new search feature that offloads processing from their data centers and gives lightning fast results.

App Engine came out in the keynote sharing the fact that anyone can signup now, the expected pricing model (important to note that the starting point will ALWAYS be free), and new APIs that work with Email and Memcached.

The Geo world had another set of news. Google Earth can now be used in the browser thanks to a new plugin that allows you to add a quick line of JavaScript to your Maps API code to see it in action.

Ben Lisbakken wrote a piece on his application that uses App Engine, Local Search, and Maps to make static maps interactive.

Finally, in housekeeping news, the Maps API blog has been transformed to the new Geo Developer Blog, so update your feed readers.

What else?

Finally, to end with a bit of fun. Aaron Spangler created something very cool with his 20% time. Along with a colleague, he created Radish an indoor solar-powered calendar display that hooked into Google Calendar and once ever hour updates via epaper.

Check it out:

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