By Tom
Stocky, Google Developer ProgramsGood news for Google
Gadget developers. We've just launched
Google Gadget Ventures, a new pilot
program for distributing grants and seed investments to gadget developers and gadget-related
businesses. We're excited about the opportunity this will give developers to build even
richer, more useful gadgets and get recognized for doing it.
The
program will provide two kinds of funding. First, we'll invite promising gadget developers
(individuals or businesses) to apply for $5,000 grants to fund further development. These are
not loans or equity investments; they're simply grants for gadgets that already have a
thriving user base and we think have potential for even more improvement. To be considered for
a grant, your gadget needs to have more than 250,000 pageviews per week, and you need to
provide a one-page proposal on how you'd like to improve your gadget. This is a
no-strings-attached grant; we won't ask for repayment of any kind. We simply ask that you work
on your project in good faith.
Secondly, the program will make $100,000
seed investments in companies that either start as a Google Gadget or have a large Google
Gadget component. In order to be eligible for a seed investment, you must have received a
$5,000 grant, and you must propose a plan for making your gadget financially
sustainable.
If you're interested in creating your own
Google Gadget, we have several tools
that can help. The
Google Mashup Editor
has an option for instantly deploying your web app as a gadget. For Java programmers,
Google Web Toolkit provides another
good way to write a gadget or a full-featured AJAX app with a gadget component. The
Google Data APIs and
AJAX Feed API can help power your
gadget with rich data sources. You can even add offline functionality using
Google Gears.
We
hope you find these tools useful for creating gadgets, and we're eager to hear what you think
in the
Google Gadgets
discussion group.
