Weekly Google Code Roundup for July 16-20th

JUL 20, 2007

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

This week we have the pleasure of having MashupCamp hosted walking distance from the Googleplex. It was great to meet people from varied backgrounds in an open spaces format, and to see so many Googlers there mixing in with the fun. We had discussions around the Google Mashup Editor, Google Geras, and of course our various APIs such as Maps and AJAX Search and Feeds.

In API and developer-product news...

Feed Discovery API and AJAX Search on the iPhone

The AJAX API team launched new functionality in the AJAX Feed API. You can now lookup and discover feeds based on a search or URL. They also posted an iPhone targeted version of the AJAX Search component.

Build Your Campus in 3D winners announced

The results are in for the winners of the Build Your Campus in 3D Competition. The judges chose 7 teams from among the dozens who submitted more than 4000 buildings from higher education institutions all over North America. Tag a fly through your school and see if it has changed!

Google SketchUp for Dummies

Staying with the world of Google Earth, Google SketchUp For Dummies was published, and a companion website is now live as well as videos.

Google Open Source Team at OSCON

For those who will be at OSCON and are interested in learning about Google's open source activities, come hear our annual open source update or learn more about how the community has used our project hosting service since its launch at OSCON 2006. For those interested in our developer applications, we'll be taking a look at how to write large, multipage Ajax applications with Google Web Toolkit and getting up close and personal with Google Gears. We're excited to hear your feedback and answer your questions.

Around Google

Hosted site searches for Australian businesses

Deepak Ramanathan announced Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE), a hosted site search solution that provides Google-quality results for your website. It's fast, relevant, reliable, and flexible, so that users can quickly find what they're looking for through search results customized and integrated into your business website.

Message Center: Let us communicate with you about your site

Maile Ohye posted about a new Message Center which is a new way for webmasters to receive personalized information from Google in our webmaster console. Should we need to contact you, you'll see a notification in your Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Our commitment to open broadband platforms

Chris Sacca, Head of Special Initiatives, has written a detailed post on the policy behind Google's commitment to open broadband platforms, including open applications, open devices, open services, and open networks.

Google Reader is More Podcast-Friendly

Ionut Alex Chitu posted on the unofficial Google Operating System blog about how Google Reader works as a podcast catcher, including how you can pop-out the music player.

Featured Projects

Prague 360 makes great usage of the Google Maps API to show beautiful gigapixel mapping of certain cities, including 360 degree visualizations.

FindBugs is an open source static analysis tool to find coding defects in Java programs. Surprise yourself and run this on your code base.

Google Tech Talks

Split Snapshots: A New Approach to Old State Storage

Kurzweil says, computers will enable people to live forever and doctors will be doing ... all backup of your memories by late 2030. This talk is not about that, yet. Instead, the remarkable drop in disk costs makes it possible and attractive to retain past application states and store them for a long time for mining or auditing.

Amigo: Proximity-based Authentication of Mobile Devices

Secure and spontaneous communication between wireless devices that come within close ... all proximity of each other, but lack a pre-existing trust relationship -- devices that are previously unknown to each other -- is an important component of many future pervasive applications.

Eyal de Lara came to talk about Amigo, a proximity-based authentication of mobile devices.

Podcasts

Google Developer Podcast Episode Five: Adam Sah on Google Gadgets

We got to chat with Adam Sah of the Google Gadgets team about all things Gadgets. This includes the technology side of things but also the business side: such as monetizing your gadgets and the new Google Gadget Ventures.