Weekly Google Code Roundup for July 23-27th
By Dion
Almaer, Google Developer ProgramsIt has been a busy time
for conferences. From MashupCamp last week, to OSCON and The Ajax Experience this week. While
some of the teams have been talking to developers at these events, others have been producing
new APIs for you all to use.
In API and developer-product
news...
A new API was added to the AJAX Search API,
Image
Search.
Paul MacDonald blogged about the
new
features in the Google Mashup Editor, including sorting, compact paging, the new
select control, and more. He also discussed various
GME
developer resources.
We have released a new tool that we have
been playing with, the
Google
Singleton Detector, as open source. Its job is to find singletons and global state
in the Java code that we produce.
While working on the
Zvents
mapplet, Michael Geary developed a
nifty
utility function called GAsync(). This lets you make several requests in a single
call. Mike has kindly donated this function to the Mapplets API so that everyone can use
it.
In other Map news,
the
Maps API team created utility functions to give you more information about your
lines and shapes: GPolyline.getLength, GPolyline.getBounds, GPolygon.getArea, and
GPolygon.getBounds.
You can also
test
your driving directions skills using the new directions API.
Around Google
Robots
Exclusion Protocol: now with even more flexibility: Dan Crow explains X-Robots-Tag
HTTP headers.
Computer
science resources for academics: At the main Google campus this week we're hosting
the
Google Faculty
Summit, which involves
universities all over participating in discussions about what we're up
to in research-land as well as computer science education - something very near and dear to
us.
The
newest Google Earth Enterprise: Today, we're pleased to announce the newest version
of
Google Earth Enterprise. The enterprise solution brings us into close
contact with some of the most advanced users of geospatial tools, and by meeting their needs,
it helps make the product better for everyone. And enterprise users are some of the most
active in using the products and also making contributions to the Google Earth and Maps user
community, with
data,
blogs and
mashups.
Featured Projects
The
BBC
Flood Tracking mapplet is a fantastic example of citizen journalism. This map
includes UK flood alert information, emergency center locations, photos submitted by local
residents, user-generated YouTube videos, and audio clips by BBC Radio correspondents.
Jookebox is a
music mashup that pulls in data from iTunes and Amazon to give you a comprehensive view of
what's happening on the music scene.
Google Tech Talks
Inbox
Zero is a fantastic talk by Merlin Mann, a well known productivity guru and creator
of the popular 43 folders website. Merlin talks about Getting Things Done, the importance of
getting your inbox to zero, and strategies for dealing with high volume email.
Erlang
is celebrating its 20th birthday this year, and is grabbing developers interest due to its
concurrency model. This talk will cover the history of Erlang, demonstrate major design goals
with a few programming examples and also touch on the subject of the future of Erlang.
Erlang also has the best movie made about it:
Erlang
the movie. A real classic.
The
Google
Test Automation Conference showcases lightning talks by Harry Robinson, Dan North,
Steve Freeman, Nat Pryce, Christine Newman, Andrin von Rechenberg, Ade Oshineye, Timur
Hairullin, James Richardson, James Lyndsay, Jordan Dea-Mattson, Curtis "Ovid" Poe.
Launchd:
One Program to Rule them All: In this talk, Dave, who developed launchd, will
discuss the rationale behind launchd and how the program came to be.
