Weekly Google Code Roundup: Lots of Geo, feeling Ajax-y and another SoC graduation

OCT 12, 2007
By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

Weekly Google Code Roundup: Lots of Geo, feeling Ajax-y and another SoC graduation

It really rained today, which has been the biggest rain that I have seen since moving to Mountain View. I am used to it, since I hail from England, and I have the chance to go back to London to speak on Google Gears at the Future of Web Apps conference. We learned more about Vortex, a simple new offline and sync abstraction on top of Gears.

In other Ajax news, the Ajax API team released a nice new Dynamic Feed Control that has a wizard that helps you find feeds.

The GWT team are looking forward to Pearson's GWT conference which offers dedicated time with GWT developers and core engineers. The Rialto framework also joined the GWT family by creating a GWT wrapper of itself.

The bulk of the news seemed to center around the geo landscape.

Chris Schalk wrote a detailed article on mashing Google Maps with Oracle XML DB and Java.

Pamela announced a new LabeledMarker which supports marker and label toggling, and the Google Mashup Editor team has updated its geo coding in maps.

There were some really fun feature additions too. You can now play YouTube videos from within Google Earth. It is great to zoom in on the Eiffel tower and see videos related to it.

The Earth team have also made it much easier to explore Earth in general. I enjoy the history of London.

If you aren't sure whether it is daytime or not when you drunkenly call your friend who is in europe, flip over to the featured DaylightMap site that always shows you where the sun shines.

We will finish with some interesting news for the newest coders:



As always, check out the latest tech talks, subscribe to the Google Developer Podcast and visit the Google Code YouTube channel.