Weekly Google Code Roundup: Reaching the Sky and Writing Offline
By Dion
Almaer, Google Developer ProgramsIt has been a busy time
recently. The Zoho team announced offline support for their Writer application this week, so
we met at their offices and
talked to
them about their experience. This is our first video talk, but more are in the
works, so head over to our new
YouTube
channel.
If you are a Mac developer you now have access to
more of our APIs via the updated
Google
Data APIs Objective-C Client Library. You can now work with Google Code Search,
Picasa Web Albums, and do more with Google Calendars.
Speaking of
Google Calendar, we
introduced
Calendar Gadgets which allow you to add behaviour to your calendar via Gadgets. Some
early examples include adding horoscopes, sudoku puzzles that get harder throughout the week,
and the ability to keep up with the all important celebrity birthdays.
If you are new to Gadgets, Alan Williamson has written a nice introduction to
creating a Gadget for the Google
Desktop.
The maps world has been productive. The big news of
the week is the ability to
embed
a Map in a YouTube like way. Now you don't need to code to be able to build a map,
and place it anyway you wish.
This doesn't mean the API is slowing
down. Richard Garland wrote about a new
cluster
zoom feature that ties DragZoom and Marker Manager.
Introducing
Sky in Google Earth has gotten a lot of people excited. Looking down at the earth is
great, but being able to sit on your back and look up at the stars is just what you want on a
nice summer night. Now you can do
just
that.
Featured ProjectsWho's Web maps out various Web 2.0
talent on a rich Maps API implementation.
Zoho Writer has gone offline... in a good way. Now
you can keep some of your docs available for that plane trip.
Read
more.
Featured MediaI got into a nice conversation with fellow Googler, and EAI expert, Gregor Hohpe at
MashupCamp.
Listen
to the conversation about enterprise Mashups and the Google Mashup Editor.
Salesforce developers came to our offices and gave an
Overview
and Q&A on AppExchange.
John Resig of Mozilla and jQuery
gave a talk on
Best Practices in
Javascript Library Design based on his work on both the jQuery library, and the new
FUEL library for building Firefox plugins.
Michael Still talked about
Practical
MythTV, which covered the powerful open source personal video recorder.
Leslie Hawthorn has made all of her Summer of Code podcasts
available
in ogg format!
As always,
check
out the latest tech talks.
