Weekly Google Code Roundup for May 14-18th

May 18, 2007


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We have found that there is a lot of news around the web dispersed on various
Google blogs, forums, and press releases. As fantastic as this all is, we want
to try to give you a weekly round-up containing news that was of interest to us.
The goal is that if you had time to read one Google related post a week, this
would keep you up to date on the big items.

Our roundups will cover news and events surrounding our APIs, products, and
items from the community at large.

Let's get started for this week, May 14-18th, 2007.

Google Developer Podcasts

We are excited to launch the new Google Developer Podcast. In the first episode we interviewed Bob Lee of the Google Guice project. In the future you will see interviews with Googlers on many different topics, and we hope that it keeps you in touch. Please contact us if you have any requests for the show, and check out episode one.

We also have a new podcast series around the ever-popular Google Summer of Code series.

Google Developer Day

The buzz is growing around the worldwide event that is Google Developer Day, May 31st, 2007.

We have launched a new developer day site that will allow you to keep up to date on the event. You may want to check out the sessions that are planned for your location. Simply choose your location from the front page and click on sessions.

Make sure to check your location, as demand has required that some sites are having to move to new, larger space. Here in California we have announced that the sessions are going to be held in the San Jose Convention Center.

We are only a couple of weeks away, and then we will witness the community gathering around the world. We have some fantastic content to showcase, but more importantly, we get a chance to listen and learn from you all.

JavaOne Roundup

JavaOne was as busy as usual this year, especially for Googlers, who gave at least 14 presentations on a variety of topics. At the booth we found a lot of interest in discussing our technologies, especially GWT, Guice, and various APIs.

We also produced an article on A Java Developer's Guide to Google Technologies that gives you a taste for what was on offer.

The Java community is an important one for us, and we would love to hear from you on what you would like to see from us in the future.

Fun in AJAX API Land

The AJAX API team has followed up on the AJAX Feed API launch by building useful components that use the feed API under the scenes.

The AJAX Feed API FeedControl allows you to build a flexible blog roll component in seconds, and the AJAX Feed API Slide Show Control will create a slide show on top of any feed that uses Media RSS (e.g. Photobucket, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums). At the same time, the Picassa team created a Flash component that works with their service.

Universal Search Launches

There was big news in search this week. At Searchology, we announced our first
phase of Universal Search which ties various search products together to give you an answer that makes sense across books, music, video, news, and good old web pages.

We published a little behind the scenes coverage for those who want to dig a little.

Google Code Projects of the Week

GWT Maven Support

If you are a maven user, it is hard to go back to any other way for building your Java applications. The GWT Maven project allows you to weave your nice dependency magic with your GWT projects.

Hey, What's That?

This Google Maps mashup allows you to get a profile on what you could see from a given point. This is normally most interesting from a point that is high up, so the interface gives you a list of mountains to choose from.

For extra bonus points, you can read up on the technical side for how
they work it all out
.

In other news...

YouTube API Blog: YouTube has just created a new API blog, so we should expect some interesting content around the APIs that Youtube has available to developers.

Real-time quotes for free: If you work in the financial sector, you will know that access to real-time quotes is very important indeed. It is great to see that we are going to be offering them for free, across our properties.

Viewing your collections with Google Maps: Check out the new maps view feature in 3D Warehouse.