Last Monday, November 18, 2007, two Google engineers from Mountain View, California gave us a tech talk at ACCEED Conference Center in Makati. Aileen Apolo, the Google Country Consultant in Philippines, introduced Jay Aguilar and Franklin Naval (both Filipinos).
The focus of the talk was mainly on Google Gadgets, but they also discussed a bit of OpenSocial, Android, and Summer of Code. I’ll briefly share the topics they covered.
Google Gadgets
iGoogle
They described iGoogle as a landing page of a list of different Google Gadgets. This page is almost similar to the regular Google home page except that you can personalize it.
Depending on your preferences, you may choose and organize the content to include gadgets on weather forecasts, traffic updates, news headlines, calendar system, etc. You may also aggregate contents from other sites or even build gadgets to fit your needs. Here’s the iGoogle I setup for myself:
Notice that I added Digg, Slashdot, WebMD Health, Official Google Blog, Geek.com, Google News, Top Stories, Dilbert, Spanish Word A Day and Google Calendar. You can try it yourself. Just go to http://www.google.com/ig (this link should also be available from the Google home page), select from popular contents and add more stuff from the Google Gadget Directory.
You can create you own gadget
As for developers, you can write you own gadgets. And there are several reasons for doing so:
- It’s fun! (You do it all the time, so it better be)
- Too many users, not enough gadgets – There are already a lot of gadgets out there but the number still doesn’t satisfy the needs of the millions of users.
- To add more traffic to your site – Having a gadget for the content of your site would increase the visibility of your site.
Now in developing gadgets, it is best to contact the owners of the content you want to make a gadget out of. When you are not authorized by the content owners, you may not submit it to Google to be added to their directory. Also, you might probably run into an issue with the content owner.
If your site already have RSS feeds, it will be easier to bring the content to a Google Gadget.
People who develop gadgets
- Some people at Google
- Only a part of the available gadgets were written by Google
- All kinds of independentt developers
- This is where most of the gadgets come from
- Teenagers writing gadgets just for fun
- People who write gadgets for a living
- Businesses that want more exposure and traffic
- Provide useful content to users
- Get traffic when users click the link for additional information
- eg. (news, sports, enthusiasts)
More on Google Gadgets..
You can put your website in a Google Gadget. This will let you reuse the code you already have and avoid tricky authentication issues.
You can embed Flash inside a Google Gadget. If you already have a great Flash program, you can easily embed it in your gadget. Use the Gadgets API to embed Flash and it will interface perfectly into iGoogle on all supported browsers.
Your gadget may include configuration for user preferences. The API allows you to set and save preferences. You can use text inputs, checkboxes, dropdown menus and list of items.
You can translate your Google Gadget in different languages. Making your gadget work in other languages is also easy. Translating your gadgets attracts more users from all over the world. Remember that iGoogle is available is 40 countries and in 26 languages. You only need a little bit of XML to do this.
In adding your gadget to the directory, you have to add a little more information: thumbnail image, screenshot, gadget description, author, affiliation, and location.
Google Gadgets is not only for the personalized (Google) home page. You can also add Google Gadgets to your web page or any website.
OpenSocial
What is is it?
[OpenSocial] provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.
This means that you can build more applications to interact with your friends using only one common set of APIs. Sites that are now implementing OpenSocial inclue Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, and many more.
Benefits
- With one common API available for several (social) websites, you no longer need to learn site-specific APIs
- It uses standards-based web languages (JavaScript, HTML)
- Allows you to extend the context of a social application
- Allows hosting of 3rd party social applications
- Since it is based upon the Google Gadget technology, it utilizes its caching technology that can ease your bandwidth demands
- It’s free!
Development
- Like in any other development, you should read the documentation first.
- And it’s always good to get your hands dirty. Write your first social gadget.
Android
[Android] is the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. It is being developed by The Open Handset Alliance – a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies.
Using the Android SDK, you can access core mobile device funtionalities. Applications are written using Java and runs on a custom virtual machine called Dalvik.
You can find everything you need in the Android home page including the SDK, sample applications, libraries, and development tools. Android also has a community (of course it does).
There’s also Android Developer Challenge. And they’re providing $10 million in awards!
Summer of Code
[Google Summer of Code] is a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects.
What’s in GSoC?
- Exposes students to real-world development
- Students are paired with mentors from open source communities
- Some used GSoC as an opportunity to focus on their existing open source coding activities
- Some students from the past Summer of Code became mentors the following summer
For more information, check out the Google Summer of Code page.
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Lastly… Aileen, Jay and Franklin setup a Filipino Google Apps Help Group: http://groups.google.com/group/filipino-google-apps-help-group
Check out Aileen Apolo’s work blog for the video coverage of the event.
Related posts:
how about exchanging blogroll links? lol