Google Developer Podcast

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Using iTunes? We have published the fourth episode of the Google Developer Podcast, which features an interview on Google SketchUp and how developers can interact with that world. Interview with Mark Limber on Google SketchUp What will you learn from this interview? Who SketchUp is aimed at, and what it containsCreative out-of-the-box uses of SketchUp by fellow developersHow to do a Hello World model (your house) and put it on Google EarthHow to find and share your models in the 3D WarehouseVarious ways in which you can use SketchUp if you are a games developerThe various SketchUp APIs and how you can extend SketchUp with Ruby, including fun examples out there (dropping trees, manipulating cameras, animation, and much more)How to attach and manipulate metadata to the artifacts in SketchUpHow you can use a web dialog within SketchUpWorking with materials and textures within your modelsHow to use the C++ SDK to use SketchUp from within your own application.To learn more about SketchUp, visit the forum, and request an SDK. News In our news segment we covered: The Google Gears community response has been great to see. This article discusses several applications and libraries that already work with Gears. Google Mashup Editor: How to use multiple pages in your mashup Blogger in Draft has been released for early adopters. This allows you to play with the upcoming Blogger features before they are announced in full. The first feature is video upload, and more are coming. Tying into the SketchUp interview we discussed the new ability to use animated models in Google Earth. You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Using iTunes? We have published the third episode of the Google Developer Podcast, which delves into the world of offline applications, which is a hot topic right now. Let's get right to it. Interview with Mike Tsao of the Google Gears team We had the pleasure of interviewing Mike Tsao of the Google Gears team just before the Google Gears announcement went public. It is a really fun chat, and lets us get into the mind of the Google Gears team a little. In this interview you will learn: What Google Gears is at a high levelHow Google Gears came aboutThe parts and pieces of Google GearsInformation on the Datastore component (SQLite)Information on the ResourceStore and ManagedResourceStore componentsHow the APIs look, and what should I be thinking about as I make my application offlineHow to handle versioning with Google Gears applicationsHow the WorkerPool came about, and why we need to run JavaScript jobs in another threadThe code contributions made back to the SQLite codebase (e.g. MATCH() added)The pain of finding the 90% case for syncingThoughts on how the client is getting smarterHow GWT supports GearsHow Google Reader is using GearsHow the UI fits in with offline behaviourThe open source vision for GearsHow other web platforms can access GearsFuture ideas for Google GearsNewsWe also discussed a little of the other news that happened just before Developer Day. MappletsGoogle Maps Street ViewGoogle Web Toolkit 1.4You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs We have published the second episode of the Google Developer Podcast, just in time to get you ready for Google Developer Day which kicks off this week. This weeks episode discusses: News for Google Developers Check out the latest schedules and information about the event. Check the location! JavaOne recap: thoughts about the show, and the Google boothDiscussing the new AJAX Feed controlsOur thoughts on Searchology and Universal SearchThe new YouTube API blog was announced Featured project: GWT Maven SupportFeatured project: Hey, What's That?Interview with Pamela Fox of the Google Maps team We want to thank Pamela for taking the time to chat to us about Google Maps, and the Google Maps API. What you will learn from Pamela: Her role, and background A little history on the Google Maps API Information about mashups How you can overlay map content such as MapWOW, Lord of the Rings, and your own How to be hard code with custom tiles, to give you a full level of detail How to use simple ground overlays About the Google Moon API How KML and Google Earth fit into Google Maps The magic of GGeoXml() What the Maps group is going to be doing for developer day How to use the JavaScript API How you can use Maps from within GWT, Rails, and other platforms What's GMap2, and how does the API handle versioning Enjoying the scroll-wheel zoom How My Maps fits into Google Maps How Google Maps helped launched the Ajax meme Pamela's favorite recent Maps mashups (bones, crop circles, and more) The sample code available in the gmaps-samples Using the Google Spreadsheet Data API as a data store Understanding the limitations on Google Maps API use What are the hidden features in the Google Maps API that people tend not to use Why you should GLog What the common issues that new Maps API users come across Best practices for developing Google Maps MashupsYou can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show. As always, please contact us to let us know if there is anything that you would like to see on the podcast.

Posted by Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs A fair few Googlers enjoy creating podcasts, and a large number choose to participate in the medium as listeners. I have really enjoyed creating Audible Ajax, as it gives me a way to get close to the community. Not only do I get to meet great people and technologists as I interview them for the show, but the listeners also let me know what they like and want to hear back from me. The better I've gotten to know Google developers and programmers in the community, the more I've wanted to highlight and share their contributions. Dick Wall and Carl Quinn are two Googlers that are part of the Java Posse podcast, and we were excited to team up and start communicating. The end result is a new podcast called the Google Developer Podcast. What will we cover on the Google Developer podcast? Interviews with Google engineers, discussing areas of their expertiseNew features, applications, and APIs that matter to developersOpen source projects that we work on and/or care about at GoogleProjects that use our APIs and applications in interesting waysNews and events that we all care about, including the Google Summer of Code.An interview with Bob Lee, Google Guice developer As we were brainstorming our first podcast Google Guice was released. Guice is an open source, lightweight, dependency injection framework with an emphasis on tight Java 5 integration and high performance. It has already been put through its paces in production at Google for awhile and it was a great effort on the behalf of the Guice team to share it with the community as a whole. The Java community noticed. A spark has ignited around the project and the ideas that it represents. To learn more we contacted Bob Lee and had a conversation about the philosophy behind Guice and how it all works. We hope you enjoy it. As with all new endeavors, we are looking to the community to help define it. What can you do?Download Episode OneSubscribe to the showJoin our Google Group for the podcastEmail us with your thoughts and ideas Thanks to Google Blogger for handling the enclosures for usThe Podsafe Music Network for our theme musicTheme Music - "Google Earth" by Zioneye

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs As soon as Android and the Open Handset Alliance was out in the wild, we were chomping at the bit to talk with some of the people behind the platform to discuss the developer-related information. Using iTunes? We were lucky enough to get some time from Dianne Hackborn and Jason Parks, who have been doing this work for a long time. They used to be at Be, and PalmSource, and you will hear how that experience has come through to Android. In fact, you will see how the Android team has engineers from many other platforms (Linux, Danger, and Windows Mobile). Dick Wall himself is an advocate on Android, and you can hear how excited he is to talk about this! What will you learn on this podcast? Some history behind the projectThe high level architecture of Android. For example, how Linux processes handle the VM and manage security (the VM doesn't handle it)Details on the Dalvik VM and how it is optimized for small devicesThe architecture: From Intents to Views to Permissions and moreHow XML is slow, but the tools convert the XML to a nicer format for youThe tooling and steps for building an application on AndroidHow so many objects have a URL, and how the environment is like a mini-SOA (Services across processes instead of across the network)Thoughts on how you program for small devices, and things to watch out for if you move from the desktopThe control, or lack of control that you have over the application lifecycle"Everything you do drains the battery"The thread story: they exist, you don't have to deal with them if you don't want too, and the UIUsing XMPP for messaging You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe). Want to learn more about Android? Read the book or watch the movie depending on how you are feeling!

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs The announcement of the OpenSocial project is really exciting, so I was really glad to drag Patrick away from his work to take some time to chat with me about it. Using iTunes? Patrick is easy to talk too, and I think that comes across in the interview itself. There has been a lot of pre-release speculation on what OpenSocial really is, and the press has put out wildly different ideas over the last couple of weeks. Patrick lays out the facts of the announcement. He covers a lot, including:What has actually been releasedWhat OpenSocial isn'tDetails on the various APIs:People Data API: You can get access to owners and viewers, and their friendsPersistence Data API: Store simple hash table data for the users using your applicationActivities Data API: Like the Facebook News feedWhat it means to be an OpenSocial "container"Fun social apps that Patrick has seen developed by the trusted testersSit back and listen to Patrick's dulcet French tones as he takes you through all things OpenSocial. You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe). Also, check out video from the Campfire One event and interviews with a subset of the partners involved in the OpenSocial launch. Having a large number of application developers and container vendors show what they have already done gives you a glimpse to the future. Now I want to record the next podcast by the fire.

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs We had the pleasure of sitting down with two of the Google Mashup Editor team to discuss the product and how developers can use it to build mashups in short order. We start out by discussing what the product actually is. The term "mashup" is a very overloaded term out there, so a mashup editor could do a number of things. What are the pieces? How does it compare to other tools like Yahoo! Pipes (complementary!)? What are the user and global feeds? We then delve into practices for building your mashups, and discuss good examples that are out there. We finish up discussing areas that the team would like to delve into as the product evolves. So, take some time to download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe). Thanks to Paul and Rich for taking the time to chat with us.

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Using iTunes? T.V. Raman is a Research Scientist at Google who knows a thing or two about accessibility. We took the opportunity to interview him, and Hubbell, his seeing-eye dog (who was nice and quiet). We started out by asking the honest question that developers ask about accessibility: "What is in it for me?". T.V. discusses the practical issues, and what you should be doing with respect to accessibility, and how it is one piece of the usability picture. We then delve into the problems of developing accessible websites, and solutions to some of the problems. If you listen to the interview you will learn: How not to develop in a user-agent specific mannerFun issues with screen readersHow audio CAPTCHA brings equality to the pain of CAPTCHA, and how people who can see use the audio onesHow painful is the Web to view for a blind personUsing the Google Web Transcoder (the other GWT!) to clean up pagesHow CSS hasn't been as leveraged as much as we would likeHow the increase in mobile and widget platforms has a side effect of accessible viewsHow RIA applications deal with accessibilityHow T.V. has written custom clients for Google APIsWhat standards groups are doing in the accessibility spaceDealing with Python, a language that cares about whitespace, as a blind man. You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe). Also, check out an accessible web search for the visually impaired.

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Mark Stahl is a technical lead on the Google data APIs team. Many of the APIs that Google offers are part of the Google data API family, so we thought it would be prudent to get some time to chat with him, and discuss all things GData. Using iTunes? If you are new to GData, or want to learn more, listen to the podcast to hear: What "Google data API" actually means (the parts and pieces)What Atom, Atom Publishing Protocol, and other tech behind GData are all aboutWhat GData adds to the mix on top of Atom and APPHow Atom compares to RSSWhat are ETags? And how can they help me?Why REST, the style, was chosen for these APIsWhere REST makes sense, and where it doesn't. Resource driven vs. RPC.What the first GData APIs wereHow the killer app of syncing data with Google CalendarHow you actually use the APIs? What do they need to learn? What tools do we give them?Can you write APIs that implement the same GData APIs?And much more.You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Using iTunes? Gregor Hohpe is a Googler who has spent a lot of time in the enterprise. He authored the book on Enterprise Integration Patterns, and has been watching and helping the integration world. We were both at MashupCamp and started to talk about how Mashups could be called EAI 2.0, and started to discuss the similarities and differences. Gregor also wrote an article titled Google Mashup Editor and Yahoo! Pipes: Friend, not Foe, which does a great job of explaining the mashup landscape by example. He shows how to use the Google Mashup Editor, and how it can work with Yahoo! Pipes and other tools. In this podcast you will hear about all of these topics in that special style that only a German can offer. There are some really fun analogies here. Listen out for the graffiti artists in the Mashup world. Oh, and on behalf of two europeans, we apologize for saying "San Franciso 49ers" when we of course meant the Giants. You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Using iTunes? Max Ross and Maulik Shah were part of a core group that worked on the recently open sourced Hibernate Shards project. In the podcast you will learn: What sharding is and what it means in the world of HibernateHow the word "shards" is common at Google (the equivalent of "smurf" in The Smurfs)Why you would want to shard your data to give you increased scalable performanceHow the Hibernate Shards project doesn't mess with the core APIs, allowing you to add sharding unobtrusively What you need to think about if you want to shard your data, and how you can design a schema that has a dimension that is easily sharded. This includes designing without complex relationships.How you could create a crazy project that shards data across multiple databases (as in, one mysql, one Oracle), but that would be crazyThe various strategies to define how you retrieve your objects across the distributed data storeHow this compares with horizontal partitioning at the database level itself (e.g. new features in MySQL, PostgreSQL, and others)And much, much more.For more information check out the Hibernate Shards homepage and the Google Group for discussion. The new release that was mentioned in the podcast just went live. Congratulations to the team. Start listening now You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Using iTunes? The Google Gadget Ventures announcement was very exciting for us and the community. We couldn't wait to get Adam Sah of the Google Gadgets team to discuss Gadgets, and the new announcement. Interview with Adam Sah on Google Gadget Ventures What will you learn from this interview? What Google Gadgets actually are and how they compare to widgets and blidgets and blodgets and ....How there is a family of Gadgets. They aren't just for iGoogle!How you can develop Gadgets in HTML, Flash, Java applets, and more. After all, this is just iframes people.The security model with GadgetsThe subtlety behind phishing and GadgetsThe long tail of Gadgets, and how to share and promote your GadgetsHow you can post Gadgets on your blog or websiteHow we are in the second generation of Gadgets (not just a minimal view on your web app)What an appropriate amount of resources to put on GadgetsHow to monetize your GadgetsInformation about the Google Gadget Ventures programHow to get going with the scratchpad in secondsHow Mapplets are Gadget tooHow this is about real business (IBM and Salesforce.com)How to deal with high volume Gadgets, and how we are here to help.The role and timing of standardization of the gadget platformsRead more about Google Gadgets, and check out the forum. Start listening now You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe). NewsThe following are links that we mentioned in the podcast: AppleScripting Google Desktop means that you can tell the Google Desktop application to do things for you via script. Boss around the system from your own applications and scripts. The new Google Earth Outreach program has some tutorials such as showing you how to create KML from a spreadsheet. The Google Mashup Gallery is a mashup itself, that allows you to add your mashup to the mix. Now, everyone will be able to find your Britney vs. Christina mashup! Geotagged Picasa JSON/KML Output + Driving Directions = Instant Scenic Tours: If you were following the Google blogs yesterday, you would have heard that Picasa now gives you a sleek drag+drop interface for geotagging your photos, and that the Picasa Google data API now outputs the geotagged data using GeoRSS & GML elements. And if you were excited by all that news and immediately visited Picasa to try out the new feature, you might have noticed the big blue KML icon next to a "View in Google Earth" hyperlink. So Picasa now gives developers geotagged photo data both in KML output and the standard Google data API output formats, and that means we map developers have a lot of ways to start playing around with Picasa photos. New drag-to-route driving directions in google maps - once you have a route, drag the blue line around to have it automatically re-route using your desired roads or intermediate destinations.

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs We are trying an experiment, putting up Code Review in a variety of formats, from text to audio (iTunes) and video. You have probably heard by now, but all of the slides and video of the presentations at Google I/O are now available to watch and read. There are some real gems in there, such as Steve Yegge talking about dynamic languages and server side JavaScript. Just as we come down from I/O, we head off to Google Developer Day events around the world. I am personally off to Brazil and Mexico City, and I am looking forward to meeting the local developers. I gave a tech talk at Yahoo! where I discussed Google Back to Front, covering Gears and App Engine. I shared a simple App Engine example that takes a Gears-enabled Addressbook application that shows how you can store history in a visual way, and ports it to save the data on App Engine. You can watch a code walk through to see it in action. Dick Wall (Google) and James Ward (Adobe) also got together to create an AIR application that talks to App Engine on the back end. The application, called QuickFix, takes a photo and has App Engine run the Picasa "I'm Feeling Lucky" transformation. It is really fun to watch the great applications being built on App Engine already, such as Wordle, which builds "word clouds" from a series of text. One final piece of news on App Engine. Nick Johnson (Google) created a little application in his spare time (read: not official) that is quite useful. smtp2web.com bridges SMTP to HTTP. This means that you can have your App Engine applications accepting email as input via the proxy. smtp2web will send an HTTP request when it gets an email on its doorstep. There has been a lot of focus on the browser this week. Mozilla released Firefox 3, and look like they have set a download record in the process. There was a lot of browser news though, including all of the major vendors. The standards are moving too. HTML 5 has a new working draft, and we are seeing the germination of an Acid4 series of tests. When it comes to Gears, we saw the full release of version 0.3 which included support for the new Firefox 3 browser. It also includes the ability to create desktop shortcuts, new install flow support, progress events, and much more. We also saw more frameworks baking Gears in. Appcelerator uses Gears under the hood to make your existing Appcelerator based application a better user experience. Also, Frizione is a JavaScript development, testing, and deployment environment that also has Gears under the hood. Speaking of testing, Markus Clermont and John Thomas wrote up an introduction to testing Ajax applications, something that is notoriously hard to do. The Geo world is cooking as usual, and you can check out the numerous election mashups as the season continues to blossom. If you fancy some fun on Google Maps, Katsuomi Kobayashi has created a 2D Driving Simulator using the new Flash API. The folks at 360cities also have a great new interface that uses the Flash API, and they also seem to use every other Geo related product. We were fortunate enough to have them come in and sit down with them, and get a bunch of demos. What else? If you care about the social Web, check out Kevin Marks post on how not to be viral. It makes you think long term about your strategy. Kevin Lim posted on the Custom Search API and the new developer guide. This API always surprises me with its richness, and how you can create a fantastic, custom, search experience on your own Web site. Related to that API, we have another new AJAX Search API, Patent Search. I have to admit, I feel sorry for you if you have to use it (due to the content)! And to finish up, Michael Ogawa has created some great visualizations of open source projects over time, such as the history of the Python code base. Check it out below. As always, thanks for reading, listening, or watching, and let us know if there is anything that you would like to see.

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Using iTunes? We had the pleasure to talk to some of the Google App Engine team to discuss the recent launch that Dick uses the tagline as "Your apps, our servers". We get to chat with tech lead on the project Kevin Gibbs, product manager Pete Koomen, and Guido van Rossum. I don't think we need to introduce Guido! The podcast starts out answering why Google App Engine was created, and why Python was chosen as the first language. We then hear about the work that goes into making a language hardened for the platform itself. Of all of the APIs that we expose in the App Engine back-end, we feel that the Database API is probably the most foreign for the majority of developers. Many are used to the relational model for datastores, and our datastore is different. Kevin talks about these differences, and the ramifications that come with a schema-less store. We then delve into the practicalities of having libraries such as SQL Alchemy support GQL which is a functional subset of SQL. What about lock-in? This was one of the big questions that came out of the community when we launched App Engine. You can see how open the team is to other solutions, and how they like seeing work such as AppDrop that shows how you can do this. The choice to make the SDK itself fully open source says a lot. Guido discussed how the Python runtime is indeed the full language, but how some libraries are not there. He talks about the reasons behind the choices, which are mainly related to security. As time goes on more libraries that developers really need will make it into the system, often with equivalent implementations. Although a traditional file system doesn't make sense in the cloud, we could very well see a virtual file system implemented. We go on to discuss a lot more, including:What restrictions are there for serving your applications?What Web frameworks are available?Can you develop Web services as well as Web applications? How about gadget and widget?What kind of traffic can be expect with the free accounts?Can I run these applications on my domain, and integrate with Google Apps?If you want to see more of the team and play with App Engine, come by a hackathon when it get to your neck of the woods, or hear more at Google I/O. You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs Using iTunes? I had the pleasure of taking a trip back to my home land of England to meet up with the team behind the Google Gears for Mobile product. As someone who loves Web development, it is an exciting proposition to be able to use the Web platform to be able to develop applications on the mobile. This release enables you to use the Gears 0.3 APIs on Windows Mobile devices. With this new version, not only do you have access to the Database, LocalServer, and WorkerPool APIs, but you can also create desktop shortcuts. Considering the disconnected nature and latency issues inherent to the mobile networks, these APIs allow you to deliver more responsive applications that can hide some of the problems. Today, we saw the release of a new mobile version of Picasa Web Albums that uses these features. I got to sit down with Joe Walnes, tech lead of the mobile Picasa team. Joe and his team built both the Gears-enabled version of Picasa for the phone as well as the iPhone version that allows you to sit on the Tube and still flip through your family photos. Joe tells us about his experience building the Gears application. I have also put together an audio podcast consisting of interviews with not only Joe, but other members of the Gears team. First, I talk to Charles Wiles, the Product Manager of the Google Gears for Mobile team. He gives us a high level view of the project in general, and this launch in particular. We also discuss the native abilities of Gears on the mobile, widget platforms, and future Gears developments. Second, we hear from two engineers on the project, Dave Burke and Andrei Popescu. They go into detail on the platform, how you architect mobile Web applications, how you develop and debug applications, new APIs such as the Location API, and how Android fits in to the picture. Finally, we hear again from Joe Walnes. I am really excited about the prospect of building rich mobile applications using Web based technology. You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).