Google Developer Day AU Highlights

Australia’s Google Developer Day has drawn to a close with a presentation from Michael Ashbridge on KML and Google Earth. The full rundown of talks is at http://code.google.com/events/developerday/au-sessions.html, but I thought I’d share some of my own highlights.

• The great Google Gears announcement. You could hear the wheels turning in hundreds of web developers’ brains in the audience thinking about how they could use this in their applications.
  


• Aaron Boodman’s “Look, no wires” demonstration of Google Gears. Aaron demonstrated his product’s efficacy by dramatically unplugging his laptop from the network in the middle of his talk.
  


• Bo Majewski invades England. Bo Majewski gave a talk on the Google Maps API, demonstrating its abilities by putting pushpins with his face on them all over the English countryside, creating a surreal, Being John Makovich-esque effect.
  


• Zhen Wang’s short but densely-packed talk on Google Gadgets which not only gave us a whirlwind introduction to a very popular Google tool but left us 15 minutes ahead of schedule.
  


• James O’Loghlin getting progressively nerdier as the day went on, even bantering about “alogarithms”.
  


• Lars’ excellent talk on Open Source, Google APIs and GWT – really summing up the reason why we’re all here and showing off Google’s efforts to build a developer community around its products.
  


• One developer in attendence commenting on Prakash Barathan’s talk: “Hrmm, gdata RESTyness looks tasty.”
  


• Michael Ashbridge’s lovely Irish accent and habit of pronouncing “URL” as “earl”. Also, the sheer coolness of his giving a talk about KML in Google Earth using Google Earth as the sole presentation platform.
  


• Seeing examples of how developers are using Google APIs in ways the original designers never imagined.
  


• Free, good food. I wouldn’t have liked to have seen 500-ish developers in a room together had we not provided tasty food and free coffee.
  

But the biggest highlight for me was meeting a whole bunch of Australian software developers. I personally hope that we can continue to develop the relationship between Google Australia and the Australian development community, and to keep hearing about new technology coming out of Australia.

Lars Rasmussen talks about Open Source, Google APIs and GWT

Lars’s talk began with an apology and a thrown-down gauntlet: Lars promised us that he had three things to talk about, each of which could fill the 45 minute slot which he had been allocated: Google and Open Source, Google APIs and Google Web Toolkit. Lars apologised for what may appear to be a rushed talk, and like one of the Iron Chefs wasted no time getting straight down to business with such an ambitious array of dishes to deliver.

First, Google and Open Source. This is a topic close to my own heart, as with many Google Engineers: we are pleased and proud to use open source software from the Linux kernels running on our many servers to the open source libraries we use in our code, to open source IDEs and web browsers on our desktops. We also try to contribute back to the open source community by releasing a lot of our own code as open source: notably Google Gears which was announced today, and Google Web Toolkit. (I’m also a big fan of Guice, our open source dependency injection framework for Java.) There are many reasons for Google to use open source; a couple that Lars mentioned are that it gives us control and freedom from having to deal with third-party vendors when something doesn’t work, and more fundamentally it’s a good fit for Google’s “don’t be evil” culture.

Next, the Google APIs. He told us, “whenever we are making a new product, we are always looking for developer angle” while demonstrating the impressive list of Google APIs already in existence. If not for the Google APIs we would not have such a great crowd of developers here today, and it is an ongoing goal to continue to support this community.

Finally, Lars turned our attention to Google Web Toolkit. Prefacing his appraisal with a disclaimer that he wasn’t part of the team that built GWT and thus had no reason to brag about it, he stated simply “it rocks.” He should know; as he pointed out, he has spent the last three years building one of the most well-known AJAX applications: Google Maps. He explained the problems with “traditional” AJAX: browser incompatibilities, difficulties of managing a team collaborating on scripting, repetitiveness of writing HTML and Javascript by hand. In contrast. GWT lets you write a web front-end in Java which is compiled to Javascript which takes care of browser quirks. And the compiled Javascript is fast. Lars demonstrated the advantages of writing code in a strongly typed language by writing a GWT application live in front of the audience (using the Eclipse IDE) and showing how a typo that wouldn’t be found until runtime in Javascript was immediately found by the Java compiler, and how using an IDE can speed up development over manually editing text files in a plain editor. (I think Steve Yegge might have something to say about that.)

So, three delicious dishes served up by a master of the web development cuisine. I think Lars needn't have worried.

Aaron Boodman's talk now on YouTube

If your interest was piqued by the announcement of Google Gears earlier today, you may be interested in watching Aaron Boodman's in-depth presentation on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyha30nm6k.

Photos from AU Developer Day online

We have some photos online from our roving photographers: http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday/GoogleDeveloperDaySydneyAustralia. You can see photos from the other developer days at http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday. And if you're reading this from Developer Day Australia, don't forget to tag them with gdd07 when you upload them to Flickr, Photobucket, or Picasa Web Albums.

Some photos that have caught my eye:

Lunch at Tokyo Developer day looks tasty!
The food here wasn't too shabby either.
Australian developers taking advantage of the bean bags - it was a very early start for those who travelled interstate this morning.
A look at the audience here today (watching Bo Majewski's talk on the Maps API)

Google Gears in the news

There is already some buzz in the press about Google Gears. The Sydney Morning Herald has a story here: http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/gears-puts-google-in-the-drivers-seat/2007/05/31/1180205350391.html and PC World’s article can be found here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132403-c,webservices/article.html.

Also, in my excitement about the big announcement I forgot to mention that you can try Google Gears for yourself right now, because it has been built into Google Reader. Go to http://www.google.com/reader/ and click the “Offline” link in the top right-hand corner. As one of the developers sitting in the audience pointed out, “I might have something to do on the plane ride home tonight”.

Mapplets with James Macgill

The next presentation we have seen here at the Australian Google Developer Day was from James Macgill, one of the developers of the newly announced Google Mapplets.

James's presentation covered all the Mapplet essentials: what they are, how they integrate with Google Maps, and how to make them. We were treated to an explanation of how a Mapplet developer can satisfy both security and functionality requirements, which is pretty cool stuff.

The most maptastic part of the presentation was demonstrating how you can overlap information from multiple mashups onto the one map. For example, overlaying crime data with real estate info.

In fact, it's obvious that the path to fame and fortune isn't with Google Gears - as awesome as that is - but with Mapplet creation. And as James pointed out, you should get in there quickly because there are going to be a lot of Mapplets to choose from very soon; you want yours to be at the top of the list!

Posted by Jon Skinner, Google Software Engineer (and Mapplet developer)

Google launches Gears - Announcement made at Sydney Developer Day

We have over 400 developers here today at the Australian Google Developer day, and we have just heard from Alan Noble, Engineering Director of Google Australia.

Alan told us that Google Australia aims to support Australian businesses, Australian users and the Australian development community. With this many attendees, we know we have a big responsibility.

Google APIs arguably became popular due to the Google Maps API, which was based on work done right here in Sydney by Lars Rasmussen and his team, who created the original Google Maps application. So it is fitting that we are the first ones to hear about two new additions to the Google applications toolchain: Mapplets and Google Gears.

We will hear more about Mapplets later on in the day (but check out http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/mapplets/index.html if you want to get ahead of the game), but Alan gave us a quick introduction to Google Gears – a browser extension for Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer which allows AJAX web applications to run offline.

Following Alan’s keynote, we saw an in-depth introduction to Google Gears from Aaron Boodman, one of the Gears developers. The audience applauded as Aaron demonstrated Gears by running his talk as a database-driven AJAX application, then unplugging his network cable halfway through and continuing his talk seamlessly, even running database queries against his captured database to prove that it wasn’t all done with smoke and mirrors. (Aaron’s talk will be made available as a YouTube video shortly)

We are releasing Google Gears as an open-source beta to allow the development community to have early input into this technology, and to ensure that it remains free for everyone to use. We hope that it will become the first step in creating an open standard for offline access

If you’re interested in developing with Google Gears, you can check out the Gears API here: http://code.google.com/apis/gears/. And everyone can start using Gears with Google Reader (link) – just follow the prompts from inside Reader.

As Google Gears is still a beta launch, there will be many changes being made and new Gears-enabled applications coming out in the weeks and months to come, so keep your eye out for more updates!

Chat with other Developers during Developer Day

Posted by Julian Sonego, Google Marketing

We have set up an IRC channel for Google Developer Day to allow anyone online at the conference, at work or at home (in Australia or abroad) who wants to chat about all things Google. IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat", and is the original way for people to chat online. It is older than the web, let alone IM and Twitter and is synonymous with a chat room. People interested in Developer Day can join that channel and have an area to chat about things, hopefully related to our Developer products and what is being presented. We hope to have Google staff dropping in there from time to time to help answer any questions people might be posting. Most IRC clients access the channel via the URL:

irc://irc.freenode.net/googledeveloperday

Happy chatting.

I am not nervous

So what if public speaking scares more people than spiders, air planes, death and proposing marriage combined? And who cares if we ended up needing a locomotive factory to fit all the people who registered for Developer Day? None of this make me the least bit nervous about presenting on Thursday. Why? Because I will be speaking about one of my favorite topics!

Well three of my favorite topics, actually, each with enough meat to easily fill up my 45-minute slot: Google & Open Source, Google APIs, and Google Web Toolkit. Ah, so much to talk about, so little time...

I'll start by outlining why and how Google loves Open Source. Next I get to enumerate Google's rapidly growing list of APIs. (Happily, some of my colleagues will spend their 45 minute slots diving further into some key members of said list.) Last but certainly not least I get to talk about my currently favorite development tool: Google's Web Toolkit. I have spent the last 3 years or so hand-rolling AJAX for Google Maps, using an emacs editor and whichever JavaScript debugger comes with the 4 top browsers. Using GWT with a modern Java IDE such as Eclipse feels like returning to the 21st century from the dark ages! (Or at least to the late Nineties...) I'll try explaining why and hopefully even have time for a quick demo. It all adds up to being a great day for developers and Googlers alike and I look forward to presenting to you all on May 31st.

Lars Rasmussen - Software Engineer

My first trip to Australia

Posted by Prakash Barathan, Software Engineer in Test

Google Developer Day is around the corner and as a member of the Google Data API team based out of New York, I am very excited about my first trip to Australia and the opportunity to present an introductory session on Google Data APIs to developers in Sydney. I understand the event has had a huge response down under and I look forward to addressing such an enthusiastic crowd. Google Data APIs have evolved at a faster rate in the past year, and we now have lot more Google services including Google Calendar, Base, Blogger and Picasa accessible through GData APIs. I consider Developer Day as an annual carnival for us to present whats new and also an opportunity for you to share your ideas and suggestions. This is a global event reaching out to developers across the world and highlights the importance Google places on the developer community. Our GData team is presenting in multiple locations including Sydney, Beijing, Tokyo, Madrid, Paris, Hamburg, London and Mountain View. I am really looking forward to meeting you in Sydney on May 31st.

Google Australia's Developer Day - Upsized

Hello Developers and Google users,

Welcome to the 2007 Australian Developer Day Blog.

We are very excited about being the first Google office to kick off Developer Day and look forward to making sure we set a fine example for the rest of the country offices around the globe to emulate. Already the overwhelming demand for the show has resulted in us having to change venue to the impressive facility at the Australian Technology Park. Set in the historical buildings that were once the Eveleigh locomotive workshops, the venue provides a stunning backdrop to what should be a great day of learning and socialising with Developers and Google technical staff from all over Australia and the world. The schedule is packed with great sessions so make sure you get to the venue in time to settle into a good seat for the keynote and the very first product speaker who will talk about how to make all those amazing maps mashups more discoverable on Google. We will also be providing free wireless internet at the venue so if you want to bring your laptop and wireless card to blog, surf or even to just take notes, please do. We will also set up recharge stations around the venue so you can juice up your laptop's batteries throughout the day so don't forget your power pack. If you're coming from interstate and staying the night, be sure to get onto your accommodation asap and remember to keep your eye on this blog for further updates. We are counting down to this exciting event and look forward to seeing you in person on May 31st.