Michael Galpin post an intresting article about creating mashup web applications. He writes:

«In this series, we look at how to get started with the Google App Engine (GAE). Here in Part 1, we look at how to get a development environment set up so you can start creating an application that will run on the GAE. We will see how we can use Eclipse to make developing and debugging your application easier. In Part 2, we build an Ajax mashup using Eclipse and deploy it to the GAE. Finally, in Part 3, we give back to the ecosystem by creating RESTful Web services to our application, so other folks can use it to create their own mashups.

The GAE is a platform for creating Web applications. The biggest prerequisite for it is knowledge of Python, as this is the programming language used on it (currently, Python V2.5.2). For this series, it would be helpful to have some typical Web development skills (e.g., knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS). To develop for the GAE, you need to download three software packages.»

Source: IBM developerWorks.

Google updated his AJAX libraries. Here's small excerpt from official announce:
«What's better than making a drag/drop effect in Javascript that's compatible in all browsers? Not making a drag/drop effect in Javascript that's compatible in all browsers. Save your ninja-code for another day and use the JQuery UI plugin that is now hosted on our AJAX Libraries API! As usual, your users will get a performance boost when you use JQuery UI through our API, so get started by checking out the docs.»

Source: Google AJAX Search API blog.

The Google Data API developers team post a new video tutorial about Atom publishing protocol. Here's excerpt from official announce:

«Before learning about the Google Data APIs, it may be helpful to get a little background and learn about the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub), since that's what the Google Data APIs are based on. To help with that I put together a little video that gives an Introduction to the Atom Publishing Protocol.»

Source: Google Data API blog.

Google Data Team announce the release of the Jaca Client Eclipppppse Plugin. Here's the excertp from the official release info:

«This plug-in aims to minimize the overhead involved in setting up external Java dependencies and in getting started with a new API released in Java client library. The plug-in lets you download the external dependencies automatically. It also creates boiler plate code to interact with the API that you are interested in. This provides an easy way for all the newbies to quickly start developing code using many of the Google Data APIs.»

Source: Google Data API blog.

Google Data API team released a new version of JavaScript client library. Here's the excerpt from official announce:

«Today we're releasing an updated version of our JavaScript client library, including new support for working with the Google Contacts Data API. This API lets users securely share their GMail contact lists with third-party sites, and now that it's available in JavaScript form, this access can be integrated directly into the rich environment of your AJAX-driven applications. All without writing a single line of complicated server-side code.»

Source: Google Data API team blog.

Google release today API for Google Finance. Here's the excerpt from official announce:

«This API provides easy access to user investment portfolio data, including current returns and market value. The API lets you develop applications that make it easy for your users to monitor their portfolio performance and retrieve data about the investment transactions in their Google Finance portfolio, while keeping portfolio holdings up-to-date with new transactions -- all through the same type of Google Data protocol available for Blogger, Calendar, and many other Google services. Keeping an eye on investment performance and maintaining investment holdings across multiple properties is a hassle, so we are happy to provide this API for our Google Finance portfolio users. »
Source: Google API blog.

Google released the interactive version of BloggerJavaScript Developer Guide. This Developer Guide Provides you with some kind of sandbox where you can modify and execute the sample code directly in your browser. Just run each code snippet and immediately see the results.

SaleForce.com released the high-level API enabling access to the full suite of Google Data APIs using Apex code. It includings high levels methods intended for working with following APIs:

• Contacts Data API

• Calendar Data API

• Spreadsheets Data API

• Documents List Data API

• Blogger Data API

Source: Google Data APIs blog.

Google released Webmaster Tools API. It has the following features:

• Managing Sites

• Retrieve a list of your sites in Webmaster Tools

• Add your sites to Webmaster Tools

• Verify your sites in Webmaster Tools

  Bookmark/Search this post with:

  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Technorati

Schalk Neethling post a series of articles about Gmail client-side architecture. Here's the small excerpt from the third part posted today:

«This implementation is not an Ajax client with a chat server but instead focuses on the client side of things. Let's start be taking a look at the working example here. Open this link in a new window or tab and once loaded move focus back to this window/tab. After a few seconds you will hear he Windows notification sound, could not find Google's, switch back and youwill find that the header of the chat window's color has changed as well as the title. Let's look at the code that made this happen.»

Source: Dzone

Google Developers team announce Patent Search API. Here's small excerpt from the official message:

«We are pleased to announce the newest member in the AJAX Search API family - the Patent Search API. This API uses the Google Patent Search service and gives you the ability to search over 7 million patents.

Using the API is easy. First load the API into your page using the AJAX API Loader

google.load("search", "1");

Now schedule your startup code to run once the DOM is ready. This is easy to do by using the google.setOnLoadCallback() method. This will call the function you specified once the DOM is ready.

google.setOnLoadCallback(onLoad, true);

You are now ready to use the Patent Search API methods. If you are using the basic search control you would need to do the following:

var searchControl = new GSearchControl();

var ps = new GpatentSearch()

searchControl.addSearcher(ps);»

Source: Google AJAX Search API blog.

The Google Data team post a new video tutorial about using the Google Base API. Also you can download the new JavaScript sample that will help you understand the Google Base better.

Source: Google Data blog.

Google released AJAX libraries API. This API simplifies acces to following Javascript libraries that will host on Google:

• jQuery

• Prototype

• script.aculo.us

• MooTools

• Dojo

For example, to load Prototype version 1.6.0.2 you would place the following in your HTML:

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/prototype/1.6.0.2/prototype.js"></script>

Source: Google AJAX Search API Blog.

Noah Gift post a brif and easy to understand tutorial about bulding application with Google App engine and Python. Here's the list of topics disscused in this tutorial:

• Introduction.

• Developer API's

• Building an Application: Greedy Coin Changer

• Additionnal AppEngine information

• Summary

• Reference

Source: ONLamp.

Google Docs developer team reports about adding the CSS support to to the Google Docs. Here's the small excerpt from the announce:

«Templates, Styles and Better Formatting have been among the most requested Google Docs features. Well, you asked and we listened!

So, as a first step we've enabled "Edit CSS" on Docs such that you can explore styling documents. Think of Docs as the platform and the world wide web your place to explore the different styles! The possibilities are endless!

Secondly, we've included some examples of CSS styles here to get you started. It's important to note that CSS is something that takes advanced knowledge and we don't recommend utilizing this functionality unless you're comfortable and familiar with it.

As we all know, this is a user help group, so please utilize this pages section to help one another out and to engage in CSS information sharing. We recommend you use outside sources to enhance your knowledge of CSS styles. A simple search for "CSS Examples" or "CSS Tutorials" is a good place to start.

The examples given below just scratch the surface of the style possibilities so I'm very excited to see the different styles you all create.»

Read more in Google Docs group.