Today I was at the G-MauritiusDay2009 conference organised by Google and the Board of Investment and I spent the whole day listening to the Google engineers and twittering about the event. Here is my Twitter transcript:
(about 9 hours ago)
Twittering from G-Mauritius Day! The Wifi connection (being shared by 100's…) is slow but it works :-)
(about 9 hours ago)
I recognise a lot of friends: Anwar and Raj from the UoM, loads of ex-UoM students, friends from RCC, ex-MCCI colleagues etc.
(about 9 hours ago)
Starting now… with a promo video of Google… as if we needed one :-)
(about 9 hours ago)
Speeches are starting. Boring as usual… up to now.
(about 9 hours ago in reply to fadilfr)
@fadilfr Raise your hand fadil so that I can see you :-)
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Sascha Brawer, lead engineer at Google Zurich, starts his keynote address.
(about 8 hours ago in reply to girishmungra)
@girishmungra The speech was, ahem, a 3/10 speech :-)
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Adewale Ostineye, Google London engineer starts talking.
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu … history of the web. I'm not too happy he said the web was crap in 1995. It was not.
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu You should bet on the web.
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu open standards HTML5, atom, openid, oauth
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google, Apple, etc. are behind HTML5 so you can bet on it succeeding…
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu geolocation api allows a webpage to know one's location. Of course, the user has to allow this first.
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu HTML5 + offline (web workers, appcache, etc.) for more powerful client software.
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari all collaborate. The browsers are becoming really good. Chrome succeeds Acid2 & most of Acid3.
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Web browsers have excellent Javascript engines now. Try http://www.youtube.com/html5 for a non-Flash version of YouTube…
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Test the speed of your webpage with the page-speed Firefox extension.
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of Ajax apps now. Still a bit too generic for my liking…
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu API-driven development is the future. Twitter gets more traffic through its API than its web interface…
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu "The mobile web site is changing from being the low-end website to being the high-end website"
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu There is no difference between a laptop and a (good) mobile phone now… as they run the same browser.
(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Going to give an interview to the MBC
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu demo of Picassa, Friendfeed, etc. without polling, hence minimal use of bandwidth.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of cloud computing now: Google App Engine & Amazon EC2
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to have a look at http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ The name is crap :-)
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Someone is having fun playing with Google Map Maker…
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu When using Pubsubhubhub, the hubs run on the cloud: Google App Engine.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu GoogleMapMaker http://bit.ly/10l7qM does not work at this moment. Google is surely seeing 100's of requests from the same IP…
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu GoogleMapMaker includes a wiki to discuss about edits before they become permanent.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu I'm yearning for some code :-) I would like to know more about the Google Maps API…
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Easy way to use Google Maps API. See http://bit.ly/wCQZ
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Yeah! Google Maps API code. It's really powerful and easy to use. Javascript closures are used to make the code more compact.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Maps API Wizard found at http://bit.ly/xbgAL It generates HTML code.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Amazon EC2 is instance based. You have to manage your own "machines"
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Fabric based clouds (like App Engine) allow you to deploy to an environment and Google decides how many servers should be used.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu http://bit.ly/aIxdA Sandbox: no threads, no native code, no filesystem access, no sockets, must respond to requests within 30s.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu App Engine only hosts web apps. Receive requests and send back response. Shared-nothing architecture: stateless.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Java session API works using Datastore http://bit.ly/ZDDhQ and Memcache http://bit.ly/cdYrn
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Google App Engine applications are written in Python by the way. I forgot to mention that.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Every language which runs on the JVM runs on the Google App Engine: Java 5 and above, JRuby, Clojure
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Quota: under 500 queries per second is free :-)
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Distributed datastore based on Bigtable http://bit.ly/y9lw4 Looks a lot like a hashmap instead of being a RDBMS. GQL for queries.
(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu UrlFetch library / Send email / Image manipulation / Optional authentication using Google accounts… (including gafd accounts)
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu cron has just been added to the App Engine. 20 actions max.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Experimental feature of Google App Engine: task queues (essentially delayed requests and responses.) Increases scalability.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Adewale Ostineye likes Python and he is raving about Jython…
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Google App Engine gallery of applications: http://appgallery.appspot.com/
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Someone asked about polymorphic queries. Google will answer later. See http://bit.ly/EWXhr
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Polymorphic queries are just queries which return rows from derived tables too. SELECT * FROM animal returns DOGs and CATs.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Relaxing for 5 minutes before a hopefully great app engine hands-on with the Google Web Toolkit http://bit.ly/18FoZ2 and Java.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Java, Eclipse, Javascript, HTML to be covered. I need to be convinced that a UI can be *easily* done in Java :-)
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu We're starting HELLO WORLD using Google Web Toolkit, GeoGuestBook, maps, gears and geolocation.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian Harris Technical Account Manager
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Starting a new Web Application Project in Eclipse. Need to add the App Engine Eclipse plugin.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Starting a new Web Application Project in Eclipse. Need to add the App Engine Eclipse plugin.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu GWT offers history support. Solves the problem of the BACK button in browsers…
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu I'm trying developing my own app using GWT and so far it works ;-)
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu GWT supports Java 5
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Now we're doing some geolocation…
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu onModuleLoad is the entry point. According to Julian, GWT looks a lot like Spring
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Java looks verbose even if inner classes somewhat make things simpler. A service can return POJOs or collections of POJOs.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Personally I am not too convinced about GWT. I wonder if something like jQuery is not adequate enough.
(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu In GWT, a POJO is the schema for the database. No separate XML required.
(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Geolocation based on Wifi access point works really well. See http://bit.ly/antBw
(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian thinks that using a static language like Java is a good thing (TM) Scala?
(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu is showing us how I18N can be done. I works with Java property files and looks trivial…
(about 5 hours ago in reply to vyshane)
@vyshane Most dynamic languages too are strongly typed :-) So, no need for wars :-)
(about 5 hours ago in reply to kurtavish)
@kurtavish You're right. Replace all @ by #googlemu :-)
(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Wave is written using Google Web Toolkit.
(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu I need to get more into Spring Web Flow :-)
(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu … or Wicket. It's not (yet) used in industry but a lot of people are raving about it. See http://wicket.apache.org/
(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Time for lunch now!
(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Back from lunch (ahem!) and Chewy, a Google Developer Advocate, has started talking…
(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of iGoogle. And of RSS aggregation. Gadgets. Which can be rich applications. Flash games. Or other webpages…
(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu iGoogle gadgets are interesting… but only a few people use iGoogle and there are so many of them! How do you choose?!?
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu The philosophy of the Amazon gadget is interesting. One can compare prices with non-Amazon store (which are sometimes cheaper.)
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Gadgets are build upon HTML and therefore you can easily use analytics on them.
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Gadgets can also be embedded on normal webpages. This is very nice IMHO.
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu The Google Gadget Editor http://bit.ly/2f8eP looks nice and can be put on iGoogle as a gadget. Recursion at work ;-)
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu One can enable and disable caching on a gadget to gadget basis…
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu I should try to build my own Google Gadget. Looks easy. And I can then embed it on https://www.noulakaz.net/ :-)
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu OpenSocial starting now. Social everywhere!!! Share links. etc. Talks of 5 eras of social web http://bit.ly/232XYZ
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to investigate Facebook Connect http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu http://www.skittles.com/ is the future of websites!!!
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu http://www.booneoakley.com/ is too :-)
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu People don't come to your website anymore…. (re: Twitter) Email is dead!
(about 3 hours ago)
I am delighted to tell the world that this is my 1000th twit. Thanks to all those following me. I love the web :-)
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of http://www.opensocial.org/ now. Mentioning Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Salesforce. OpenSocial has a REST interface.
(about 3 hours ago in reply to asheshr)
@asheshr Thanks! I would never have guessed that my 1000th would have been in the middle of a Google conference ;-)
(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to check http://www.buddypoke.com/ It uses the OpenSocial API and runs on Google App Engine
(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is making me reconsider my stance towards social games. I'll need to try some of them. They seem to be neat :-)
(about 2 hours ago in reply to sjdvda)
@sjdvda Congrats. Incidentally, it would be a good idea to have a regular girlfriend too :-)
(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to understand the implications of Google Friend Connect http://www.google.com/friendconnect/
(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu As a flight sim addict, I am definitely going to check http://plane-crazy.appspot.com/
(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Friend Connect looks really powerful and can greatly increase the "attractiveness" of websites…
(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy has finished. Things to check: gadgets. And Google Friend Connect. There are so many things to learn and so little time.
(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Presentation of Chrome Themes & Extensions starting… See https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/index.html
(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Creating a Chrome extension http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/common/extensions/docs/getstarted.html
(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Extensions in Chrome are still in their infancy. Extensions will be able to manage all features of Chrome e.g. bookmarks
(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Still showing how to customise Chrome. I'll leave in a few minutes as I'm tired.
(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Extensions are written in Javascript and need a JSON manifest. Little by little, JSON is replacing XML ;-) http://www.json.org/
(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu I asked about Chrome OS :-)
(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu He said that Chrome OS is still only a few words on a blog right now and nothing substantial has been done.
(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu yet :-)
(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Time to go home now :-)
(about 1 hour ago)
Finished! Today I am going at my brother's place for a barbecue. Life is cool :-)
