Download Squad

Google I/O round-up

As we noted on Tuesday, Google I/O took place on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Here are some of the highlights:

• Google Demos the latest version of Android - At I/O, Google demoed the latest version of their cellphone I/O for developers. Thus far, Android appears to be very iPhone-esque.
• Google Earth comes to the browser - Well, Windows browsers anyway. A plugin is available for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and Firefox 2 that will let you use most of Google Earth's features from within the browser, no external app required. Now if only Google Earth would get Mac or Linux support...
• Google App Engine Opens Up - After launching to an initial pool of 10,000 (later expanded to 75,000) developers in April, Google is now opening the App Engine preview release to everyone. Google has also laid-out its preliminary pricing structure for users that exceed the 500 MB storage/5M pageviews included for free.
  • $0.10 - $0.12 per CPU core-hour
  • $0.15 - $0.18 per GB-month in storage
  • $0.11 - $0.13 per GB outgoing bandwidth / $0.09 - $0.11 per GB incoming bandwidth
• AOL will support OpenSocial - At I/O, AOL (parent-company to Weblogs, Inc., which includes DownloadSquad) announced their plans to support OpenSocial, Google's API for social applications across the web. AOL will start by adopting the use of Gadgets for myAOL.com with plans to eventually expand the use throughout their products and platforms.

Use Google to reference your JavaScript libraries

We really enjoy playing with the various open source JavaScript libraries (jQuery, prototype, script.aculo.us, MooTools, etc.) but managing more than one library within a site or application and keeping tabs on their various update cycles can be annoying. This is where Google's AJAX Libraries API comes into play.

The AJAX Libraries API is a content distribution network/loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries. Instead of referencing the JavaScript library locally in your site or application, you can instead use the google.load() loader or a direct </script> tag to reference the library. Awesome!

[via Google Operating System]

Google Web Toolkit 1.5 RC

Google Web Toolkit Release Candidate 1 is now available for download. GWT makes writing AJAX applications easy because you write the code and GWT compiles and optimizes it and makes it easy to support multiple browsers. Plus it comes equipped with Google APIs and reusable UI components, which can make the coding process even more efficient. Google Web Toolkit is available for Mac, Windows and Linux users and can be used with a variety of IDEs.

[via Official Google Web Toolkit Blog]

Other random Google bits

This was a big week for Google news, because of I/O, so here are a few other Google tidbits of the week:

• Google changes their favicon [via Google Operating System] - Google has changed their favicon from the longstanding "big G" to the lowercase "g"
• Google Maps might be getting a redesign - Google Blogoscoped has all the details but it looks like Google is experimenting with the design of the Google Maps page.
• Get a vanity Google definition - Google Blogoscoped also has information on how to trick Google into creating your own definition for the "define" query.