Google Developers Blog: 2009

A look back on 2009

Monday, December 21, 2009

Google I/OGoogle Developer Days

Faster Apps Faster - the theme for the recent Campfire One event letting developers know how GWT 2.0 decreases development time (it's being used by Google Wave & Adwords for this reason) and how Speed Tracer gives you new insight into speeding up your apps

Make the Web faster - as part of an effort to Make the web faster we launched tools like Page-Speed and our DNS resolution service. We also made our internal JavaScript tools available, called Closure Tools, so you can rev up your js like the guys on Gmail. With PubSubHubbub all your feeds can be real-time streams.

A faster browser - A few weeks ago we launched Google Chrome for Mac and Linux, along with an extension framework for Chrome and a gallery for developers to distribute their extensions -- there are over 900 to check out already! Chrome has a set of developer tools built on WebKit to help optimize your code. Plus, we released details of Chrome OS...a netbook operating system for speed freaks. Along the way, we've worked with the larger web community contributing to the exciting future of the web with HTML5.

Mobile - Android launched on one device in one country on one carrier in 2008. This year, 20 devices in 26 countries on 32 carriers have been launched or announced. Developers have created over 16,000 apps in the Android Marketplace. Some were winners of our second Android Developer Challenge. We launched new mobile versions of gmail and calendar using HTML5. You can take a picture to search using Google Goggles and get turn-by-turn navigation with Google maps. Plus, we recently announced our mobile lab for Android hardware.

Hosting - App Engine apps were allowed to scale beyond free quotas and Java developers were invited to try it out at Campfire 1 in April. Developers responded, with over 100K apps built on App Engine. Open source developers using Project Hosting were able to host projects on Mercurial, in addition to Subversion.

New APIs - Google Wave was released early to developers at Google I/O in May. Wave is "equal parts conversation and document" and showcases what is possible in the browser. Developers can build robot extensions to automate common tasks or build gadget extensions to provide a new way for users to interact. Google Maps released v3, Friend Connect got more personalized and then got cozy w/ Twitter, Google Analytics released an API and then added asynchronous tracking.

Google Web Elements - From maps to search to translate and more, Google Web Elements made it even easier than ever to add Google products to your site.

Labs - Google Code Labs was created to let developers know which APIs and products are cutting edge labs "experiments" and which we are committed to supporting for the long term.

By Mike Marchak, on behalf of the Google Developer Team

Google Analytics API v2 Python Client Library

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Python Client libraryAPI version 2Account FeedData FeedTaking The Library For a Spinsample applicationGoogle Analytics Python client libraryGChartWrapperGoogle Charts APIPython Imaging LibrarySolving Business ProblemsAvinash KaushikengagementOccam's Razor blog

Let's Analyze

Far more visits originate from Twitter (3.6x) when compared to Facebook, perhaps not surprising given Avinash's Twitter followers (~16,120)

Visitors from Twitter tend to be new visitors, a good thing, but they view fewer pages and spend significantly less time on the blog.

On the other hand Facebook delivers an audience that is loyal. These visitors come back to the site more often and spend a significant time on the blog (compared to Twitter and all other visitors).

download it hereBy Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Introducing Google Browser Size

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

browsersize.googlelabs.combrowser-size-external-feedbackBy Arthur Blume on behalf of the Google Browser Size team

New Google Analytics API Features

Monday, December 14, 2009

Google Analytics APISupport for Advanced Segmentsadvanced segmentation

Create them on the fly by specifying their expression directly through an API query.

Use advanced segments created in the Google Analytics web interface through the API.

Goal 5-20 and Configuration Data

Custom VariablesCustom variablespublic changelogpublic notify grouphttp://code.google.com/apis/analyticspublic google groupBy Nick Mihailovski on behalf of the Google Analytics API Team

Google Fusion Tables API

Monday, December 14, 2009

Fusion Tables

Google Maps APIGoogle Visualization APIFusion Tables APIOpen Data KitBy Anno Langen, Jayant Madhavan and Rebecca Shapley, Google Fusion Tables Team

Google Developer Days 2009 come to an end

Friday, December 11, 2009

Google Developer Days 2009Google WaveAndroidChromeGoogle Web ToolkitOpenSocialApp EnginepresentationsphotosBy Alyssa England Sachs, Google Developer Team

New features for Google Web Elements

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Earlier this yearGoogle Web Elements

Translate element

The Translate element enables visitors to automatically translate your pages into their native language, extending the reach of your website to a global audience. Even better, it will know when their language doesn't match your site's. Have some multi-lingual visitors? Don't worry, they'll be able to turn it off completely.

Note that whether or not the Translate element pops up is based on the language of your web browser. In order to test what other language visitors will see on your site, you'll have to follow the directions here to change your browser's language.

Reader element

The Reader element embeds the headlines from your recent shared items on Google Reader right on your website. You can customize the element by choosing how many items to show and the color scheme. The headlines shown in the Reader element will automatically update as you share or unshare items.

Orkut element

The Orkut element makes it easy for your website's visitors to share your site on their Orkut page. When visitors to your site click the button, they'll be able to share your website content with their Orkut friends with a couple clicks

Custom Search element themes: The Custom Search element lets visitors search your site (or other content defined by you) and enables you to earn revenue (via AdSense) from highly relevant ads that are displayed in the search results. You've always been able to richly style this element (we described a couple ways in this blog post), but that required knowing JavaScript and CSS. Now you can adjust the look and feel of the element to better integrate with your site, without having to code anything.

Login integration: The Google Web Elements website is now integrated with your Google account. By logging in (if you're not logged in already), you'll be able to more easily select your Calendar, Presentation or Spreadsheet in creating your element. Login is also required to personalize your Reader element.

Document selector: Once logged into the Google Web Elements website, you'll be able to easily search through your data when creating a Calendar, Presentation or Spreadsheet element. All you have to do is click the "Choose" button and select the one that you would like to use with your element. You still have the option of pasting in a URL (for instance, if you wish to use a document not associated with your account), but this is no longer required.

www.google.com/webelementsBy Christine Tsai, Web Elements Team

Google Web Toolkit 2.0 - now with Speed Tracer

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Google Campfire OneGoogle Web Toolkit 2.0

Make it easier to build faster apps

Speed up the overall development cycle

Faster AppsIntroducing: Performance profiling with Speed TracerSpeed Tracerworked closelyIntroducing: Incremental app download with code splittingdeveloper-guided code splittingFaster DevelopmentIntroducing: Declarative UI with UiBinderUiBinderDive into the details

By Andrew Bowers, GWT Product Manager

Google Chrome Extensions launched in beta!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

launchedgallerydocsmailing list

let us knowAdd-on ConformBy Erik Kay and Aaron Boodman, Google Chrome Software Engineers

Google Translator Toolkit Data API

Monday, December 7, 2009

Translator Toolkitglossariestranslation memoriesGoogle Data Protocol

Automatically connect your content management system (CMS) with Translator Toolkit. You can transform your content into HTML files, protect sections of HTML from translation through the class="notranslate" attribute, upload the HTML files, share the files with your translators, download the translated HTML, and then transform and upload the documents back into your CMS.

Automatically connect your file system with Translator Toolkit. You can create a cron job that uploads files into Translator Toolkit, shares the files with your translators, then downloads completed files back to the file system.

labsdocumentationJava client librarya developer guidenew developer forumBy Mayank Gupta and Paneendra Ba, Google Translator Toolkit Team

Introducing Google Public DNS: A new DNS resolver from Google

Thursday, December 3, 2009

make the web fasterGoogle Public DNSDNS protocoldocumentation

Speed: Resolver-side cache misses are one of the primary contributors to sluggish DNS responses. Clever caching techniques can help increase the speed of these responses. Google Public DNS implements prefetching: before the TTL on a record expires, we refresh the record continuously, asychronously and independently of user requests for a large number of popular domains. This allows Google Public DNS to serve many DNS requests in the round trip time it takes a packet to travel to our servers and back.

Security: DNS is vulnerable to spoofing attacks that can poison the cache of a nameserver and can route all its users to a malicious website. Until new protocols like DNSSEC get widely adopted, resolvers need to take additional measures to keep their caches secure. Google Public DNS makes it more difficult for attackers to spoof valid responses by randomizing the case of query names and including additional data in its DNS messages.

Validity: Google Public DNS complies with the DNS standards and gives the user the exact response his or her computer expects without performing any blocking, filtering, or redirection that may hamper a user's browsing experience.

using the Google Public DNS servicesitedocumentationlogging policiesdiscussion groupBy Prem Ramaswami, Public DNS Team

Deeper integration for Friend Connect and Twitter

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Social Web BlogBy James Reilly, Google Friend Connect Team

Google Analytics Launches Asynchronous Tracking

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Asynchronous Tracking Code

Faster tracking code load times for your web pages due to improved browser execution

Enhanced data collection & accuracy

Elimination of tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn't fully loaded

new tracking snippet

<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script');
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 
        'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    ga.setAttribute('async', 'true');
    document.documentElement.firstChild.appendChild(ga);
  })();

</script>

HTML5 async specificationAnalytics _gaq objectAsynchronous Tracking Usage Guidedeveloper docsmigration guideBy Brian Kuhn, Google Analytics Team

Additional functionality for Google Chrome's Developer Tools

Monday, November 30, 2009

improveour developer tools are partially based on Web Inspectorheap profilertimeline tabmini site

Developer ChannelfeedbackBy Pavel Feldman, Software Engineer and Anders Sandholm, Product Manager

Captions available for all Google I/O videos

Friday, November 20, 2009

I/O added over a hundred hours of video contentI/O

A group of volunteers from Russia used the translated.by software to crowdsource translation for Google Wave video captions. Thank you, habratranslation! Check out one of the Wave videos with Russian subtitles. (You have to choose Russian from the caption menu in YouTube to see them.)

If you'd like to help translate captions for any of our videos, please email google-video-captions@googlegroups.com with a request. We'd be happy to share any caption files that you might be interested in under a creative commons attribution license. If you send us the translation, we'll credit you in the video caption track and blog about how awesome you are.

In addition to machine translation for captions, YouTube now provides experimental automatic caption transcription using the same speech recognition algorithms found in Google Voice. The GoogleDevelopers channel is part of the initial pilot, so this feature is available on many of our videos. To learn more, check out the blog post on the Official Google Blog.

By Naomi Bilodeau, Google Developer Team

The latest addition to Google's open source projects

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Google has released more than 300 open source projectsannouncedYouTube DirectYouTube's public APIsGoogle App EngineABC NewsThe Huffington PostPoliticoBy Amanda Surya, YouTube Direct team

Welcome to Google Developer Relations, Don!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

TechCrunch postintegrating with Google Appsfirst day on the jobEnterprise Cloud Summit Panelpersonal blog@dondodgeBy Michael Winton, Google Developer Relations

Go: A New Programming Language

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Google Open Source blogBy Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Ian Taylor, Russ Cox, Jini Kim and Adam Langley - The Go Team

Use compression to make the web faster

Monday, November 9, 2009

uncompressed contentEven Faster Web Sites

Data, with permission, from Steve Souders, "Chapter 9: Going Beyond Gzipping," in Even Faster Web Sites (Sebastapol, CA: O'Reilly, 2009), 122.web requestbrowser compression test page

Data from Google Web Search Logsbrowser compression test page

Data generated using Page Speed

Corporate IT departments and individual users can upgrade their browsers, especially if they are using IE 6 with a proxy. Using the latest version of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, or Google Chrome will increase the chances of getting compressed content. A recent editorial in IEEE Spectrum lists additional reasons - besides compression - for upgrading from IE6.

Anti-virus software vendors can start handling compression properly and would need to stop removing or mangling the Accept-Encoding header in upcoming releases of their software.

ISPs that use an HTTP proxy which strips or mangles the Accept-Encoding header can upgrade, reconfigure or install a better proxy which doesn't prevent their users from getting compressed content.

Webmasters can use Page Speed (or other similar tools) to check that the content of their pages is compressed.

http://code.google.com/speed/articles/By Arvind Jain, Engineering Director and Jason Glasgow, Staff Software Engineer

Introducing Closure Tools

Thursday, November 5, 2009

GmailGoogle DocsGoogle MapsClosure CompilerClosure CompilerClosure Inspectorcommand-line toolweb applicationPage SpeedClosure LibraryClosure Librarythe docsSTLJDKClosure TemplatesClosure Templates20% projectsBy the Closure Tools team

New personalization features in Google Friend Connect

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Google Friend ConnectGoogle Social Web BlogFriend Connect provides API level accessJavaScript APIOpenSocial REST APIGuitar Universe example sitedeveloper forumBy Mussie Shore, Product Manager, Google Friend Connect

OAuth Enhancements

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The ability to use OAuth without registration

Support for software apps installed on a computer or mobile phone

Additional controls for our Google Apps Premier and Education customers which allows administrators to give another web application access to a subset of the data Google stores for that organization

OAuth documentation1. The ability to use OAuth without registration2. Support for software apps installed on a computer or mobile phoneGoogle AppsSAML protocolGoogle Apps Sync3. Additional controls for our Google Apps Premier and Education customers which allows administrators to give another web application access to a subset of the data Google stores for that organizationOAuth for Google Apps domain administratorsManymoondocumentationBy Eric Sachs, Product Manager, Google Security

Hybrid Onboarding

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

main blogOpenIDOAuthPortable Contacts

OpenID User Interface Extension 1.0 (including the ability to display the favicon of the website)

x-has-session, which is an enhacement to checkid_immediate requests via the UI extension. If the request includes "openid.ui.x-has-session," it will be echoed in the response only if Google detects an authenticated session

Support for the US Government's GSA profile for OpenID

PAPE (Provider Authentication Policy Extension) to support forced password reprompts

Support for not only Google Accounts, but also our Google Apps customers, as discussed on the Enterprise blog

OpenIDHybrid Onboarding Guide

The technique is primarily for websites with an existing login system based on email addresses.

It also assumes the website will send email to users who are not yet registered, whether it is through traditional email marketing or social network invitations.

The website owner then needs to choose a small set of email providers such as Yahoo and Google that support these standards.

Whenever the website sends email to a user at one of those providers, any hyperlinks that promote registration at the website should be modified to communicate the email address (or at least domain) of the user back to the website's registration page.

If the registration page detects a user from one of these domains, it should NOT start the traditional process of asking the user to enter a password, password confirmation, and email. Instead, it should prominently show a single button that says "Sign up with your Google Account" — where Google is replaced with the name of the email provider.

If the user clicks that button, the website should use the OpenID protocol to ask the email provider to authenticate the user, provide their email address, and optionally ask for access to their address book using the hybrid OpenID/OAuth protocol and the Portable Contacts API. More details about this flow are available on the OpenID blog.

Once the user returns to the website, it can create an account entry for the user. The website can also mark the email address as verified without having to send a traditional "email verification" link to the user. If the website received the user's permission to access their address book, it can now download it and look for information about the user's friends.

In the unusual case where an account already exists for that email address, the website can simply log the user into that pre-existing account.

For any newly registered user, the website should then display a page that confirms the user is registered and that indicates how they should sign in in the future.

To make the login process simple, the website should modify their login box to include a logo for each of the trusted email providers it supports, or use one of the other user experiences for Federated Login.

If a user clicks the email provider button, they can again be sent to that provider's site using the OpenID protocol. When the user comes back, the website can either detect that they previously registered, or if it is a new user, the website can create an account for them on the fly.

In some cases the account may already exist for that email address, but it was not initially registered using OpenID. In that case, the website can simply log the user in to that pre-existing account.

By Eric Sachs, Product Manager, Google Security

Google Analytics API on App Engine Treemap Visualization

Friday, October 30, 2009

visualize your own data

open sourcedarticle describing how this application worksApp Engine Java SDKGoogle Analytics Data Export API Java Client LibraryAuthSubOAuthModel-View-ControllerProtovis SVG Visualization LibraryJQueryJavaScript source to the visualizationBy Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Teamemail us

Customize your search results page with themes

Monday, October 26, 2009

LEGO ®control panel

Custom Search Developer's GuideBy Kevin Gnome Lim, Custom Search Team

Customize your results snippets with structured data