An interview with Paul McDonald and Rich Burdon of the Google Mashup Editor Team

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

We had the pleasure of sitting down with two of the Google Mashup Editor team to discuss the product and how developers can use it to build mashups in short order.



We start out by discussing what the product actually is. The term "mashup" is a very overloaded term out there, so a mashup editor could do a number of things. What are the pieces? How does it compare to other tools like Yahoo! Pipes (complementary!)? What are the user and global feeds?

We then delve into practices for building your mashups, and discuss good examples that are out there. We finish up discussing areas that the team would like to delve into as the product evolves.

So, take some time to download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

Thanks to Paul and Rich for taking the time to chat with us.

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Google Developer Podcast Episode Seven: Mashups in the Enterprise

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

Using iTunes?

Gregor Hohpe is a Googler who has spent a lot of time in the enterprise. He authored the book on Enterprise Integration Patterns, and has been watching and helping the integration world.

We were both at MashupCamp and started to talk about how Mashups could be called EAI 2.0, and started to discuss the similarities and differences.

Gregor also wrote an article titled Google Mashup Editor and Yahoo! Pipes: Friend, not Foe, which does a great job of explaining the mashup landscape by example. He shows how to use the Google Mashup Editor, and how it can work with Yahoo! Pipes and other tools.

In this podcast you will hear about all of these topics in that special style that only a German can offer. There are some really fun analogies here. Listen out for the graffiti artists in the Mashup world.

Oh, and on behalf of two europeans, we apologize for saying "San Franciso 49ers" when we of course meant the Giants.

You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).

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Weekly Google Code Roundup for June 4-8th

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

This week it felt like the day after the wedding. The developer day was complete, and now we need to move on, gather up the feedback from the community, and start on the real work of producing APIs and tools for you all.

In API and developer-product news...

DragZoomControl v1.0: Easier zooming, coming right up!

Andre Lewis has contributed his GZoom control to the Google Maps Utility Library which is a set of useful additions to the Maps API, distributed under an open source license. The new control is DragZoomControl, and does what it says on the box.

New KML Developments and Documentation

Mano Marks told us about the new documentation available that tells us about how to get Google to search your KML files, and the release of KML 2.2 beta reference material. KML will now support use of the Atom Syndication format atom:author and atom:uri elements for attribution.

AJAX Feed API Slide Show Enhancements

Mark Lucovsky upgraded the AJAX Feed API Slide Show to allow you to tweak the experience by using various callbacks that let you hook slide transitions, clicks, etc. For an example, he created a slideshow view
of PodTech that allows you to play videos inline as the appropriate image shows up.

Around Google

Google Calendar Gallery

The Google Calendar Gallery helps you find public calendars that may interest you. Plug in the Red Sox schedule, or the Netflix release dates, directly into your calendar.

FeedBurner Acquisition

FeedBurner lets you manage your feeds in interesting ways. You offload the traffic to the service, can add features on top of your own feed (enable Podcast on the fly, advertising, etc), and see great statistics on how your users are using it. We are proud to have the FeedBurner team part of the Google family.

Featured Projects

San Francisco Giants Mashup

Paul McDonald, of the Google Mashup Editor team, has put together a nice mashup on all things SF Giants. As with all Google Mashups, everyone is open source, and you can "view source" on anyones application. Take a peak at this example to see how you can use the mashup editor to do some sophisticated application building.

Remember The Milk Offline

The Remember The Milk team had an advantage. They were in Sydney where we released Gears, and they were obviously on the case. They quickly released an offline version of their TODO list application.

Google Tech Talks

Java on Guice: Dependency Injection, the Java Way

Bob Lee has been traveling the world speaking on Guice recently. This week he got to give his talk right here in Mountain View, and it was recorded for your viewing pleasure.

Hey, What's That? A Map Hack

Michael Kosowsky came to chat about his cool Maps application that lets you see what you could see from a high point (e.g. Longs Peak). Fun math and visualizations indeed.

Podcasts

Google Developer Podcast Episode Three: Mike Tsao on Google Gears

We got to interview Mike Tsao of the Google Gears team on how Gears came about, the design decisions, and lessons for developers as they go about offline-enabling their applications.

The Mono Project

Miguel de Icaza was joined by three former students for Mono: Aaron Tomb, Alan McGovern and Michael Hutchinson. They chat about the past, present, and future of Mono and what the summer of coders are working on now.

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Several sample Google Mashup Editor applications

By DeWitt Clinton, Google Developer Programs

Now that the wraps are off of the Google Mashup Editor, we've begun to invite members of the public to participate in the beta. If you haven't received an invite yet, please hang tight; the interest has been flattering and we're sending out the invites in batches.

While you are waiting for your invite to arrive, the Google Mashup Editor team has posted several sample mashup applications to get you started, some developed by the team, and some developed by you. One of our favorites is the SF Giants baseball mashup, notable in part for integrating multiple data sources with just a handful of simple commands. Don't forget to view the source and see how it's all put together.

Check out the FAQ and follow along on the Google Mashup Blog. See you there!

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