Feature

Web API Expert: Why Web API Directories Are the New Search Engines

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:15:00 EDT

Last week we launched a new column called “Web API Expert,” in essence, to provide a deeper focus on the emerging number of Web APIs out there, and show how to leverage them for mashups or other applications. This is the most exciting and interesting area of the emerging Web right now, and the more you understand what’s coming, the better you can take advantage.

Web API Expert: The Concept of a Web API

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:30:00 EDT

The Web is slowly changing from a visual resource designed to externalize information to people, to a non-visual resource that's able to facilitate machine-to-machine communications. The catalysts of this change are non-visual communications that are enabled using APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces. These APIs allow you to leverage within your own application both behavior and data that somebody else has built and hosted, as if both the functionality and information were local.

Google’s Position in AOL Turns Rancid

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Google has told the SEC that its billion-dollar acquisition of 5% of AOL, made in 2005 to prevent Microsoft from doing it and giving AOL a $20 billion over-the-top valuation, “may be impaired,” accounting-speak for it ain’t worth what it was (if it ever was).

Engelbart's Usability Dilemma: Efficiency vs Ease-of-Use

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:15:00 EDT

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys like a piano, used by one hand. The problem was, Engelbart's five-finger keyboard and mouse combination was very difficult to learn.

The i-Technology World Celebrates 25th Anniversary of TCP/IP

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:30:00 EST

Google's new-year special logo, which went live briefly as 2008 began, celebrated the 25th anniversary of TCP/IP - adopted by Arpanet on January 1st, 1983. While 'invisible' to most users, many of the layers built on top of TCP/IP are well-known even to laymen: HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), FTP (the File Transfer Protocol), SMTP and POP3, and IRC.

How OpenSocial Complements Silverlight

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 08:45:00 EST

To take advantage of the OpenSocial implementation in Orkut sandbox, you have to create a Google Gadget with the OpenSocial feature, post the gadget on the Internet, and then add the URL of the gadget as an application. As I looked into the Google gadget API to build this, I found something interesting, the Google Gadget framework exposes the function _IG_FetchContent() that can be used to asynchronously fetch the text at any URL.

Microsoft Silverlight Jives With Google's OpenSocial

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:00:00 EST

So what kind of real social networking applications would Silverlight enable? Would it be network visualization or media playback or mash-ups? Google with its Orkut online community (a closed-source ASP.Net application) created an API for social applications so that developers can build applications that can then run inside other social networking applications. They then opened up the specification for that API to other social networking applications so that all other social networking sites can (if they want to) make their sites containers for third-party applications. So I started playing with it.

Google's OpenSocial: A Technical Overview and Critique

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 02:45:00 EST

One of the Google folks working on OpenSocial sent me a message via Facebook asking what I thought about the technical details of the recent announcements. Since my day job is working on social networking platforms for Web properties at Microsoft and I'm deeply interested in RESTful protocols, this is something I definitely have some thoughts about. Below is what started off as a private message but ended up being long enough to be its own article.

Fifty Million Facebook Users Don't Care About Google's OpenSocial APIs

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 02:30:00 EST

There are 50 million Facebook users who don't know what OpenSocial APIs are...and don't care. There are about 5,000 tech bloggers and developers who think it is a revolution that will 'Checkmate' Facebook and leave them with no moves. TechMeme has over 100 stories saying that OpenSocial is awesome and Facebook is dead. MySpace joins Google on OpenSocial initiative. OK, surely that settles it, Facebook is toast. Nope, not in my opinion.

How to Create a Gadget for Google Desktop

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:15:00 EDT

Have you played with Google's Desktop tool? This is basically a strip on the side of your screen that lets you house small applications, called Gadgets. The tool is available for Windows, Linux and Mac so no matter your vice there is a flavour for you. There is a wide variety of Gadgets available, ranging from the usual news tickers and clocks right through to games and even being able to vote if a girl is hot or not!

Google Maps and ASP.NET

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 15:15:00 EDT

I am sure that most of you have heard about or have had a chance to use Google Maps. It's a great service and I was really impressed by the responsiveness of the application and the ease with which users could drag and zoom maps from a Web browser. It has in many ways heralded the arrival of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which I am sure will revitalize Web development in the days to come.

AJAXWorld 2006 West Power Panel with Google's Adam Bosworth

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 11:45:00 EDT

Six of the Web's brightest and best minds - Google's Adam Bosworth, Laszlo Systems founder David Temkin, coiner of the term 'AJAX' Jesse James Garrett, Paul Rademacher of HousingMaps.com and Google, Web 2.0 Journal editor-in-chief Dion Hinchcliffe and Microsoft MVP Sahil Malik - wrestle with a host of issues in this 'AJAX Power Panel' moderated by SYS-CON Media Group Publisher and Editorial Director, Jeremy Geelan.

i-Technology Blog: Google Trends on Java, McNealy, AJAX, and SOA Give Pause For Thought

Fri, 12 May 2006 09:15:00 EDT

Like so many of the ideas that tumble out of the Googleplex into the public domain, Google Trends is irresistible. Jeremy Geelan puts the application, newly taken out of beta and now available to all cyberspace from the Google main page, through its paces by taking it out for a giddy spin around the i-Technology world. The results are surprising...