Google I/O 2009, a massive developer conference hosted by the Google Gods, just took place in the Moscone Center in San Francisco. At this conference, Google unveils some of their newest and biggest projects and developments. Here is nearly 3 hours worth of the youtube goodness that came out of Google I/O 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5aJAaGZIvk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ&feature=player_embedded
Here is a summary of what is going on in these videos along with the times that things are happening:
Introduction
Google Chrome Experiments showing off the capabilities of the Google Chrome browser.
(5:00)
Dr. Eric Schmidt is the first on the stage he and welcomes everybody to the event. He then stresses that "It's Time to take advantage of the amazing opportunity that is before us." Schmidt talks about changing the web computing models so that it "just works."
(11:55)
Vic Gundotra takes the stage and says "Never Underestimate the web." He goes on to explain how Google Maps was once thought to be impossible but is now commonly used.
He shows several graphs:
Graph of new browsers(faster and more functional)
Graph of # of developers
Graph of browser performance
Graph of users
All graphs go UP over time
Then he explains that Gmail introduced AJAX to the developer community and suddenly they developed many AJAX apps. So, people need to know what is possible.
(18:29)
5 things:
1. Canvas - "defines drawing and animation APIs with pixel level control"
This allows developers to make rich, interactive apps WITH NO PLUGINS. They do some demos of interactive graphic applications and show that there are no plugins. The canvas tag has been implemented across all modern browsers(Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera).
(23:24)
O3D - Matt Papakipos introduces Googles open source view of 3D graphics in the browser. It is not yet built into browsers. An API is in progress.
(29:50)
2. Video Tag - makes inserting a video as easy as inserting an image. There are no plugins required. Vic shows some examples of how easy it is to put videos onto a website and how they can be viewed without plugins.
(32:33)
3. Geolocation - Its like having GPS when you only have wifi or cellphone tower signal. Jay Sulivan, vice president from Mozilla, talks about how common APIs across all browsers are VERY IMPORTANT. He demonstrates how geolocation has been implemented in FireFox 3.5. Vic demonstrates how it is implemented on on the iPhone, IN THE BROWSER.
(44:45)
4. Database and App Cache - "store user data and app resources locally." This allows developers to make web apps that can continue to work when there is no connection to the Internet.
(48:11)
Micheal A and Greg talk about Palm and how they will be deploying HTML5 on devices like the Palm Pre.
(52:39)
5. Web Workers - Background processing in the browser. This allows process intensive applications to run smoothly without interrupting other tabs. It allows developers to create powerful and responsive apps.
To summarize those 5 things... The future of web browsers will allow developers to make incredible applications and they will simply work.
(55:50)
Vic introduces Google App Engine and Google Web Toolkit, tools which make developing apps much simpler. Kevin Gibbs discusses Google App Engine saying that it allows developers to use and make apps that run on google servers so developers don't have to deal with the hardware involved in keeping an app running.
(1:00:50)
Andrew Bowers demonstrates how developers can use GWT and AppEngine to write an application in java and compile it into javascript and run it in a browser. Also those applications will work consistently on all popular browsers.
(1:08:52)
runAsync- "developer guided code splitting." It is a simple way to split javascript files. It allows web apps to start up more quickly by decreasing the size of the initial download. Then, the rest of the code downloads in the background while the app is running.
(1:12:52) DeWitt Clinton introduces Google Web Elements, embeddable apps that allow site owners to add applications by simply copying and pasting html code, just like to YouTube videos.
(1:17:25)
Vic starts the discussion of Android and introduces Romain Guy who uses an Android phone to demonstrate a few features of Android. He mainly focuses on the search interface. He also discusses the powerful text to speech feature on Android Doughnut.
(1:24:49)
Vic mentions a few more things:
Android Developer Challenge 2
Everyone in the audience gets a free android phone(Oprah Moment)
Don't miss tomorrows discussion!!!!
That sums up the first video. I'm not going to go into much detail about the second video. Not because I don't want to or because its not as important. Just because I wouldn't know how. You really have to see this for yourself.
It's called Google Wave. It is designed to cover all the boundaries of internet messages. It can carry out the tasks of Instant Messenger, Twitter, Email, and do quite a few other things. Also, the whole thing is open source.
It was developed by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, the creators of Google Maps, so it must be good. In the video they do live demonstrations of a ton of features. If you want to know more, check it out here:
http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html
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