JeffreyBarke.net

Kick-Ass Mash-Ups with Punk Rock APIs

Tired of re-inventing the wheel? Wish there was a single grand unified API layer over everything? In this panel we'll gather data from a dozen different popular sites and services and present it all under a single API, using nothing but stone knives, bear skins, free online tools and client-side JavaScript.

• Kent Brewster, Web Guy, Yahoo!

Please note: These notes were typed and published live. I'll clean them up at some point in the future. Audio forthcoming.

About Kent:
* No formal education
About Kent and Yahoo!
* Listed as a Yahoo! employee, but only true for five more days.
About the tech
* Insecure
* Unauthorized
* Not supported by anyone
* Generally a bad, scary idea

If what you do is wrong, they can turn around and feed you bad things (steal cookies, etc).

http://kentbrewster.com/badges/

What he’s going to show us relies on the script tag hack. Douglas Crockford quote: “The script tag hack is not secure and should be avoided.” Douglas Crockford wrote this in response to Kent Brewster.
Read the rest of this entry »

Pachube is a Web service for sharing real time sensor data from objects, devices, building and environments around the world. It makes use of Extended Environments Markup Language (EEML), an XML-based protocol that is designed to work Industry Foundation Classes.

The API supports requests in EEML and CSV. An EEML Processing library is available to connect directly to Pachube without needing to know or understand EEML and several applications are available.

Pachube was initiated by Haque Design + Research. It's currently in closed beta, but an invitation code can be requested. I just requested mine, so I haven't had a chance to actually use the service yet.

Notes and links from last night's Google I/O review at the New York Web Standards Meetup Group. Thanks to everyone who made it!

Note—There's a "curated" selection of Google I/O videos on this blog tagged io2008.

PowerPoint presentation

Demos/tutorials

• Gears
• Google AJAX Feed API

Advanced Gadget and UI Development Using Google's AJAX APIs. Derek Collison (Google)

The Google AJAX APIs can be used to build sophisticated Gadgets and UI controls for your website. For instance, you can by-pass complex server-side proxies and mash up feeds directly with a few lines of JavaScript using the Feed API. In this session, we'll dive into advanced uses of the raw Feed and Search APIs. We’ll also show you how to use Google's new Language API to broaden the global reach of your web applications.

Participants should be familiar with JavaScript and dynamic Web applications.

Presentation slides (PDF)

Source: YouTube

The New York Web Standards Meetup Group will meet this Thursday (24 July 2008) at theMechanism at 7:00 pm.

Google I/O was a two day developer gathering in San Francisco, 28–28 May 2008, which covered building the next generation of Web applications with Google and open technologies.

I attended and will talk about what I learned there, specifically focusing on Gears, Google App Engine and the Google Ajax APIs. Prior to the meetup, you can read a bit about my experience at theMechanism's blog and watch some of the videos I've gathered here.

24 July 2008 . 7:00 pm
theMechanism
440 9th Avenue 8th Floor
New York, NY 10001 [map]

RSVP now!

Please contact theMechanism if you'd like to present at the September or October meetup.

Google I/O '08 Keynote by Marissa Mayer

Marissa Mayer has been with Google for nine years, helping to build Google into one of the world's most popular web services. As the VP of Search and User Experience, her team is behind some of Google's most popular and successful products including core web search, images, news, books, maps, iGoogle, toolbar, desktop and health. This talk is a glimpse from inside the trenches of how Google builds products (including practical insights on how to build the best products), how to prioritize your efforts especially under resource constraints and how to think about strategy.

Source: YouTube

Keynote for Google I/O 2008: Client, Connectivity and the Cloud

Featuring Vic Gundotra, Allen Hurff (MySpace), Steve Horowitz, Kevin Gibbs, Mark Lucovsky, Bruce Johnson, David Glazer, Nat Brown (iLike)

Source: YouTube

I created a tutorial that will step one through how to create a density map with Prototype, the Google Maps API and the HeatMapAPI. The final product, a density map of liquor licenses in Milwaukee, WI, is below. While this map is based on real data, one limitation of the free HeatMapAPI is that only 100 data points can be submitted per call. Since there are approximately 1,300 liquor licenses in Milwaukee, this map isn't even close to accurate!

Creating a map like this takes four simple steps:

1. Getting everything ready
2. Create the Google map
3. Add the data
4. Create the density map

To step one!

Note—HMGoogleOverlay is an undocumented method of the HeatMapAPI. The documentation here is unofficial and unauthorized, and it simply represents my best guess as to what HMGoogleOverlay is.

class HMGoogleOverlay

A HMGoogleOverlay augments the map with a density map image. It implements the GOverlay interface and thus is added to the map using the GMap2.addOverlay() method.

Constructor

Note—HMGoogleOverlay does not have any public methods. It does not support either show() or hide().

Three posts bundled as one about various things Google Maps API, including: an API plugin for Dreamweaver (no JavaScript required!), one-minute mashups by Google and the datum and projection used by Google.

WebAssist Dreamweaver tools for Google

Posted by Brandon Badger, Product Manager, Google Maps API:

We want to highlight a new tool that helps make the Google Maps API accessible to even more web developers. We're for everyone becoming a JavaScript expert, but sometimes it's nice to lean on a tool to get development done quickly. WebAssist has created a free plugin for Adobe Dreamweaver that walks you through a simple wizard to add a Google Maps API powered map to your webpage. The properties of the map can even be edited via Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG editor.

WebAssist Dreamweaver Tools For Google (free)

From the Google Maps API Blog

Map search wizard

The Google AJAX Search API team has put together a map search wizard to help you put a searchable map on your web page in three easy steps:

1. Customize it—Use the wizard to define the map's width, height, zoom level, title, location, etc.
2. Provide your site's URL—This is used by the wizard to create your free Maps API and AJAX Search API keys to associate with your web site.
3. Hit the magic button—Click on the "Generate Code" button and the wizard will create the customized JavaScript for your map. Just paste this code into your web page, and voilà, your users will have the power of Google Maps at their fingertips.

From the Google Maps API Blog

Google Maps projection

According to Google (official), they use a Mercator projection for their maps (both street and satellite). Charlie Savage provides quite a bit more detail in a blog post, though (unofficial, but very informative):

From last time, we know that a geodetic coordinate system consists of a datum, a projection, an origin, a unit system, two axes and perhaps an origin offset. Without further ado, this is what Google is doing:

• Datum—WGS84 (I'm assuming this, I've never seen verification of it)
• Projection—Mercator
• Unit system—pixels (believe it or not)
• Axes—standard east, non-standard south
• Origin—near the north pole on the international date line

From cfis