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Sunday, 19 June 2011

Now that we have your attention…

Posted by Daniel Holevoet, Google Gadgets Team

We thought we'd take a moment to formally invite you to participate in the Google Gadgets API group. The goal of the group is to give updates on the progression of the gadgets API and to aid you in the development of your own gadgets.

The group is officially staffed by two Googlers — myself, and Dann Lee — and unofficially by a set of talented Gadget Gurus — members of the community who've been identified for outstanding long-term commitment to the community.

Second, we'd like to point out a somewhat new article that you might not have seen yet: Gadget Caching for Higher Performance. It sheds light on the numerous ways the Google API can be used to save your bandwidth, while at the same time, decreasing the loading time of your gadgets.

More articles on gadgets will be coming soon, and when they are released, we'll make sure to let you know here. Stay tuned!
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Flexi-ng your muscles with Gears

Posted by Dion Almaer, Gears Team

When a lot of developers think about Flex, they often tie it to Flash and AIR, but you can of course integrate Flex applications with many other front-end services.

Mrinal Wadhwa has seen value in building Flex applications, and also likes functionality available in Gears.

He wrote up an article on enhancing Flex applications with Gears which had him create a sample application the uses the Desktop API in Gears.

It is interesting to take a look at the source to see how Flex applications tie back to plain old JavaScript.

For example, the following shows you how you put JavaScript into your Flex application, and then call back to the Flex code via thisMovie(APP_NAME).methodToCall:


  // tells the swf if gears is installed
  function isGearsInstalled() {
    if (window.google && google.gears) { //gears is installed
      thisMovie("FlexGears").testForGears(true);    
      return;
    }
    //gears is not installed
    thisMovie("FlexGears").testForGears(false);    
  }

            
  function thisMovie(movieName) {
    if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft") != -1) {
      return window[movieName];
    } else {
      return document[movieName];
    }
  }
  // ....

Thanks to Mrinal Wadhwa for taking the time to try this all out. We enjoy seeing how people take Gears into many corners of the Web!

Also, you may not have seen QuickFix, an example application that shows how you can use Flex to talk to Google App Engine. The example is created by Dick Wall from App Engine, and James Ward from Adobe.

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Spreadsheet gadgets: free dynamic data for your gadget

Posted by Justin Kosslyn, Google Spreadsheet Team

Want to develop new features for google spreadsheets? Want a dynamic, collaborative data store for gadgets embedded in your site? If you answered “yes” to either question, you’re in luck – spreadsheet gadgets can be embedded directly in spreadsheets or use spreadsheets as dynamic data stores.

For example, here’s a Motion Chart gadget that’s reading data from a spreadsheet. You or a collaborator can add more data to the gadget by modifying the underlying spreadsheet.

Or here's a much simpler example that just integrates Google maps with a simple spreadsheet:

You can extend any existing gadget into a spreadsheet gadget with the Google Visualization API. When your gadgets are ready for prime time, you can submit them to the Gallery and possibly get your gadgets featured on our Gadget picker within the Google Docs spreadsheets editor. So, whether you're just looking for a simple, dynamic database for your gadget, or want to integrate your other web products or services with Google Docs, check out this platform.

For more information, please check out our new developer documentation, Getting Started with Spreadsheet Gadgets.

We’ll also soon be expanding our APIs to allow your gadgets to write data back to an underlying Spreadsheet.

Give us feedback using our Feedback Form, where you can also let us know if you are interested in participating in early testing of the expanded read-write API.
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Your fast pass through security

Webmaster level: All

Security checks are nobody's cup of tea. We've never seen people go through airport baggage checks for fun. But while security measures are often necessary, that doesn't mean they have to be painful. In that spirit, we’ve implemented several major improvements to make the Google Site Verification process faster, more straightforward, and perhaps even a pleasure to use—so you can get on with the tasks that matter to you.

New verification method recommendations

You’ll quickly notice the changes we’ve made to the verification page, namely the new tabbed interface. These tabs allow us to give greater visibility to the verification method that we think will be most useful to you, which is listed in the Recommended Method tab.

Our recommendation is just an educated guess, but sometimes guesses can be wrong. It’s possible that the method we recommend might not work for you. If this is the case, simply click the "Alternate methods" tab to see the other verification methods that are available. Verifying with an alternate method is just as powerful as verifying with a recommended method.

Our recommendations are computed from statistical data taken from users with a similar configuration to yours. For example, we can guess which verification methods might be successful by looking at the public hosting information for your website. In the future we plan to add more signals so that we can provide additional customized instructions along with more relevant recommendations.

New Google Sites Are Automatically Verified
For some of you, we’ve made the process even more effortless—Google Sites administrators are now automatically verified for all new sites that they create. When you create a new Google Site, it’ll appear verified in the details page. The same goes for adding or removing owners: when you edit the owners list in your Google Site's settings, the changes will automatically appear in Webmaster Tools.

One thing to note is that we’re unable to automatically verify preexisting Google Sites at this time. If you’d like to verify your older Google Sites, please continue to use the meta tag method already available.

We hope these enhancements help get you through security even faster. Should you get pulled over and have any questions, feel free to check out our Webmaster Help Forums.

Written by Kevin Marshall, Konstantin Roslyakov, Ian Porteous (Software Engineers)

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Add +1 to help your site stand out

Webmaster level: Intermediate

When we introduced the +1 button in March, Google search took a small step in an important direction. Search results can be more helpful, and more personal, when recommendations from the people you trust are there to guide your way.

The +1 button can help publishers, too. As potential visitors see recommendations from their friends and contacts beneath your Google search results, you could see more, and better qualified, traffic coming from Google.

Since we announced +1, we’ve gotten lots of requests from Google search users and webmasters alike for +1 buttons in more places than just search results. That’s why today we’re making the +1 button available to sites across the web. Sometimes you want to recommend a web page after you’ve visited it. After all, how do you know you want to suggest that great article on Spanish tapas if you haven’t read it yet?

We’ve partnered with a few sites where you’ll see +1 buttons over the coming days:

You'll also start to see +1 buttons on other Google properties such as Android Market, Blogger, Product Search and YouTube.

Adding +1 buttons to your pages is a great way to help your content stand out in Google search. By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search results and search ads could show up with +1 annotations more often, helping users see when your pages are most likely to be useful.

To get started, visit the +1 button tool on Google Webmaster Central. You’ll be able to configure a small snippet of JavaScript and add it to the pages where you want +1 buttons to appear. You can pick from a few different button sizes and styles, so choose the +1 button that best matches your site’s layout.

In the common case, a press of the button +1’s the URL of the page it’s on. We recommend some easy ways to ensure this maps as often as possible to the pages appearing in Google search results.

If your site primarily caters to users outside of the US and Canada, you can install the +1 button code now; the +1 button is already supported in 44 languages. However, keep in mind that +1 annotations currently only appear for English search results on Google.com. We’re working on releasing +1 to searchers worldwide in the future.

If you have users who love your content (and we bet you do), encourage them to spread the word! Add the +1 button to help your site stand out with a personal recommendation right at the moment of decision, on Google search.

To stay current on updates to the +1 button large and small, please subscribe to the Google Publisher Buttons Announce Group. For advanced tips and tricks, check our Google Code site. Finally, if you have any questions about using the +1 button on your websites, feel free to drop by the Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Evan Gilbert, Software Engineer, +1 Button

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Thursday, 16 June 2011

5 Innovative Ways to Teach Your Skills Online

The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles — it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.

class Through projects like Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare and University of the People, the Internet has made it easier for anyone to be a student. Now it’s also making it easier for anyone to become a teacher.

Several platforms have launched within the last two years that democratize teaching. It’s now possible for anyone to teach anything — whether it’s how to play the Irish whistle or master investing basics — without a teaching contract, special software or a brick-and-mortar classroom.

Here are five ways to get started.

1. Skillshare

Skillshare is an online marketplace that sells tickets to offline classes. Anyone who knows something others would be interested in learning about can sell tickets to a class on the site.

Skillshare takes a 15% cut of the tickets sold. Right now most classes on the just-launched platform take place in New York City, but it is open everywhere.

2. Sophia

Sophia helps experts curate the social web in a way that reliably explains a topic. Anybody can compile a free “lesson packet” on the platform using slideshows, videos, audio clips and text that they either upload or pull in from sources like YouTube. When it’s published, they’re encouraged to engage with those who view it through an attached Q&A board.

Lessons can be voted “academically sound” by subject experts (users who hold a degree in that field or teach a course on it), which helps sort out good material from the noise of an open platform.

3. Learnable

Learnable asks its teachers to put together an entire online course rather than a single lesson packet, but it also gives them the opportunity to make money from it. The site was spun off from Sitepoint.com, a resource for web developers that hosts forums, blogs, and, yes, courses on web topics.

Anybody can create a course on Learnable by bundling articles, documents and videos into consecutive lessons that students work through at their own pace. A Q&A section attached to each course becomes its forum, and users can see who else is enrolled in the course.

Most lessons are priced around $20, and Learnable collects 50% of each student’s fee.

4. Udemy

Udemy is similar to Learnable. Teachers use the site’s platform to easily build courses by combining video, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, audio files and zip files. On Udemy, they can also host live classes.

Some classes on Udemy are free. Paid courses typically range from $5 to $250, and Udemy keeps 20% of the ticket price.

5. Tildee

If you’re looking to explain something relatively simple, Tildee works great. Type a title, add an explanation, paste links to the necessary Google maps, videos or images and boom — you have a tutorial.

The platform doesn’t leave much room for detail or consecutive lessons, but if people ask you over and over again how to make your famous cookies or how to get to your offices, it’s nice to have a shareable link to refer them to.

Series Supported by BMW i

The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles; it delivers smart mobility services within and beyond the car. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.

Are you an innovative entrepreneur? Submit your pitch to BMW i Ventures, a mobility and tech venture capital company.

More About: education, Global Innovation Series, Learnable, skillshare, Sophia, teaching, Tildee, udemy

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