Google Chrome Frame

• Enable open web technologies in Internet Explorer
  Google Chrome Frame is an open source plug-in that seamlessly brings Google Chrome's open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer. With Google Chrome Frame, you can:
  
  • Start using open web technologies - like the HTML5 canvas tag - right away, even technologies that aren't yet supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, or 9.
  • Take advantage of JavaScript performance improvements to make your apps faster and more responsive.
• Get started with Google Chrome Frame
  Enabling Google Chrome Frame is simple. For most web pages, all you have to do is add a single tag to your pages and detect whether your users have installed Google Chrome Frame.
  
  • If Google Chrome Frame is not installed, you can direct your users to an installation page.
  • If Google Chrome Frame is installed, it detects the tag you added and works automatically.

http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/

Google Dart – Should JavaScript be Replaced?

A memo from a Google employee was leaked earlier this month exposing the new plan for Dart, which they claim to be a new programming language for structured web programming. The memo goes into some detail on what Dart would be, but doesn’t go into much detail on why Dart should be. In other words, it doesn’t explicitly state the deficiencies in JavaScript. Do they have a point? Should JavaScript be replaced?


http://clubajax.org/google-dart-should-javascript-be-replaced/

Google JS Test

Google JS Test is a JavaScript unit testing framework that runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine, the same open source project that is responsible for Google Chrome’s super-fast JS execution speed. Google JS Test is used internally by several Google projects, and we’re pleased to announce that it has been released as an open source project.

Features of Google JS Test include:

• Extremely fast startup and execution time, without needing to run a browser.

• Clean, readable output in the case of both passing and failing tests.

• An optional browser-based test runner that can simply be refreshed whenever JS is changed.

• Style and semantics that resemble Google Test for C++.

• A built-in mocking framework that requires minimal boilerplate code (e.g. no $tearDown or $verifyAll calls), with style and semantics based on the Google C++ Mocking Framework.

• A system of matchers allowing for expressive tests and easy to read failure output, with many built-in matchers and the ability for the user to add their own.
  
  

See the Google JS Test project home page for a quick introduction, and the getting started page for a tutorial that will teach you the basics in just a few minutes.

http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/09/introducing-google-js-test.html

HTML Video Codec Support in Chrome

The web’s open and community-driven development model is a key factor in its rapid evolution and ubiquitous adoption. The WebM Project was launched last year to bring an open, world-class video codec to the web. Since the launch, we’ve seen first-hand the benefits of an open development model:

• Rapid performance improvements in the video encoder and decoder thanks to contributions from dozens of developers across the community
• Broad adoption by browser, tools, and hardware vendors
• Independent (yet compatible) implementations that not only bring additional choice for users, publishers, and developers but also foster healthy competition and innovation

We expect even more rapid innovation in the web media platform in the coming year and are focusing our investments in those technologies that are developed and licensed based on open web principles. To that end, we are changing Chrome’s HTML5 <video> support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.

These changes will occur in the next couple months but we are announcing them now to give content publishers and developers using HTML <video> an opportunity to make any necessary changes to their sites.

http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html

Google Data on Rails

"Where's Ruby on the list of client libraries?"
Motivated by the ferocious appetite of our developers and the enduring popularity of Ruby on Rails (RoR), Jeff Fisher has forged a Ruby utility library from the fiery depths of Mount Doom. Mind you, it's not a full-blown client library, but it does handle the fundamentals like authentication and basic XML manipulation. It also requires you to work directly with the Atom feed using the REXML module and XPath.

http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/articles/gdata_on_rails.html

Google's SEO Report Card

How many of Google's web pages use a descriptive title tag? Do we use description meta tags? Heading tags? While we always try to focus on the user, could our products use an SEO tune up? These are just some of the questions we set out to answer with Google's SEO Report Card.

Google's SEO Report Card is an effort to provide Google's product teams with ideas on how they can improve their products' pages using simple and accepted optimizations. These optimizations are intended to not only help search engines understand the content of our pages better, but also to improve our users' experience when visiting our sites. Simple steps such as fixing 404s and broken links, simplifying URL choice, and providing easier-to-understand titles and snippets for our pages can benefit both users and search engines. From the start of the project we also wanted to release the report card publicly so other companies and webmasters could learn from the report, which is filled with dozens of examples taken straight from our products' pages.

The project looked at the main pages of 100 different Google products, measuring them across a dozen common optimization categories. Future iterations of the project might look at deeper Google product web pages as well as international ones. We released the report card within Google last month and since then a good number of teams have taken action on it or plan to.

We hope you find our SEO Report Card useful and we'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below or in the Webmaster Central Help Forum. And if you'd like to do your own SEO tune up, a good place to start is by reading our free SEO Beginner's Guide.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html

The Evil Side of Google? Exploring Google's User Data Collection

Google Inc. is first and foremost a data company. In the past, it competed on a level playing field by manipulating publicly available data better than its competition. By doing this, it had unprecedented success.

Enter Web 2.0. Hard drives, processors, bandwidth, and even workers are now all relatively inexpensive. This has caused the barriers to entry in the search field to drastically lower. As Google’s competition has started to catch up (MSN Image Search) and new competitors are arising, (Cuill) the search engine is looking for some kind of advantage. Since everyone has reasonably equal access to the internet’s content, leaders have been striving to gain access to private data. The most cost effective way of doing this for the engines is by collecting data from the users that already use their services. Google has been increasingly serving its users by using their personal data to manipulate public data in individualized ways. These methods are impossible to copy without the necessary personal data.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-evil-side-of-google-exploring-googles-user-data-collection

Google App Engine

An Early Look at Java™ Language Support
App Engine recently unveiled its second language: Java. This release includes an early look at our Java runtime, integration with Google Web Toolkit, and a Google Plugin for Eclipse, giving you an end-to-end Java solution for AJAX web applications. Our support for the Java language is still under development and we're eager to get your help and input. The Java runtime is now available for anyone to use, so please give it a try and send us your feedback.

• Get the full scoop in our blog post.
• Click over to YouTube to watch our Campfire One announcements.
• See our docs for other new features like cron support, database import, and access to firewalled data.

Getting started
Here’s how to get rolling:

1. Install the gems
   $ sudo gem install google-appengine

2. Assign an app identifier

   Simply create an application at appspot.com,
   we'll refer to that as my-app in this document.

3. Generate your rails app

   $ rails my-app; cd my-app;

4. Generate a rackup file

   In the same folder, save this as config.ru.

   require 'appengine-rack'
   AppEngine::Rack.configure_app(
   :application => 'my-app',
   :version => 1 )
   
   ENV['RAILS_ENV'] = AppEngine::Rack.environment
   require 'config/environment'
   run ActionController::Dispatcher.new
   

5. Check gem sources for datamapper

   $ gem sources

   Only when missing, add it like this...
   $ sudo gem source -a http://gems.datamapper.org

6. Install gems into your app

   $ appcfg.rb gem install rails dm-appengine

7. Modify the Rails Initializer

   Add the following to your config/environment.rb.

   # Set DataMapper to use dm-appengine adapter
   require 'dm-core'
   DataMapper.setup(:default, "appengine://auto")
   
   # Set Logger from appengine-apis, all environments
   require 'appengine-apis/logger'
   config.logger = AppEngine::Logger.new
   
   # Skip frameworks you're not going to use.
   config.frameworks -= [ :active_record ]
   

8. Run your app locally

   $ dev_appserver.rb .

9. Open up the console

   $ appcfg.rb run -S irb
   > require 'config/environment'

10. Deploy to App Engine

    $ appcfg.rb update .

http://code.google.com/appengine/
http://rails-primer.appspot.com/

Google Analytics API is Now Available to Developers

It is a good news to web application developers. Google Analytics Data Export API beta is now publicly available to all Analytics users. The Data Export API is easy to use and provides read-only access to all your Analytics data. Any data that’s available through the standard Analytics web interface is available through the API.

Developers can integrate Google Analytics into their existing products and create standalone applications that they sell. Users could see snapshots of their Analytics data in developer created dashboards and gadgets. Individuals and business owners will have opportunities to access their Google Analytics information in a variety of new ways with Google Analytics Data Export API.

For example, you can accessing Analytics from your desktop with Polaris from now on. Polaris is a cross-platform desktop widget for Google Analytics. With 8 standard reports it’s the easiest way keep your data always instantly available. The rich interface and swift navigation make it a pleasure to use.

http://www.webappers.com/2009/04/27/google-analytics-api-is-now-available-to-developers
http://www.desktop-reporting.com/polaris.html