Weekly Google Code Roundup: Reaching the Sky and Writing Offline

By Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

It has been a busy time recently. The Zoho team announced offline support for their Writer application this week, so we met at their offices and talked to them about their experience. This is our first video talk, but more are in the works, so head over to our new YouTube channel.

If you are a Mac developer you now have access to more of our APIs via the updated Google Data APIs Objective-C Client Library. You can now work with Google Code Search, Picasa Web Albums, and do more with Google Calendars.

Speaking of Google Calendar, we introduced Calendar Gadgets which allow you to add behaviour to your calendar via Gadgets. Some early examples include adding horoscopes, sudoku puzzles that get harder throughout the week, and the ability to keep up with the all important celebrity birthdays.

If you are new to Gadgets, Alan Williamson has written a nice introduction to creating a Gadget for the Google Desktop.

The maps world has been productive. The big news of the week is the ability to embed a Map in a YouTube like way. Now you don't need to code to be able to build a map, and place it anyway you wish.

This doesn't mean the API is slowing down. Richard Garland wrote about a new cluster zoom feature that ties DragZoom and Marker Manager.

Introducing Sky in Google Earth has gotten a lot of people excited. Looking down at the earth is great, but being able to sit on your back and look up at the stars is just what you want on a nice summer night. Now you can do just that.

Featured Projects

Who's Web maps out various Web 2.0 talent on a rich Maps API implementation.

Zoho Writer has gone offline... in a good way. Now you can keep some of your docs available for that plane trip. Read more.

Featured Media

I got into a nice conversation with fellow Googler, and EAI expert, Gregor Hohpe at MashupCamp. Listen to the conversation about enterprise Mashups and the Google Mashup Editor.

Salesforce developers came to our offices and gave an Overview and Q&A on AppExchange.

John Resig of Mozilla and jQuery gave a talk on Best Practices in Javascript Library Design based on his work on both the jQuery library, and the new FUEL library for building Firefox plugins.

Michael Still talked about Practical MythTV, which covered the powerful open source personal video recorder.

Leslie Hawthorn has made all of her Summer of Code podcasts available in ogg format!

As always, check out the latest tech talks.