Who's @ Google I/O - spotlight on Google Web Toolkit

Google Web Toolkit, or GWT for short, recently went live with their 1.6 release, which also included a Google plugin for Eclipse and integration with App Engine's Java language support. Google I/O will be rich with GWT content, including a number of sessions on improving productivity and app performance with GWT. In addition, there will be a number of external GWT developers leading some of these sessions and/or part of the Developer Sandbox.

As mentioned last week, we're giving you a closer look at developers who'll be presenting or demoing at I/O. Here is a taste of these GWT developers below. (New to GWT? Check out this overview)

• JBoss, a Division of Red Hat
  JBoss is well-known by developers for their enterprise open source middleware. Red Hat developer communities such as the Fedora Project and jboss.org have collaborated with Google on a number of developer initiatives over the years including Google Summer of Code, Hibernate Shards, integration with Drools and the Seam Framework and Google Gadgets integration with JBoss Portal. JBoss will be present at the Developer Sandbox.
  


• Timefire
  Timefire produces highly scalable, interactive visualizations of up to millions of data points for business intelligence, analytics, finance, sensor networks, and other industries in what they like to call "Google Maps, but for the time dimension." Their platform's built on Google Web Toolkit from the ground up, but also runs natively on Android. Timefire also uses App Engine's new Java language support for their social charting tool, Gadgets, OpenSocial, GData, Google Maps, GViz, YouTube Player API, and Protocol Buffers. Ray Cromwell will be at the Developer Sandbox as well as speaking on 2 sessions - Building Applications on the Google OpenStack and Progressively Enhance AJAX Applications with Google Web Toolkit and GQuery
  


• StudyBlue
  StudyBlue is an academic network which enables students to connect with each other and offers study tools. StudyBlue's website is built entirely with GWT. According to StudyBlue, GWT allows for complete AJAX integration without sacrificing usability or integration capabilities. StudyBlue will be at the Sandbox.
  


• Lombardi Blueprint
  Lombardi Blueprint is a cloud-based process discovery and documentation platform accessible from any browser. They've used GWT since early 2007 to write the client side of Lombardi Blueprint. GWT has enabled Lombardi to focus on writing and maintaining their Java code, while taking care of creating the browser-specific optimized AJAX for them. Alex Moffat and Damon Lundin will be at the Developer Sandbox as well as leading a session, Effective GWT: Developing a complex, high-performance app with Google Web Toolkit. (Check out Alex Moffat's video about Lombardi's use of GWT)

Finally, one little known fact - a number of Google products were developed with the help of GWT. This includes Google Moderator, Health, Checkout, Image Labeler, and Base.

Don't forget - early registration for Google I/O ends May 1. This means $100 off the standard list price (and a copy of the Chrome comic book). To register, check out the latest sessions, or see more developers who'll be presenting at I/O, visit code.google.com/io.

*Follow us for the latest I/O updates: @googleio.

By Christine Tsai, Google Developer Products