Thomas Gallagher

Morning Keynote – “Surf Report: Surf’s Up on the Open Web!”
The first keynote of the day was focused on the latest Google technologies that are driving forward development of the ‘Open Web’ concept. Primary topics included leveraging the Google Cloud deployment platform through Google App Engine (now available to all), and making use of the Google Web Toolkit (a suite of tools, primarily focused around a Java cross-compiler) to provide desktop-style rich functionality on the web browser.

There was also a ‘Celebrity Fan Site’ demo that showed just how easy it is to add multilingual search, news, videos, images and maps to a static website using the Google Web APIs and Javascript.

Google OpenSocial Campfire Chat
I found this campfire interesting as it focused on the development of the platform as much as the actual implementation of the technology. Emphasis was also placed on the importance of remembering that as we are dealing with an open standard, we as developers and consumers can contribute to the Google OpenSocial Specification and shape its future development.

Many of the floor questions seemed a little misguided as they were rather specific to an individual’s company or website. In reaction to this, panelist Dan Pieterson (Google, seventh from the left in the photograph) raised a very valid point that “OpenSocial provides common APIs, not common policies”. On a personal level I thought this was particularly valid as I have sometimes found that people have a tendency to seek reassurance for their business decisions from service providers when it is not really within their remit to comment.

Other topics of note included:

• Harvard Law’s Project VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) – From what I gathered from a high level, this is the ethical notion that networks and containers simply borrow data that is owned by a user in order to fulfill a value proposition.
• Google Friend Connect – Why go to your friends when they can come to you?
• Hi5 supports “Friend Circles” which allow developers to distinguish between relationship types (friend, colleague, acquaintance, lover?! etc.)
• Jeremiah from Slide mentioned that *some* networks are talking to application developers in order expand their marketing offering to larger brands.
• Apache Shindig – Because anybody can be an OpenSocial container..

Stands
I visited all of the stands at the event to find out what was going on, although I will admit that I was slightly biased towards OpenSocial and Android (what is it about shiny new technologies?!).

At the OpenSocial stand I was introduced to the surprisingly addictive real-time TypeRacer game on Orkut. Players are displayed as cars and the idea is that you type out a paragraph word for word, the higher your word per minute count, the faster your car goes…

Google Android seemed like a far less complete offering which is not surprising as it is a rather large proposition and the hardware isn’t due to be released until late this year. Still, after installing the Android SDK, the Eclipse IDE (complete with Android plugin) and sample Java code – I had a basic version of “snake” running on the emulator in next to no time. From a business perspective, I think that it will be interesting to see what kind of rich UI functionality the OpenGL support will make possible. Personally I would like to see an Amazon Ec2 instance monitor that would give you real time application statistics and alerts on your mobile device – a future project for RightScale perhaps?

Summary
Although it may seem that there is a lot of experimentation in the online sector at the moment; talking to various people has reinforced my assumption that developers (and savvy businessmen alike) are unified in their understanding of what ‘the open web’ is rapidly becoming. It is time to “think outside of the container” and bring the simplistic power of relevant social tools into our own websites and applications.

Picture: Flight of the Conchords