Posts filed under 'Google'
Google just released
recently his “Google Web Toolkit”:
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java development framework that lets you escape the matrix of technologies that make writing AJAX applications so difficult and error prone. With GWT, you can develop and debug AJAX applications in the Java language using the Java development tools of your choice. When you deploy your application to production, the GWT compiler to translate your Java application to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.
So basically, it’s a toolkit that can be used to write Web2.0 application in
Java, and then translate it into some JavaScript+librairies.
It’s quite nice, writing client web applications in Java that execute in a
browser..Hey, but stop, this reminds me something: yes, the applet, and these
small pieces of Java running in a Web Browser? Yes, sounds very similar,
however, the Applet failed in their objective to be the technology for browser
application. Maybe it was too early and browser / pc capacity were not ready,
but also it suffered from a lack of interaction with the rest of the browsing
experience, while this is much better with Ajax2.0 app.
But basically, were are here: JavaScript/Ajax was just a technical way to solve
previous issue. Honestly, result is great from the end user point of view, but it’s
horrible from the engineering point of view. Writing complex Web2.0 app is a
nightmare, with a lot of different layers (Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Sql, HTML,
XML, etc…), translators, etc…
May be a message for the mobile community, could be also to learn from our
previous mistake, and make what was initially planned for web happened on
mobile: rich client app that can be downloaded and run within a browser, and
avoid this complex multiple layers.
We already have the technologies available on mobile (XML, J2ME, SVG, etc…)
we just need to tight them together in the right way.
I hope that this ideal scenario will happens (through JCP? 3GPP?) but I am
afraid that once again, the fight between standards, companies, etc… will
lead to a situation where nothing will really emerge, and we will leave again
in a world of translators, layers, and complexity…
May 19th, 2006
map.Ask.com provide a service similar to Google Local/Map. At a first view, nothing really new. But what I really like is the “add location” feature. Just click on a point in the map, and this will put a marker on the map, with the street location on it. Technically speaking, this is reverse geocoding, but it’s not provided by Google. If you put more point, then ask.com compute the direction between these two point. You can even move the point by dragging them, and the direction is recomputed in real time. No more that what a navigation system does, but for the first time avail from the web!
Technorati Tags: maps, googlemaps
May 12th, 2006
Good news, Google Map now support Europe! So you have find, and soon direction works now on J2memap….
Technorati Tags: google, googlemap, j2memap
April 28th, 2006
First, I’ve finally went upgraded J2memap with some important functions. search is now fixed (but not yet direction), but more important, a some memory allocation issue on Nokia has been fixed.
I take the occasion of this note to “introduce” mPowerplay. This fantastic tool enable you to display any midlet on the web, without any change, just by adding ” http://webstart.mpowerplayer.com/ before the URL of the midlet you want to display, and ending with “.jnlp”. Of course, you can protect your midlet if you want, for demo games for instance. I am just surprised to see that no so many developers are using it. See the result on J2memap: J2meMap_Beta
Technorati Tags: j2memap, j2me, javame, mpowerplay
April 1st, 2006
The Siemens SGX75 is released now, and as you might now, have a integrated GPS. I have several feedbacks from happy users of J2MEMap with this handset…. Hope that more GPS/JSR179 enabled handset will come, so let me know your experience with this..
Technorati Tags: j2memap, j2me, sgx75, gps, javame
March 22nd, 2006
Short entry to bring some links about J2Maps reviews..I especially like this one, in Russian where I did not get any single word:
You can also check these two links on GPS Passion, one in english and one in French:
English
French
Technorati Tags: j2memap, j2me, JavaMe, Wireless, GoogleMap
March 15th, 2006
There were some reviews of this new SE phone yesterday. But I’ve just notice a few interesting features, that have not been heavily highlighted (and I am not talking of this direct Google link):
- Identify Music: while listening radio, you can identify the current song. The phone will record a few seconds of the songs, and send it to a server, and you will get back the song name. Next step is probably to link this to an “iTune like” system (from Sony?). But interesting first step approach
- The second interesting innovation, for me, is the fact that it seems that you can lunch at least two instance of the VM. Not yet truly multitasking, but good enough to create new application, and have the notion of a background app….
Source: Mobile Review
Technorati Tags: k790, wireless, j2me
March 1st, 2006
Just got an information that some GoogleMap tiles jave been greatly enhanced. And that true. Check these two snapshots, left the old version, right the new one. I will modify J2memap to take in accound these changes. Even better, maximum resolution has also been improved! A little bit more complex to do for me, but update on the way too…
Technorati Tags: GoogleMap, Wireless, J2meMap
January 27th, 2006
I’ve found this nace racing application just recently: it’s a small javascript that simulate a racing game on top of GoogleMap. As it’s in Japaneese, I’ve just grab the script to and make it run on top of SF, one of my favorite spot! 
. Of course, there is no collision detection with “walls”, but this could be probably implemented using a specific client…If i have time, I would like once do it using my J2meMap framework (or if anybody interested by this?)….
But it’s an interesting example of one of the numerous game that game be done using google map API. I did not see a lot yet, there is this one, a Golf game (nice idea, but bad interface)….
Technorati Tags: google, googlemap, game, wirelessgames
January 19th, 2006
An update for J2meMap: it seems that Google changed recently the result of the “search” and “direction” requests, moving from XML to HTML.
Not sure if it’s an attempt for third party app (like J2meMap) to stop using their result. But in all case, the “search”, and “direction” feature of J2meMap does not work anymore.
I will try to fix it ASAP, hoping that they won’t do any change in the near future.
Technorati Tags: GoogleMap, Google, Map, JavaMe, J2me, J2meMap
January 18th, 2006
Google recently announced the acquisition or ReqWireless, done probably mid of last year. Several posters are questioning the rationale of this acquisition. My previous “guess” was the acquition of Opera (see my Predictions for 2006 ). But ReqWireles is probably cheaper than Opera, and has several interests for Google:
- It provides a talented team of people. I would not be surprised the GoogleLocal has been partially made thanks to this team. Also, the fact that GoogleLocal client contains a mini browser is a good indication of this.
- I think that this small browser wills be used to provide a better user experience to end user to access to the Google personalized portal. There is a full XHTML access, but user experience is still average . I would not be surprised if Google provides a “Google personalized client” to access to your email, buddy list, photos, etc in J2me, using partially some microbrowsing based on ReqWireless techno…
Technorati Tags: Google, Wireles, ReqWireless, JavaMe, J2me
January 17th, 2006
Apparently Google just launched a personalized home page. Unfortunatly, the link provided in the Google blog does not seems to work at this time, which is strange as several poster seems to have used it to read some rss feed….
Probably a short term anwser to the Yahoo!Go launch?
Update: it works if you do directly to your mobile to the following link: http://google.com/xhtml 
Technorati tags: wireless google yahoo
January 13th, 2006
I’ve just decided to start to work on something called “MicroWidget”. MicroWidget will be the equivalent for mobile of Widget, Gadget, or other inspiration source on the mobile….
Basically, it’s an XML based rendering engine with a tiny scriping language. I’ve used FScriptME as a basis for the scripting language. FScriptME is very limited, but it’s a good start. I’ve added some pseudo object oriented faciclities, like myText.data=”some text”, and some usefull xml parsing function.
As an example, here is the widget code for a Clock like widget:
The code is pretty short and can be easily understood. The only difficulty is the function “explode”, who create an array from a string.
Of course, there are plenty of other usefull function to retrive some xml data, to parse them, etc….
First result are really encouraging, but generate some interesting issue about interface design…
Technorati tags: JavaMe J2ME Ajax Widget Micro Widget
December 28th, 2005
I will go also through my little prediction for 2006. Most of them are based on my previous post, and yes, it’s Christmas break:
- Google will buy a Opera(if not already done): the “OS” of Google is the browser, so they need to provide one on platform who does not have one, or a good one. That’s why I predict that they will buy a browser company typically Opera. The interest of Opera for Google is that they also have a good mobile offering.
- But Google will move from the “Good side” to the “Evil Side”. Too powerfull, too big, too smart….
- The “big three”, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft will enters more strongly into mobiles. All will provides much better access to their service to everybody mobile.
- Location based service will increase, especially in North America, thanks to GPS enabled mobiles. In Europe, such mobile will start to appear
December 27th, 2005
Google just published his 2005 “Zeitgeist “, and it’s really worth reading: you wil lhave the top 10 search of the year, in several categories.
But what take a look at some detailled info on popular search in various categories, like WMD, Marhc of the penguins, or Jean Paul II , etc…
The page contain some very detailled graph about the evolution of some request around the year, as well as comparains between two terms. For instance:
show requests about Weapons of Mass Desctruction around all year….
Theses pages show how powerfull is it to know what are the verious request made on Google: you could anticipate trends, get visibility on some mass phenomena, and probably much much more…
Technorati tags: Google
December 23rd, 2005
Google just introduced the ability to add Widget in your starting page. The first widget are not very numerous (see the directory ) but I guess it will increase rapidly. The “date and time” widget seems very similar, in terms of look and feel (and functionalities) to a Konfabulator widget.
May be somebody in Google read my previous posts about writing Konfabulator widgets and write something in a couple of days!
More seriously, this’s a quite good and smart approach, as it uses the browser model. So all rendering is done using HTML, JavaScript, etc… and widgets are stored on the server side. So the only missing thing, to compete with Konfabulator, is the ability to put theses Widget on your desktop…. Should not be a too difficult task, just extend Google desktop to provide the ability to open some “web pages” that contains each one a Widget, and you’re done (and ultimately, Google Desktop could finally be useful and sexy!).
Also, I would like to mention this interesting view from C.Enrique Ortiz: Google – The Best Thing That Has Happened to Yahoo! I totally share this view, and it’s a very positive proof of the utility of competition (and of course, this comment can be extended to Microsoft, hopefully).
Technorati tags: Google Yahoo Widget Konfabulator
December 15th, 2005
During a recent discussion with one of our partner, this one predicted “the end of the browser”, before two years, as opposed to the emergence of specialized applications like messenger, or Google earth. His point was that the crucial part was integration between applications, something that was in his view impossible to do using a Web Browser.
In a time of a complete renewal of the Web, I was a little bit puzzled by this remark. That’s true that the obvious evolution of messenger (or any other chat client) is a better and better integration with the rest of you’re environment…
So should we oppose loosely integrated “web application” to highly integrated local apps…
Not sure that there is an opposition here:
- If it was possible to do Google Earth using a standard browser, I am sure that Google would have done it. It’s just a question of availability of the techno (in fact, I can predict that in two years, Google Earth will be available as a Web application).
- The Web is probably the best platform for integration. In fact, it much easiest to share application between web app than to share locally, most of the time. And a good example is Msn messenger. The sharing (of information) is mostly done on the server side, not on the client. And it seems that the evolution of messenger and hotmail, is to a be a full web/Ajax based application.
So the Web is probably the best platform to do component integration, and the best integration tool is the Browser.
Of course, there is some need for some vertical and specific application, but most of the people do not really need it. The few specific needs can be solved by a “Widget” approach, similar to Konfabulator or Safari: still browser (ok, it’s not 100% the case), but this browser is skinned and just displays a single web page, but in a very good way…
Again, as stated in one of my previous post, “The end of the OS“, I think that in the future, the operating system might be a detail, as long as you have a very good browser…So I think that browsers will be here for a long time, see you in two years….
December 2nd, 2005
This picture show J2ME Map communicating with a Bluetooth enabled head (this is the BETA vrsion, 07.03). This works quite well, and you are able to get your positionning while driving and display it on a Google Map/Virtual Earth Map… That’s quite fun, this probably needs to be linked to other features like direction. One things that is missing in Google Map is reversegeocoding, in other words the ability to get a street adress from your current position, feature which exists anyway in GoogleLocal for mobile!
Technocrati tags: Google Map J2ME GPS
BlueTooth
November 16th, 2005
Playing a little bit with GoogleMap, and having saw a nice page somewhere on the web (but I really can not find it anymore) showing all the list of tiles to go to a specific location of GoogleMap, I’ve just created a fun page where you just enter a latitude longitude, and he shows the list of tile from here.
You can try it at j2memap.landspurg.net/whereAmI.php
For instance, for statue of liberty, it’s: http://j2memap.landspurg.net/whereAmI.php?lon=-74.045051&lat=40.689712
Have fun!
Technocrati tags: Google Map.
November 5th, 2005
I’ve just played a little bit with the last version of Yahoo Map beta.
First, my comment is that the application is big, in size! It tooks literraly more than 10 minutes at home to download. Yes, I am one of the few without DSL, so I still have to use a modem! The beauty of GoogleMap was his simplicity and the use of standard Web Technologies. I guess that being late in the race, Yahoo had to find something to differenciate…
The application is fancy, but not really innovative. For instance, you have three text string for your request (one for finding place, the others two for directions) while Google had just one box for all of these…
The other strange thing, when you look inside, is that all tiles are predefined Flash elements. But these elements just seems to contains a bitmap..sounds strange (look at http://195.113.150.5/us.tile.maps.yimg.com/tile?md=200511021115&col=1308&row=923&z=5 ).
One the other hand, the AJAX interface seems to work quite well. The good news is that if you use it, all tiles are png images, but with some strange choice: they are 258×258 (256×256 seems much more simpler! 
). But anyway, it should be quite easy to use them in other mapping application, like the good J2MEMAP!
Technocrati tags: google maps YahooMaps
November 3rd, 2005
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