Google will hold a developer confab in May, called Google I/O, to discuss the challenges of writing applications for the Web.
This year's two-day event in San Francisco is larger than last year's Google Developer Day, its first organized conference aimed specifically at Web developers.
While the format is different--there will be more in-depth technical sessions and tutorials for newbies who want to write mash-ups--Google's developer strategy remains the same.
Why do they court developers? To encourage creation of more and better Web applications, said Tom Stocky, a senior product manager at Google, on Tuesday.
"We're trying to get more users, in general. We want to increase the number of users and the amount they use the Web. And improving the platform is the best way to do that, we've found," Stocky said.
What will be different this year is an increased focus on developing social applications, reflecting Web development in general. Google will have sessions on social applications, including ways to use OpenSocial, which is designed to let people share information on social networks among different applications.
There is also a track on mobile development, including ways to use Google Gears for Mobile and Android, the mobile phone platform Google and its partners introduced last November.
All the same Web platform?
Google, of course, is hardly the only tech company that is attracting Web developers to their "platform."
Salesforce.com sells subscriptions to a customer relationship management application, but when you talk to the company's CEO, Marc Benioff, you quickly understand that he is betting that its development platform, called Force.com, will fuel growth in the future.
Other Web giants--Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon--all have their own developer programs as well.
But the company set to shake things up the most in Web service development is Microsoft, which just hosted its own Mix Web development conference.
It already has many application programming interfaces (APIs) to its Web services, from Virtual Earth to Windows Live Messenger, and continues to release more.
More significantly, Microsoft understands platforms, how to build a thriving "ecosystem" of third-party applications and partners, and how to make money for everyone involved.
Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie has laid out a vision of a providing unifying development model for a wide range of applications, from classic client-server Windows applications to Web services mashups using Silverlight.
On a technical level, Google's push to attract developers to the Web has a slightly different flavor than others.
Stocky said that Google's focus with tools and APIs is JavaScript and good Ajax development practices.
Of course, Google doesn't have a legacy development tools business--like Microsoft or Adobe both do--that needs refreshed tooling to write applications for the Internet "cloud."
In addition, Google wants to promote technologies that work in all browsers, not things like Flash or Silverlight that require a special plug-in and are proprietary.
"If anyone's going to push the Web forward, we want them to do it in way that benefits everyone," Stocky said. "We don't have an underlying platform we're selling. We're trying to improve the Web as a platform...and increase usage of the Internet as a whole."
Google's own engineers were able to push the boundaries of Ajax. Its first release of Google Maps, where users can drag a map around a browser, inspired many developers to push the limits of Webware.
Stocky said that one of the goals of Google I/O is to garner some feedback from developers on where they are hitting the limits of Web development. But it's clear that Google wants to ride--and push--the momentum toward more capable Web applications.
"In general, every developer I know is trying to learn more and more JavaScript and Ajax best practices," he said. "It's where programming is going."
IBM on Thursday said it is donating code for securing mashups to the Open Ajax Alliance, a group of vendors and open-source Ajax projects.
The software, called Smash (for secure mashups), is designed to make it easier to keep the sources of data separate in a mashup so that the application can't be hacked, according to IBM.
Better security for Web applications built with Ajax is generally a good thing.
For IBM, this is particularly important because the company is trying to build tools that let business users create their own mashup applications. Without better security, IT managers could block the use of these tools.
For more technical details, a blogger at Web application development and design firm Pathfinder Associates dug out an IBM research paper on Smash (click here for PDF).
Adobe on Monday released the long-awaited AIR download for running Web applications offline, but Microsoft is readying an update to its Silverlight platform that it hopes will keep Web developers in its camp.
Microsoft will release the first beta of Silverlight 2 "shortly," said Scott Guthrie, a general manager in Microsoft's developer division in charge of Web development, in his blog on Friday. Next week, the company is hosting its Mix '08 Web development and design conference in Las Vegas.
Silverlight 2 is a significant upgrade to the existing edition because it's designed to let programmers write rich Internet applications for Windows and Macintosh browsers using Microsoft's popular .Net tools.
The area of rich Internet applications is fast becoming one of the most hotly contested among infrastructure software providers.
There a handful of emerging platforms that look to bring the features associated with desktop applications, such as offline access to data, to the Web.
In addition to Adobe AIR, there is Google Gears for offline access as well as JavaFX and the Mozilla Foundation's Prism project.
Guthrie said that Silverlight 2 has a stripped-down version of the .Net Framework that lets people use many different languages to write for the Web. These applications can run in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Apple's Safari browser.
"Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby). We will ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support that enables great developer/designer work flow and integration when building Silverlight applications," he wrote.
Microsoft hopes to exploit its strengths and developer tools as it battles Adobe and others for developer attention. Developers can use standard Ajax toolkits or Adobe's Flex, which is now open source, to write AIR applications.
Silverlight is now available on Windows or Mac browser but Microsoft said that it intends to have versions for Linux desktops and mobile devices.
A company called Ribbit came out of stealth mode this week, showing off a "phone component" that will let developers embed Internet calling into Web applications.
"The Ribbit Phone Component will give rich Internet application developers the ability to make and receive calls, record/send and receive voice mail, as well as add and manage contacts," according to a description on the company blog.
A schedule posted on Ribbit's site indicates that a beta version of the product will be released in October.
The Ribbit Phone Component appears to be competing with the developer tools available for the popular voice over IP service Skype. On the consumer end of things is YackPack, which allows end users to drop embed code into Web sites for voice calls.
In the company blog, Ribbit said that its component will allow users to click on a phone number in a Web page to make a call.
There are other communications features as well, including the ability to integrate voice mail and contacts.
Last year, there were reports that Adobe was building voice-over-IP capability into its Flash Player.
Continuing to warm up to Web developers, Microsoft released an early version of IronRuby that will let programmers write .Net applications with the Ruby language.
In tandem with the "first code drop" of IronRuby, Microsoft will be taking code contributions from outsiders, John Lam, program manager on the Common Language Runtime team at Microsoft, wrote in his blog on Monday.
Lam said that the company intends to fully release IronRuby on RubyForge and take a wider range of contributions by the end of August. The software is available under the open-source style Microsoft Permissive License.
IronRuby uses the Dynamic Languages Runtime which the company introduced at its Mix 07 Web developer and design conference in May of this year. The runtime allows people to use dynamic, or scripting, languages to write .Net applications.
Other languages that Microsoft intends to support include Python, JavaScript (EcmaScript 3.0), and Visual Basic.
Once Microsoft releases the Silverlight version 1.1, expected in the next few months, developers can use Ruby or other scripting languages to build Silverlight Web applications on Windows or the Safari Mac browser.
Eventually, developers could use supported dynamic languages to write applications for handheld devices and, in theory, Linux applications using the Mono Moonlight implementation of Silverlight on Linux.
Silverlight is Microsoft's alternative to Adobe's Flash for writing and running rich Internet applications.
BOSTON--eBay intends to expand into global e-commerce, in part by further integrating its Skype and PayPal acquisitions.
At its developer conference here on Wednesday, eBay hosted a talk with company founder and chairman Pierre Omidyar, investor and eBay director Robert Kagle, and eBay Markeplaces president John Donahoe.
Omidyar, who is now a philanthropist through the Omidyar Network, and Kagle, who made the initial venture investment in eBay, reflected on the events and ideas of online commerce and community that helped start the company.
Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder, speaking at the eBay Developers Conference.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)All three executives said that eBay needs to extend its presence in different international markets and create tools that enable "global commerce."
"My vision for eBay generally has always been creating a single global marketplace where anyone in the world can do business regardless of the language they speak and the currency they use," said Omidyar. "Our platforms PayPal and Skype are critical components."
They said that eBay needs to do more to enable cross-border trade. Omidyar and Donahoe said they met on Tuesday to discuss ways to address barriers for international trade, such as different currencies, customs costs and postal systems.
Although they stayed clear of making specific commitments, the three said that they intend to make eBay services accessible from mobile phones, which is critical to driving adoption of online commerce in the developing world.
Bob Kagle, an eBay director and early investor, spoke with Omidyar about eBay's global commerce ambitions.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)"It's going to be platforms other than the PCs that may be the drivers and enablers (for global e-commerce) in other societies," said Kagle. "eBay is sort of islands of commerce around the world but we haven't empowered a craftsman who makes drums in Nairobi to sell to someone in Japan."
Omidyar said that eBay relies on third-party developers to push the company to do things like develop better tools and applications for international trade. "Developers are always the ones who are leading the innovation in any kind of ecosystem," he said.
The executives also committed to better integrating eBay's voice-over-Internet Protocol Skype division and PayPal online payment system over the coming years.
"What Skype adds to the mix is better control over all avenues of communications. We need to do a better job of integrating that into the actual commerce experience," Omidyar said. "To me, it's a central part of what defines a global trading community."
eBay's Donahoe and Kagle also committed to bringing better tools to "casual sellers," or people who sell the occasional item.
"I think enabling the casual seller is something we've yet to accomplish at eBay," said Kagle.
E-commerce company eBay relies heavily on outside developers--about one quarter of the commerce conducted on eBay happens through third-party tools.
The company on Monday kicked off its developers conference in Boston where it laid out the latest programs to entice developers to build add-ons and tools around the eBay auctioning site.
During the morning keynote speech, eBay announced new application programming interfaces to build eBay applications and tools to make widgets to embed eBay auctions in other Web sites.
The company also showed off a new desktop client application, called Project San Dimas, which is meant to give buyers a better eBay experience.
Max Mancini, eBay's senior director for platforms and disruptive innovation, talked about how developer outreach plays into eBay's bigger strategy of "social commerce."
And Stephen Chang of eBay showed off his creation: eBay To Go, a way of creating eBay widgets for a blog or other Web site.
eBay next week will host a developer conference in Boston where the ecommerce heavyweight is expected to outline its Web services strategy.
The company is also expected to release a beta of the San Dimas project, a desktop version of the eBay application written using Adobe's Apollo platform. In true eBay style, the application was posted on eBay for others to bid on.
In a survey published this week, eBay got the highest marks among developers who write applications on top of Web site platforms using published application programming interfaces (APIs). Other Web companies in the survey included Amazon, Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo, Google, and Paypal.
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