Google made a very exciting announcement today: they released Google Gears, a browser extension that helps developers create web applications capable of working while offline.

According to the developer docs, it relies on SQLite for the offline database. That said, if you’re interested in brushing up on this great database, check out The Definitive Guide to SQLite, which is the most up-to-date SQLite book on the market.

Jason

I spent some time yesterday learning a bit more about Groovy, a pretty cool dynamic language targeting the Java platform. In the process of sniffing around the documentation I came across searchgroovy.org, which titles itself as a search engine for references, articles and applications for the Groovy language.

What’s really interesting about this site is it’s powered by Google Co-op, a service that lets you easily create custom search engines based on a pre-defined set of websites. It also provides a gadget for adding the search engine to your Google homepage.

The Google Co-op website highlights a number of other custom search engines, however none were particularly geared towards the IT industry. This surprises me, because the ability to search a select set of sites for language-specific code and documentation seems immensely useful. However perhaps it’s a simply a matter of promotion (or lack thereof) of this service, as seems to be so often the case for Google’s seemingly neverending array of cool services?

In a rather unexpected turn of events, Google has decided to deprecate their SOAP API, and are instead going to point users to their AJAX search API.

This API is used by countless of developers around the globe, and has become the standard example for web services-related tutorials, both online and in print. Indeed, the merits (or lack thereof) of SOAP has long been a hot topic, however even in light of trends toward REST one cannot deny it remains a crucial part of so many web services implementations.

I realize technology is always a moving target, and successful developers will always find a way to move forward; however this move seems irrational at best.

• Don’t write off Novell: Landmark deal sees Microsoft and Novell working together on cross-platform technologies. Quote: “Top executives from Microsoft and Novell convened in San Francisco today to proclaim a landmark deal that sees the companies improve interoperability between Windows and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) on virtualization, Microsoft’s Active Directory and Novell’s eDirectory, and Microsoft Office and OpenOffice XML formats on the desktop.” Rather predictably, the FSF is already up in arms.
• Firefox 2 continues rough ride: Another nasty bug is discovered; many are refusing to upgrade and are sticking with the 1.5x release. Still, looks like Internet Explorer 7 isn’t faring much better.
• IronPython for ASP.NET: Other dynamic languages can now be easily utilized too.
• Google gets Creative: Google gives $30,000 to Creative Commons, continues its role as the AntiMicrosoft.
• IBM targets .NET devs: Quote: “The company has announced Lotus Expeditor, an Eclipse-based environment for building what IBM has called a “universal” client spanning current Lotus products and the planned “Hanover” release of its Domino email and collaboration server.”
• OpenBSD 4.0 released and reviewed: Millions of changes but primarily related to hardware support. Changelog.
• Deluge: GTK-based BitTorrent client for those bored of Azureus. Check out the screenshots.
• amaroK gets music store: New version of KDE music player/manager is first open source program to tie-in with music store, in this case Magnatune.
• Shuttleworth calls for packaging revolution: Ubuntu man wants single common software installation format across distributions, and even across all open source operating systems, including the BSDs.
• Edgy Eft fails to impress: Recently released Ubuntu 6.10 not going down well. After all the success, has Ubuntu made its first slip-up? Also see this less critical review; quote: “Edgy is a worthwhile upgrade, if you’re looking to run a desktop with the most recent versions of your favorite programs and don’t require the long-term support offered by Dapper, but it’s not as adventurous as one might have hoped.”
• GNewSense—Linux for a GNU generation: FSF attacks those on its own side in the war against proprietary software by releasing its own version of Ubuntu, but with “the addition of freedom” (ie the removal of useful proprietary bits and pieces that means Ubuntu will function correctly for many of us).
• Dell going pro-Linux? Quote: “We recognize the chicken-and-egg problem though: it has to work before many people will want to buy it; and it won’t work unless effort is put into it before people start buying it. So we’re cracking the egg, not quite making omelettes.”
• Mandrive 2007 review: Quote: “With its latest version, Mandriva returns attention to its software development and re-establishes itself as a leading desktop distribution that can give Ubuntu serious competition.”
• IE guys send Firefox guys a cake: To say congrats on the release of Firefox 2.

I recently had an opportunity to ask Eric Case from Google a few questions. Eric manages the blogs at code.google.com and is very involved in Blogger as well.

Click here to read more

Rather unrelated to open source, but as somebody with an obsession for books and reading in general I found this so fascinating that I couldn’t help but pass it along. Google and the UN have teamed up in an effort to combat global illiteracy, with Google using its array of services to promote the effort. For instance, you can now view a Google Map littered with literacy organizations around the globe, search blogs for literacy-related posts, and watch videos pertinent to literacy efforts.

To be sure, this is an wonderful application of technology which hopefully will help eradicate one of the world’s greatest woes.

View the Literacy Project website

This isn’t open source related, so excuse the off-topic post, but I thought this well-worth passing along. This morning I happened across a link to Google Notebook, which is a tool for organizing notes as you travel the Web. Note management is made easy through a sweet Firefox extension which adds an icon to the status bar for easy access to your notebook, and an item to the context menu for quickly annotating a page.

This service seems to me particularly compelling because it’s basically a bookmark organizer with additional features. It’s nothing new of course, I’ve used del.icio.us for some time, however for some reason I like Google Notebook even more.

I’m presently working on a few new book projects, and it’s clear I’ll be making regular use of this in the coming months.

The Services_Google package is simply a wrapper around the SOAP extension and is used to access the Google Web APIs (http://www.google.com/apis/reference.html) for the search engine, spelling suggestions, and cache. To access any of these services, you must obtain a license key by registering for an account. A link to the registration page is available from the previously mentioned URL. Because this package is a wrapper for SOAP, both PHP 5 and the SOAP extension are prerequisites for installing and using this package.
Click here to read more

My ongoing Developer.com series covering the Google Maps API (tutorial 1, tutorial 2, tutorial 3, tutorial 4) shows you how to use this great service to build interesting and useful spatial Web applications. Yet one of the glaring omissions from the API has been the ability to map locations without the use of third-party solutions for converting mailing addresses to their corresponding coordinates; just as is the case with the Yahoo! and Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping APIs, locations can only be pinpointed using their latitudinal and longitudinal descriptors. Whereas the latter two solutions have offered built-in conversion capabilities for some time, Google Maps API users have had to rely on services such as geocoder.us or the US Census Bureau TIGER/Line data for such tasks.

This longstanding feature request was satisfied on June 11 when Google quietly added geocoding capabilities to the API. What’s more, this feature isn’t limited to the U.S.; street-level geocoding is also offered for Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain! While limited to 50,000 daily requests, it’s fair to say such constraints won’t affect most users, particularly if caching is implemented. This tutorial shows you how to use this new feature, further streamlining your use of this wonderful API.

• Read the tutorial