The keynote showed examples of how Google's technologies can enhance web site development. Google Gears extends the browser's capabilities for all web pages with features such as multi-file upload, a local database similar to HTML 5, file system access, and soon to include camera integration.
GWT allows Java to provide a more sane interface to DHTML development, with one Google client side veteran saying she would not be hand-coding again after using it for Google Health.
Android is an OS for mobiles like Windows Mobile that should appear on some new phones shortly. It offers a universal platform for developing Java applications for mobiles by abstracting out the hardware differences of each phone. Another way to develop for Android is to develop sites that will run on its WebKit browser, which will also then run on the iPhone's browse too. We were shown Pacman running on an Android phone as well as a version of Street View that auto rotates the street view as you move your phone around by taking advantage of the phone's built-in compass. This was very cool.
Some sample web page enhancement APIs were shown that run as Javascript pulled in via script tags from google. They allow easy blog integration onto other sites, and easy integration of youtube content. They join the existing APIs offered by Google to the client to jazz up web sites with little work.
Finally, Google is now also offering free application deployment space on its servers for web applications. It's free for the first 5 million page views per year.
Demonstrations
After the keynote, I went to the area where Google's APIs were being demonstrated. The data visualization API is separate from the charting API and can take data from XML or google spreesdsheets and render charts. One advantage of a DHTML based chart is that it'll run on the iPhone.
Google analytics can be used on Blogger. I'll try this out when I get back on this blog.
The evolution of new features on the web
Alex Russell, one of Dojo's developers, gave a really interesting speech on what the most hopeful ways for the web to evolve might be. He focused on the multiplier effects of an open development system - allowing new developers to learn the web quickly and making code sharing and maintenance easier. Google's Gears was an example of an app along these lines, whereas GWT, despite its great helpfulness to Java developers, removed too much of what is good about the web to be on this track.
Alex's talk was the reason you go to conferences. Often if you mention that there are cases where tables are better than CSS for layout, or how the web standards movement sometimes holds the web back, people look at you funny and say that you're against code standardization and progress and should be sent to the salt mines.
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