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Google Adds Widgets to Homepage
Panaphonix writes "Google announced that their personalized homepage now has an API for developers to add their own modules. Samples are available in this directory."
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..... for how easy creating these apps happens to be. If I were still teaching, I would likely use this as a means to teach basic programming skills. They also have something else going for them excellent documentation that is easily understood by my wife who is a non geek. To top it all off, it's using HTML, XML, and Javascript. Three open and accessible languages that are widely used on a variety of platforms.
Methinks that one of the reasons behind this is that they want to "embrace and extend." Sound familiar?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Maybe now I can add some of the mor euseful widgets at My Yahoo! to the Google homepage... lik a stock ticker that does more than just US exchange, or a TV listings mondule for more than just US listings.
My Yahoo! has been way ahead of Google on this for some time, hopefully this will allow Google to catch up quicker by leveraging third-party developers.
I've been up all night writing a widget. Let me tell you this: the development environment is a pain in the arse. Using their developer widget, it gives you the option of not caching the various widgets. I tried using this tool to not cache mine (so I could reload easily and see changes to the code), but it didn't work reliably. Whenever you moved the widget around to a different spot, it would go to a new revision of the code... and it was almost never the latest revision. This was so frustrating. What I ended up doing was renaming my widget every revision (also a huge pain in the arse). I ended up renaming it over 40 times during the course of the night. Then you have to add the widget back to your personalized home and go through all the steps again. Blast. I'm not bitter :).
If you want to see the culmination of my night's work, plug this into the widget manager: http://andrewhitchcock.org/musicmobs/w.xml
My widget pulls data from musicmobs. You can look at similar artists or find interesting playlists. If you visit that page, you can upload your iTunes library to make the recommendations more accurate, and it gives you the ability to upload your own playlists (which then become visible in the widget). Check it out!
Andrew
I created a quick imageshack hosting widget. To give it a try add this link to the "Create a Section" spot. It is a really simple one, but for me is very useful. Imageshack hosting widget http://base.google.com/base/a/16800097909005850654
The API gives you access to a enterprise class web-crawler for one. And we're saying the same thing, you say content I say data and infrastructure. The content needs delivery and Google giving you access to their server farms to build your own custom logic on top of their services/information.
Shh.
Agreed - the "personalized homepage" at google seems to be a very poor competitor WRT live.com. For example, adding or closing a "widget" in google.com/ig triggers a RELOAD of the page. live.com adds and removes them without reloading anything. Clicking in the "more content" in the content sidebar opens another web page. THe add buttons in that same side bar are ugly buttons not nice text links. live.com had a javascript RSS reader which supports images and google.com/ig added it later and it doesn't support images. Also, live.com is already translated to spanish
It's somewhat weird that being google the "ajax leader" microsoft has beaten google in this field.
Hey, you asked for it
I disagree that C is the ideal learning language, but I agree that the primary importance of learning programming is learning how to think. I'm not even talking necessisarily about OOP concepts, but more generally how to define, approach, and break down problems.
On the other hand, I think the worst thing you could do to a completely green student is to sit them down with a text editor and and compiler. This will only attract people who want to program in the first place and are willing to "tough it out". A good teacher/tool should be able to engage people who wouldn't consider themselves programmers. The first language I learned was LOGO for the TRS-80 and I was instantly hooked - me and my brother tried to one-up each other's spirographs
LOGO is my favorite example of a teaching language. The syntax vocabulary is small and your feedback is entirely visual (at least starting out). At first you're just moving a turtle around and drawing spirograph-like patterns... the programming methodology is almost a passive, secondary experience.
That said, with computers and the net you have many exciting opportunities to teach programming. "Widgets" programming seems like it has promise (maybe not for 5-10 year olds, but probably jr. high and up), but even a campaign editor for Starcraft is basically a turing-complete "language" -- You still get to learn the concepts of a conditional statement, with the added bonus of blowing up aliens. Why not learn that way?