iGoogle Launches Developer Sandbox

gurubaba writes "Google has announced the launch of iGoogle Developer Sandbox, which will allow developers to build and test applications. The Sandbox provides support for building social applications using the OpenSocial API. 'The iGoogle OpenSocial container will allow developers to build full page applications, just like the ones on Facebook, using the Canvas View. The applications built using the developer Sandbox can display profile information, post activity updates, send messages and gadget invites and add friends. The developers will also be able to monetize the applications through ads.'"

Comments

Please, please please...

[Mateo_LeFou]

Don't do another pseudo-open API like Android. I had been all excited about the prospect of playing with that (woot, an Eclipse plugin already!) until I read about its licensing.

Re:Please, please please...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as you mention nothing in particular, I call FUD!

ads

[Frac O Mac]

The developers will also be able to monetize the applications through ads. Google ads of course.

Trademark Lawyers for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

...seen gearing up for battle. Film at 11...

TOS here, btw..

[Mateo_LeFou]

http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

Re:TOS here, btw..

[Anonymous Coward]

you posted a direct link?!?!?

hopefully we wont slashdot their sites off the web. ;)

Re:TOS here, btw..

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is it with lawyers and ALLCAPS SECTIONS IN LEGAL AGREEMENTS - Is it established precedent that the capitals make it extra-binding?

Re:TOS here, btw..

[RiotingPacifist]

Thats very inter...yawn, i skimmed through all of that non of that really limits what you can do with their API (theirs a limit that you wont be allowed to reproduce/redistribute their SDK or their services, but that doesn't mean you cant open source a project developed using it). Theres also a bit about the use of adverts, but unless i misunderstood that only applies to their tool kits, your ap doesn't have to have ads

Have i missed something or is this pointless google bashing.

Re:TOS here, btw..

[LiENUS]

Certain warranty disclaimers must be in larger text in order to be valid. So that you can not disclaim a warranty of fitness for a particular purpose then bury it in the middle of a eula. Of course I don't think it counts when you make the whole damned eula caps but thats the theory anyway.

Re:Sorry....

[CSMatt]

Nice try. Only the must gullible of readers are going to continue to fall for these redirects.

needless to say, parent link is DANGEROUS

[Nushio]

There's a virus of sorts on the embedded yahoo link. Don't click.

Any word if said virus works on Linux? (I'd rather not test it myself ;) )

Re:needless to say, parent link is DANGEROUS

[junner518]

that was SO cool. Windows were bouncing all around, and like 80 new windows popped up. Sweet!
thankfully in linux ctrl+alt+backspace fixes that :D

Re:needless to say, parent link is DANGEROUS

[sootman]

Dear Slashdot,

Please don't allow ACs to use <A HREF> tags.

Thanks,
-----everyone

Re:needless to say, parent link is DANGEROUS

[eu_virtual]

$ killall firefox works too.

Re:Sorry....

[Nushio]

you'd think that by now, that troll would at least switch the yahoo link.

I guess people still fall for it :/

Faster to link to the source....

[morgosmaci]

Here is a better link. http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/04/by-saurabh-mathur-igoogle-team-today.html

Re:Really cool app (Development):

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit you fail at life.

Re:Sorry....

[CSMatt]

Well, considering that the goatse trolls are still around, posting what Slash clearly labels are goatse links, I think you are overestimating the intelligence of the average Slashdot troll.

Some of these trolls even link to goat.cx, which isn't even a goatse mirror anymore.

Re:Really cool app (Development):

[Slashdot Suxxors]

Actually, it's an *.FLV, and it's not a video of some web app, it's another RickRoll, which is becoming increasingly unfunny.

Re:Sorry....

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the cool CSS/JavaScript navigation whatnot on Slashdot, i'd like to know why Slashdot is displaying [yahoo.com] on this trolls link:

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGklwoIg1InYYBns5XNyoA/SIG=127o7c63n/EXP=1208906664/**http%3A//slashblog.notlong.com/story%3Fid=32432423432

A simple phishing check should be in order.

And also on the goatse.ch link below:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=529844&cid=23152310
I'd be happy if Slashdots's default behavior would be to block these links by default,( you know Slashdot has a file of suspect links it checks against ) and i would have to choose to enable them. like:

Slashdot preferences: enable goatse links yes/no?

Open Social

[Anonymous Coward]

The open social platform is still very new and is based on the Google Gadget platform. Really it's just an _extension_ of the Google Gadget platform. It's not very server friendly and thus requires a LOT of javascript to run the apps unlike on facebook which is server based. The server interface is more going to be like an XML SOAP API interface. This has the benefit that google caches the gadget, ahem, open social app but it's much harder to do really cool things like interact users together in a community because you need to write a fairly complex client/server system to enable that where as with a Facebook app you just make a database and your done. The other thing is that (as of the last I looked) if you are doing a server service like this then there is no verification that the user is the user. Facebook gets around this through a session key that allows the server to then interface with Facebook. Facebook and the server then know the user is the user. Open Social has no such key so it's much more difficult to maintain security and validity. It's possible to hack such an API interface.

In all, Open Social is a cool idea that is prematurely released with things not thought all the way through. It's a poor show from Google.

They have some big names on board with Open Social but clearly the other companies haven't spoken to the developers who have experience with it and it's flaws. They may change their support for such a system if they knew it's problems.

Not bashing

[Mateo_LeFou]

Just posting the TOS in case anyone else was interested in this question. IANAL, but this TOS seems pretty acceptable to me.

Re:Not bashing

[beckerist]

It is acceptable, yet you were excited about the prospect of playing with it (word, who cares) until you read about its licensing? So...the license is acceptable, yet reeking with contagious apathy? I don't get it.

Re:Not bashing

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it.

Obviously. Maybe you should read it again.

Re:Not bashing

[beckerist]

Hmm, funny because it's quite clear he's saying he WAS interested until he saw the licensing, implying the licensing was in some way bad. He then proceeds to say the licensing is fine. Either irony or stupidity and regardless the joke went way over your head. Peace

--beckerist

Re:Not bashing

[Mateo_LeFou]

"he WAS interested until he saw the licensing"

yes. That part of the story was about Android. I am hoping not to be thusly disappointed again w/r/t igoogle. so far am not

Re:Not bashing

[Anonymous Coward]

Either irony or stupidity and regardless the joke went way over your head.

At first I figured you just skimmed the post and didn't read it clearly. Now I see you're simply unable to comprehend what you read. So here, let me spell it out for you. He was disappointed in the Android license.

if you type google into google....

[stimpleton]

From TFA:

"1.5 If there is any contradiction between what the Additional Terms say and what the Universal Terms say, then the Additional Terms shall take precedence in relation to that Service."

My brain....

Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[Shux]

Opensocial is not just some gimmick. It is good and useful technology. No more logging into some annoying website so I can communicate with my friends. No more damn silos scattered everywhere under control of some fly-by-night company that might get scooped up by you-know-who anyday. Thanks Google.

Google makes stuff that geeks appreciate, apps that are simple and easy to use that make us remember that computers are not supposed to get in our way. They don't keep our data locked up if we don't want them to. Let me explain...

Let's start with their first product: search. Do you even remember how much that kicked ass back in the day? I started using Google almost immediately after hearing about in on slashdot because I really got the best search results and it was so beautifully simple. Some us may have thought, "Wait, no annoying ads or styling or anything? Just this simple page? Yeah, try selling that to somebody". But look now, all these years later they are the darling of the tech industry, all because of that drop-dead results page powered by a massive network of Linux boxes.

Then came along gmail. I had an early invite and started using it about 3 or 4 years ago (if my memory serves me). I admit it took a long time to ween myself off the traditional email app (Thunderbird) but I will never look back. I can still remember the days of manually filing emails in folders and I laugh at the time I wasted. I chuckle when my coworkers (who do not use gmail) struggle to find an email containing some piece of information from long ago. It is a new way to do email that is hands down better than the previous way. And it seems young people love it too. All my friends use it, not just the geeks.

As if that wasn't good enough, they gave us iGoogle. At first I thought, "Yeah this is lame like every other "portal" site. But now I have three tabs full of RSS feeds from news sites, deal sites, and programming blogs. I cut my daily browsing time in half (probably more than half) and have saved hundreds of dollars. I actually don't use my computer when I get home because I don't feel like I have to search around for something I may have missed.

All this stuff is based on open standards and open technology. But really, I just love to use their apps. They are the closest thing to a command line for the web. Could all their financial success AND geek love actually have something to do with their philosophy of openness and the famous "don't be evil(tm)" slogan?

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[Jraregris]

http://yubnub.org/ is sort of like a command line for the web.

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[AnyoneEB]

I disagree on Google's openness. Google certainly is a big supporter of open source (SoC, etc.), but their core business is intrinsically closed: they want you on their site looking at their ads. Search is at least understandable as it requires a lot of work to spider, index, and cache any significant portion of the web, but GMail is not open. It ties you to Google and Google's ads instead of, say, Microsoft's OS, so it is more accessible, but it still holds the same problems: you do not really control your e-mail.

To use GMail's features, you have to let Google have all of your e-mail to scrape for information about you, and, because it is closed-source, certain features which are not in Google's interest like easy encryption support will likely never get implemented and minor interface tweaks/extra preferences are difficult or impossible to get added.

That said, I am also a GMail user because it simply is far more convenient than the alternatives, but nothing made by Google is going to be truly open unless it is a side project they cannot make money on. As soon as a libre webmail client reaches GMail's usability (at least for the subset of its features that I use), I will switch.

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[op12]

Regarding email, the completely free POP/IMAP support in Gmail removes most of the restrictions you mentioned.

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[RiotingPacifist]

Closed source yes, but they do produce academic papers on most of their stuff, and work to open specifications (like actual html or at least good enough for cross browser, long before ms). Minor interface tweaks are fairly easy a quick search gives better gmail ( bunch of userscripts ) , gives encryption.

Your email is still on their server, if they give you a millions options it costs them lots of money, and at heart they are still a company, if you want more customisation that gmail offers, you can always use POP/IMAP (i think the same goes for hotmail) and do the processing on your side (that way they dont really care about how much you customise the interface).

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[Thing 1]

I agree with most of what you say, I just take a small exception to:

[...] certain features which are not in Google's interest like easy encryption support will likely never get implemented [...]

It's actually quite easy to use encryption while reading your email. Go to https://gmail.com/ to log in, and the entire session will be https. If you go to http://gmail.com/ then only the login page is encrypted.

Hope this helps your experience!

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree on Google's openness. Google certainly is a big supporter of open source (SoC, etc.), but their core business is intrinsically closed: they want you on their site looking at their ads. Search is at least understandable as it requires a lot of work to spider, index, and cache any significant portion of the web, but GMail is not open. It ties you to Google and Google's ads instead of, say, Microsoft's OS, so it is more accessible, but it still holds the same problems: you do not really control your e-mail.

We go now to AnyoneEB, reporting live from The Obvious! Seriously. Of course there are ads. While they do sell mini-google search boxes, the bulk of their exported "product" is free (of charge, anyways). Closed source or not, most for-profit organizations exist to make money for its shareholders - and you don't make money by giving away a great product for free without some sort of monetary hook to its functionality (e.g. - contextual ads.)

And before anyone starts up - there is not enough money in paid support for Gmail/Google Docs/Whatever to bridge the gap between cost and profit.

The "Google is reading my email!" panicky bit comes up with just about every story about Gmail, and it really speaks to the paranoia and arrogance of those users. First, if - for whatever reason - your life suddenly became so noteworthy that anyone would go out of their way to read your email, it's probably a safe bet to say your ISP would be the first link to break in the trust chain before Google. Specifically, most major ISPs are in bed with the government and will happily dime you out at the first hint of something fishy, while at least Google has made some effort to protect its users.

Secondly, if you really don't want outside people reading your email, you should write the person a letter with invisible ink. Your email can readily be glanced over by any router between the sending point and the end point. You could use PGP with your email and annoy the hell out of any non-PGP user, but most web-based services (Gmail included) don't support encryption natively anyways.

Bottom line is this : Nothing is free, but Google's services are damn close for most people. And since the more extreme of our Free Software brethren can't seem to come up with a workable business model for their demands, I don't see Google's approach going away any time soon.

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm worried about a hitherto unconsidered danger of targeted advertising in gmail...

The other day I noticed that I get targeted ads when I read some of my saved gmail-talk chats. I started rereading some of the more, uh, interesting chats I had saved to see what AdWords would come up with. Odd, odd mixtures of start-your-own biz ads and other ads for, um, women's undergarments, etc.

(Try this at home and see for yourself!)

Now, if a cyber consciousness ever does come into being, it's a pretty good bet it's going to be born in Google's massive clusters.

If AdWords is somehow part of this, then the first true machine conciousness will probably be a worldwide, distributed electronic pervert.

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[zedlander]

They are the closest thing to a command line for the web.

Yubnub is a command line for the web. It rocks.

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[AnyoneEB]

Thank you, but I meant encrypted e-mails, which other replies addressed. I already do use the https version.

Re:Finally somebody makes sense of it all

[Thing 1]

Now it makes sense, and you're right that's something Google would have to code (perhaps this Summer?).

It's funny how stupid this is

[Anonymous Coward]

a sandbox where google can steal all of your good ideas and code and use it for themselves.

i bet a million fanboys have no idea that this is what is really going on.. oh well

Re:Really cool app (Development):

[Tangent128]

Faruk Ates says this is the replacement.

my idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to create an application that browses through google user's profile pictures and lets me rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 based on their appearance. Then I'd make it so you could view your ratings only after you invite 15 of your google friends to use the application. Still thinking of a name though, let me know some ideas.

Re:my idea

[wik]

googoogaga.

Book Gadget?

[Anonymous Coward]

Curiosity, does anyone know what book gadget he was using in the video? Looks really good to me

Re:Sorry....

[smbarbour]

It displays [yahoo.com] because it is using the yahoo.com domain (specifically the host rds, which according to a quick Google search is for "redirect script")

My recommendation as a systems admin, is to add an entry to your host files setting "rds.yahoo.com" to map to "127.0.0.1" Doing this will prevent any links using rds.yahoo.com (which is a known cross-site scripting vulnerability)

While I harbor no ill will towards Yahoo, unless they clean this up, it will be blocked on my machines.

This is Also Nothing New

[anomalous cohort]

This is simply Metcalfe's Law reloaded Web 2.0 Style.

Re:This is Also Nothing New

[White Yeti]

The "dept." line made me think (as intended?): this is a big Katamari-style competition between Microsoft and Google.

Monetize

[professorfalcon]

The developers will also be able to monetize the applications through ads.

Back in the day, we used to say "profit from" instead of "monetize".

Re:Monetize

[Paradise Pete]

Back in the day, we used to say "profit from" instead of "monetize".

Maybe by Monetize they meant you could turn it into a 19th century French impressionist painter.

Re:Monetize

[lamona]

Wouldn't that be "Monetiser"?

Re:Monetize

[zedlander]

1. 1. Learn Google's new API
2. 2. Develop App
3. 3. Add Adsense
4. 4. ???
5. 5. Monetize?

Re:Sorry....

[JackieBrown]

I guess if slashdot was a browser, it would be blocked by paypal :)

Re:Sorry....

[Alpha830RulZ]

I was browsing on a new, clean machine, so I decided to try the link. Noscript worked perfectly. No apparent problems, nothing reported by AVG. Of course, I din't get the dancing windows, either...

Re:Sorry....

[TheThiefMaster]

Adding a hosts entry for rds.yahoo.com pointing to the localhost address is a hack.
Better to block it with a proxy (or there's probably a Firefox extension that can do it), or if it has a different IP you can block it with a normal firewall.

Fixed Links in Getting Started Guide

[saddino]

For those of you stuck in setting up the iGoogle sandbox due to broken links in the Getting Started Guide:

After signing up for iGoogle sandbox access, you need to add the developer tools tab to your sandbox page. Then, read the developer guide to get started. If you already have an OpenSocial app, you can add it using the "My Gadgets" gadget included with the developer tools.

And if you're looking for an OpenSocial app to try out, feel free to try ours.

iCan't Stand it Anymore

[kidcharles]

If iSee one more product name with an 'i' in front of it, iThink iWill have to stab my left iOut then my right iOut.

mod parent up!

[Pollardito]

the "add developer tools" link on this page is currently broken and his link seems to be what they intended