Free Code

Lately, I've been really paying attention to how much functionality you can reuse for free from major players. For example, you can check out the various Google APIs (http://code.google.com/)and the Yahoo! User Interface Library (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/). These libraries are free, released via Open Source licenses, and offer ridiculous amounts of functionality.

As a developer, I love the idea of being able to leverage the work of other people. Most of the time, this is hard to do because so much of the code that everyone else writes is crap. ;-) But seriously, there is even a name for this, we call it Not Invented Here (NIH). The premise being most developers like to know exactly what their code is going to do, so using someone else's code can be hard.

In the case of the big boys like Yahoo! and Google, it becomes a lot easier to trust that the code is going to deliver expected results and not be malicious or buggy. After all, when it is provided (and used) by a company with billions of dollars of online reputation to uphold, you can pretty much bet they've tested it.

Which isn't to say that just because they are all that, you don't need your own bag of chips, they have their issues too. Dependency and version issues, occasional bugs, and warped programming models are abundant. But in the end, you are definitely getting your moneys worth.

The chart at the top of this post is generated using the super cool (and free!) Google Chart API which means I won't be paying for Dundas or ChartFX licenses again. You can find the details at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/.

Gears of War

This is not a post about video games.

First it was Docs & Spreadsheets, now Google is once again cooking up some interesting things that reach beyond the search universe . Check out http://code.google.com/apis/gears/ for an overview of their latest offering.

It's a great concept, if late to the party. In their case, that might not matter. We saw this before with Java, we see it currently with Ajax and we'll see it again tomorrow with another challenger. Everyone wants a piece of the desktop pie and there will be no end of challengers.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the PC is the end-all, be-all, but I recognize clearly that corporations want stable, feature-rich, controlled applications that can be delivered by inexpensive resources. Many of the initiatives in the last few years have forgotten that businesses run by different rules than individuals. What you put up with and is important to you personally is not acceptable and irrelevant to a business. In many cases, the very things you desire for yourself are things that businesses are willing to spend money to ensure you can't have.

In any case, I think this new conglomeration of half-baked technologies has true potential and will be a significant force if it can gain even a small foothold.

Google Gets Dirty, Takes Away Soap

Google has decide to discontinue access to their SOAP API. If you are already using it you can still continue to access it, but by not issuing new keys, they are effectively killing their support.

They've made a token effort by suggesting you use the AJAX API, but that is hardly the same thing as everyone knows. The AJAX API hardly even qualifies an a real API, it is more just a widget you can add to your pages.

The do have some other interesting APIs, but it seems like they are starting to close off access to their core data. Interesting to wonder what that might portend, eh?

Google Goes On

Someone pointed out yet another new Google feature (YANGF) recently.  It seems that now they've added a new capability to be able to search public source code.

The Google Code Search feature is another remarkably useful tidbit to come out of the Google Labs.

If you use the advanced version you can even filter by language.  This will certainly make finding that little tidbit of C# syntax you just can't remember, that much easier.

Good going, Google!

Another Google-bit

The onward march of Google towards usefulness and necessity continues. A new beta service called Google Transit will let you plan your transit routes with precise. It is an excellent example of combining two information sources into one extremely useful resource. Currently, they are supporting the city of Portland but plan to expand to other cities soon.

Tidbits & Morsels

The list of tidbits that I wanted to take time to mention on my blog is getting longer so I needed to clean house a little bit.

First up is Openomy. These guys are offering 1GB of free space online. They don't appear to have much of a business model, just a keen sense of "do-it-right"-edness. That's a technical term.

The coolest fact about Openomy is that it appears to be running solely out of a desire to build something useful, learn some lessons, and potential help some people. This may not sound ordinary, but in the universe of online ventures, it can be anything but normal. I recommend you check them out. It's worth making note of their upbeat and positive attitudes and attention to detail. Now, if they'd just make the web services leap...

My next morsel is about Google Analytics. Analytics is a web analysis system that provides site publishers with traffic metrics and marketing data. As you can see, the output reports are really excellent and detailed.

This is based on technology originally developed by Urchin that Google acquired in March. The coolest thing is how smoothly Analytics integrates with the popular AdWords system. Even if you don’t use AdWords you can still use Analytics by adding a simple script to your site.

There are a few other juicy bits still to come, but I'll save them for next time.

Secure Browsing

Recently my little sister had here internet shut-off for supposedly downloading illegal files.  Now to be clear, my little sister wouldn't do something like that (she wouldn't even know how).  But evidently the internet provider,Cox, decided she was doing something inappropriate and was therefore taking it out on her.  Stupid, ignorant, and totally uncool.

I travel a lot and in most of the hotels I have to share an internet connection with a couple hundred of my closest strangers.

These two situations are why I use a secure tunnel which secures my web-surfing and makes it more or less anonymous.  For my own choice I use a private SSH provider and the VanDyke Entunnel software package.  However there are several new alternatives on the market.

For the Google-lovers, there is the Google Secure Access (Beta) which can be found at http://wifi.google.com/download.html.  This primarily allows people living in San Franscisco to surf using a secure connection through googles servers.

For those who want to deal with a company for whom this is their sole business, you might try MySecureISP which you can find at www.mysecureisp.com.  Similar service, but works anywhere, costs $6 a month.  If you require full-time secure internet access via a plethora of providers, they might be a good fit for you.

If you want to be on the bleeding edge and are really concerned about being anonymous and so forth, then you can jump on the JAP bandwagon from http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html.  This is really neat technology that is still a work in-progress.  However it offers high-degrees of secure browsing and a variety of experiences.  Plus you get to support education, further the privacy movement, blah, blah, blah.  Check it out.

Lastly, if Dave ever gets off his rear-end there will be another addition which you can all check out.  Feel free to post a comment to let him know you want him to stop slacking off and finish the thing already!