iPhone and Andriod now fully support the standard JavaScript Google Maps API which makes it easier to develop accross platforms.

Care must be taken in mobile designs though due to:

• Screen size
• User interaction
• Speed

For example, iPhone Safari is 10x slower to parse JS than desktop with limited caching.  Networks also induce significant latencies which often dominate load times relative to total file sizes.  Improve performance by compiling/obfuscating code.  

Current Gmaps API (v2) is poorly designed for mobile apps.  v3 means to address these concerns and enhance mobile support.

• Only 35K in size (vs 190Kb in current v2)
• Static map is built in
• Optimized for mobile devices
• ~9s to load js and tiles on v3 vs over 18s on v2
• Chrome and iPhone supported
• no domain keys required!
• Default UI construct so app can by automatically keep up with control updates
• New geocoding API

v3 is based on a Model-View-Controller architecture to allow fast loading of initial models and wait for on-demand loading of required views.  New features can be added as additional views/controllers with less impact to the overall code base.

• Gmaps API v3 using an MVC programming model and optimized for fast loading on mobile devices
• Open registration for Java Apps in App Engine
• Lots of HMTL5 evangelism 
• A certified developer program for Gmaps

We were left with an expectation of more announcements in today’s keynote which is about to start.  We’ll blog them here as they come out.

1st up is Steven Canvin from LEGO Group (each chair this morning had 6 standard 8 ‘peg’ LEGO blocks).  He asks, “How many combinations can you create from 6 blocks?  (Answer: 951,103,765) He gave a short history of LEGO Mindstorm and LEGO’s use of adult enthusiasts to help feed the R&D effort.  Use of open-source SDK’s has helped drive Mindstorm product adoption.

Now Vic Gundotra (Google VP of Engineering) is back up.  New personal communication/collaboration tool in early form.  Will be open source. 

Named Google Wave

Engineered by Lars Rasmussen and others.  Stephanie Hannon is the PM.  Developed in Sydney Australia.  I/O attendees will be given developer beta accounts.  The product will launch later this year.

More info at:

wave.google.com

code.google.com/apis/wave

www.wareprotocol.org

• Wave assumes a ‘convsersation’ which is a shared,hosted object which represents a discussion thread
• Blends e-mail and chat paradigms into a common interface where ‘threads’ can be updated in non-real time ala e-mail or realtime ala chat depending on the connectivity of the recipients
• Because the ‘thread’ is a hosted conversation recipients can make inline comments to previous replies without copying whole messages
• Adding new participants to a thread allows then to ‘playback’ the sequential messaging up to the existing conversation ’state’
• In real-time mode, users have the option to view others’ typing live
• Private replies are supported
• Drag and Drop attachments (photos demonstrated).  Has inline processing to thumbnail images and transmit to the server prior to uploading the full photos.  Requires Gears for this feature.
• Can copy attachments (such as photos) from one conversation (Wave) into another or new message
• Can link automated ‘agents’ to a wave to allow direct publishing via Wave API’s.  Links go both ways so responses can be sent via the blog but replied to via other interfaces
• Allows users to partipate in threads across multiple sites through a single interface by bringing active threads in the Wave Client – think Google Reader, but for discussion threads – so you can write, not just read
• Connections created via an Embed API
• Edits are carried through all instances of a Wave thread
• Can use the editing feature to provide a collaborative environment for discussions.  Change markup is provided to other users.  Author receives a change notification.
• Playback will provide powerful tools for filtered, reversion to prior versions, version labels, etc.
• SVN like ability to merge changes from multiple Waves into a single ‘production’ Wave 
• Concurrent edits can be made with live preview by any number of users at the same time
• Multi language support, right to left languages, … supported
• Wave is built using Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 
• Shared tagging, folders, subjects for Wave organization, can link to external Waves – interlinking similar to wikis

Wave Extensions:

• Context-based spell checker
• Automatic link detector from plain text
• Robots act on the server to modify Waves via the collaborative editing engine
• Add links into Wave directly from inline Google Search
• Spell check, linking engine, etc. to be available as external API’s for developers
• Various Gadgets were shown using client-side Wave extensions – a Soduku game, Chess game, Collaborative Map
• Robot App for making a Poll demonstrated
• Extension for interacting with Twitter via Waves
• Robot to do live translation of Wave messages – ‘Rosie’ with support for over 40 languages

Google is planning to open source most Wave code so that others could create ‘competing’ systems.   Multiple instances could cross-communicate via invitation.  Private replies within Wave server instances are not communicated outside of the originating server even in the case of ’shared’ Waves.

First up were updates, enhancements, and changes for the Google Earth API and Google Earth support for HMTL.  Highlights included

• The new Tour KML tags for GE 5.0
• Use of update tags during Tours to create animations during tours
• Using the GE API to playback tours
• Limited HTML 5 is operative within GE 5.0 including video and audio tags on the Mac (via webkit 4.5 on PC)
• Based on an audience question, JavaScript support for JS within KML description windows will be resolved soon

SketchUp API – Mano showed some neat physics simulations which use the SketchUp API.

Pamela Fox presented on Google Maps APIs.  

• Travelling Salesman in Google Maps www.geweb.net/optimap/
• StaticMaps API does support directions 
• Google Maps API can be used for Desktop Applications (Section 7.1c in the Terms of Service)
• Reverse Geocoding, you can get full jSON on reserve lookups for large areas and the bounding box will be returned as the recommended viewport
• ClientLocation API to use IP to rough guess user location
• Monetization: GoogleBar and Maps Ad Unit
• Recoloring tiles in Flash (mush be approved by Google)
• 3D Flash Map with GE API like rotation control in Flash 9 and 10 (coming soon)
• Google Maps “Qualified Developer” program http://code.google.com/qualify

This marks our 3rd year at I/O and we’re looking forward to the next 2 days of sessions.  

CEO Eric Schmidt opened the keynote address.  His theme was ‘It’s Time’ in terms of platforms and opportunities to solve real user problems in simple ways rather than complex ones.  

Vic Gundotra followed with a talk themed ‘A more Powerful Web, Made Easier’.  Browsers have attained a 100x implovement in Javascript parsing in the last 10 years.  Nearly 500 million people are using open source browsers.  HTML 5 should offer a significant enhancement to developer options.

• <canvas> tag for in browser drawing giving pixel level control of the browser
• Matt Papakitos demo of O3D (open sourced on code.google.com ) Googles Javascript 3D inbrowser demo.  Stressed need for common 3D browser API’s and standardization for 3D
• HTML5 <video> tag to abstract playback and control of video
• Accurate geolocation moving forward via various techonologies.  Jay Sullivan (VP Mozilla) presented developer info for Firefox 3.5 (bit.ly/ff35dev) including canvas, video, geolocation, app cache + database, and web workers.  Google Maps demo of ‘My Location’ using the geolocation API to transmitt user position to Google to zoom/pan Google Maps to the user location.  
• Lattitude on iPhone coming directly in the browser.  Nextgen iPhone software for OS 3.0 will include native Safari support for W3C geolocation
• Example of Gmail on Adriod in offline mode.  Google’s 1st major HTML5 app to use app cache
• Michael Abbott (Senior VP, Palm) on WebOS which primarily uses HMTL, CSS, javascript to implement applications.  Exposing Accelerometer data into JavaScript API
• Web workers defines API for background scripts.  Motion detection in video via Javascript with annotation via a background process demo.  Very impressive given typical computational complexity of image and video processing

Andrew Bowers and Kevin Gibbs talked about app engine.  Coming up- backing processing, large object store, database export, XMPP, incoming email.  App Engine is now open for Java application signups.  Demo showed using Eclipse with the App Engine plugin to quickly develop and deploy Java Apps to the web.  GWT 2.0 will provide in-browser debugging support cross-browser also a runAsync() option for functions which will allow the compliler to split optimize javascript code for faster download.  

DeWitee Clinto introduced Google Web Elements for simple ways to embed Google API’s (google.com/webelements) in simple ways such as Maps, Site Search, News, Calendar, Conversation.

Roman Guy previewed ‘Donut’ the next version of Andriod.   Search UI will remember how search results where ‘used’ on each device.  Developers will be able to supply search terms in code for display in the Search UI.  A text-to-speach API will allow developers to generate voice commands in various languages and accents.  The underlying text to speech engine will be open source.  Andriod UI will support ‘finger writing’ with handwriting recognition on the screen to filter results or jump through large lists.

Andriod Devleper Challenge 2 at code.google.com/android/adc

All I/O attendees will receive an unlocked Android phone with unlimited 30 day SIM card for data and voice!