{"id":929,"date":"2007-06-30T08:21:43","date_gmt":"2007-06-30T07:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/electronicmuseum.wordpress.com\/2007\/06\/30\/google-mashup-editor-first-impressions\/"},"modified":"2020-11-18T15:05:45","modified_gmt":"2020-11-18T15:05:45","slug":"google-mashup-editor-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/2007\/06\/30\/google-mashup-editor-first-impressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Mashup Editor: first impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Unfinished<\/a>I just got my alpha sign-in from Google for their Mashup Editor<\/a>. Immediately, this ruined any good intentions I have for finishing off my shed<\/a> but hey, every sane <\/strong>person is in bed at 7am on a Saturday morning, so it’s time in lieu as far as I’m concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First impressions: true to Google style, they’re focussing on their developer base first and foremost and will probably worry about the GUI later. It’s sparse – essentially a code editor view and a couple of tabs for feeds and sandboxing. Compared to Yahoo! Pipes<\/a> it’s very unimpressive to look at, but Pipes was always going to be a winner GUI solely on the basis of its innovative drag and drop interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Google<\/a>What’s more important, of course, is what it does..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its heart, GME gives you access into a kind of metalanguage<\/a> which is a mish-mash of html, javascript and the <gm: ***> namespace. It’s very reminiscent of the vague dabblings I’ve had with .Net. For instance, to define a repeating row based on some kind of input feed, you’d say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <tr repeat=\"true\">\n      <td><gm:text ref=\"atom:title\"\/><\/strong><\/td>\n      <td><gm:text ref=\"digg:diggCount\"\/><\/strong><\/td>\n    <\/tr><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
As with any coding based environment, you make changes direct into the line editor, then save and preview – when you do this, the sandbox tab comes up and you get to see your creation. Or an error message…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Maps<\/a>The samples are impressive and give some idea as to the range of ideas that can be implemented. The screen grab on the right for example is a “Maps wiki” which lets you add a point with comments and a rating onto a Google Map. You can see the GME code for this sample here<\/a>. Not bad for 81 lines of code…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you push publish, your application is pushed up onto the Google servers – interestingly, you can also choose to publish (and preview, while editing) as a Google Gadget<\/a> which means anyone can embed the widget onto their personalised Google startpage. There’s a few mashups already online in the Google Mashup Gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crucially, the cross-over between gadgets on the web and gadgets on your desktop is blurring<\/a> (see Google’s “Google Desktop” gadget list<\/a>, for example) so expect this to become a very interesting space to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What’s important with all of this – and I think this is interestingly reminiscent of the (first days of the) web – is that you can “view source” on any of these apps: much like Pipes where you can clone anything that anyone else has done, the starting point is often “I’ll copy what person X has done and extend it so it works for me”. This is a new and welcome paradigm which keeps appearing – MIT Scratch<\/a> which I reviewed briefly<\/a> a while back has a similar approach: once you publish, your work is automatically available to others. This will ensure that beginners always have code samples to learn from, and ultimately grows creativity exponentially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve so far spent all my time writing this rather than playing, but my first impressions are that although graphically less impressive, the potential here is far greater than Yahoo! Pipes: being able to save data, edit at code level, embed javascripting, tweak CSS, publish as a Google Gadget, etc. – these feel like the beginnings of something very, very cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m still waiting for my Popfly<\/a> account (c’mon Microsoft, catch up..) – hopefully will be able to report back soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right, must go and do some more playing. Er, I mean, finish off my shed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just got my alpha sign-in from Google for their Mashup Editor. Immediately, this ruined any good intentions I have for finishing off my shed but hey, every sane person is in bed at 7am on a Saturday morning, so it’s time in lieu as far as I’m concerned. First impressions: true to Google style, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}