Crumpled

Google is underutilizing the very things it championed last month.

"Hey," they said, "look at how we index your GeoRSS feeds!"

"Well," I replied. "Where are the lat/long fields on Blogger?"

"Dude!" Myspace exclaimed, "Check out how we made our message system searchable in real-time using Google Gears!"

"That's nice." I grumbled. "I wonder why I have to wade through page after page of Gmail to delete my unread and unwanted email."

Then there was the new Google Maps API where they showed how easily a person could implement the new Google Earth 3D map in any existing Google map application. I had such an application, and I tried it out. It was unsatisfactory. Foremost, unlike the other Google Maps views, this one was conspicuously missing the buttons to return to any of the other views. I couldn't use it for my application. In fact, the engineer who showed off the new API and was keen on demonstrating how easy it was to implement, showed us an example of the implementation on his site (trulia.com). But guess what? the implementation isn't public. It was a tease! Because (gasp!) it doesn't do what it should be able to do!

Don't get me wrong, I love the Monster Milktruck, I'm just waiting for some home delivery.

Edit:
Also, I can't even visit YouTube if I have my javascript debugger turned on. The amount of javascript error notifications is crippling. I certainly hope that YouTube wasn't enhanced using the Google Web Tool Kit, which claims to compile Java into optimized javascript.

Labels: IO2008

So here's my post.

io2008

Labels: IO2008