Geek & Tech 01 Jun 2007 03:45 pm
Google Developer Day
I attended the Google Developer Day, “Sydney edition”, yesterday. There were lots of interesting announcements: the first session was about Google Gears, and it was very exciting. The demonstration (achieved by, literally, unplugging the laptop from the network mid-presentation) went very well, and gave everyone ideas. Soon after, Mapplets were also introduced (well, actually they had been mentioned briefly at Where 2.0 the day before); they’re sort of gadgets for Google Maps, allowing the creation of “instant mashups”.
Also interesting were the “non-announcements”. Everyone got a brochure at the beginning of the day with a list of several Google products, and one of them was the Google Mashup Editor; when I read it, it sounded like it was something new, but it wasn’t mentioned by anyone during the day, so I kind of assumed it was actually something “old” that I hadn’t heard about. It turns out it wasn’t.
It was a great event, and it was interesting being the first ones to learn about Google Gears (as one of the presenters mentioned, usually Australia wakes up to news from the US; yesterday, it was the other way around). It was a bit ironic that, being at the event, I couldn’t play with the tool (or even write about it) yesterday, while everyone else who got the news online could start right away. But they didn’t get the great free food Google gave us 
on 02 Jun 2007 at 12:47 am 1.Nicole said …
Just curious: why did you go to the GDD? Was it a “business” trip or a “pleasure” trip? (I suppose “both” is also a valid answer
Your Twitter updates during the day were great — I’m inspired to try mobile tweeting now.
on 02 Jun 2007 at 12:13 pm 2.Wilson said …
Mostly “pleasure” (meaning that I took a day off and paid for the trip - it was not “sponsored”). A few things I learned might be useful for “business” at some point, of course…
on 07 Jun 2007 at 5:45 am 3.Domingos said …
Hey, I’ve attended to the Google Developer Day too, but in São Paulo. Yeah, the free food was really nice, btw
There where no “gears” presentation, tough. In the other hand, there where a lot of adwords/adsense presentations going around (and people got really interested on them). Gotta love Brazil.