1 June 2007 - 0:00Google Developer Day 2007
Today was quite exciting with Google’s event in San Jose. I got to learn about the new Google APIs and developer tools that’ll be pushing forward web applications as well as to meet all sorts of people and see what they’re working on. I attended most of the main sessions except to participate in the Fireside Chat for Google Gears, but the nice thing is that many of the sessions were recorded and are now available on youtube [code.google.com].
Overall, the event was very Google. Colorful decorations with beanbag seats and exercise balls. Free drinks. Free food. Free swag. And plenty of Google products. (Tons of Dev Day photos [picasaweb.google.com].)
I found the performance improvements provided by Google Gears especially interesting because one doesn’t have to even be offline to see some benefits (of removing network latency). At the fireside chat, I asked a question about Javascript performance (relating to my research area) because Gears will facilitate building more complex web apps that do a lot more (distributed) processing on the client. The responses were valid in that bottlenecks do come from updating the DOM and disk I/O, but maybe I was just hoping to hear what Google has planned in pushing Javascript from interpreted to JIT and then adaptive optimizations.
And after the conference part ended, there was a big party at the Googleplex with even more free food and beverages. The center of the campus had food stands with hamburgers, corn dogs, shaved ice, cotton candy, churros, nachos, and a bunch more. The dining area of the main cafeteria changed into a party area with a DJ, pool tables, arcade games, and flashing lights with the projector showing photos of Dev Day around the world.
When it started getting dark, they brought out some neat cups to add to the party atmosphere – glowsticks in a cup form. Basically, cups that glow, so you end up drinking glowing green goo in the dark.. kinda. Just make sure when you hit the cup against a hard surface to break the glow capsules, don’t hit so hard that you crack the cup causing the liquids to spill out.
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