Google data APIs!

Filed under: Programming, Web Tech, Work
2 Comments

For those who've been wondering what I've been devoting most of my waking hours to lately:

The Google Calendar data API has now been released. I am very happy about this. Also extremely sleepy, as I haven't slept much in the past couple days.

For a programmer-oriented high-level introduction to what this is all about, see the Google Code Blog. The general idea is that a programmer can now write an application that can send a query to Google Calendar (or, later, other services that have data APIs). Calendar then sends back a data feed (in Atom or RSS format) containing the results of the query. For example, a programmer could write a program that lets the program's user ask Google Calendar for all of their appointments that are scheduled for anytime in the next two days.

I realize that the non-programmers among you probably don't find this especially interesting. But I'm really excited to see it go live.

And if it weren't for the fact that my other big project's deadline is tomorrow, maybe I would be getting some sleep soon. (No, this doesn't mean my other project will be releasing tomorrow. But my part of it is due tomorrow.)

Oh--and if any of you are interested in this data API stuff, you may also want to stop by the Google Calendar data API discussion group and/or the more general Google data APIs discussion group.

Thanks much to Twig and Kam for providing me with rides to and from work today. I was working at home up until 45 minutes before my deadline, at which point Dreamweaver freaked out and started crashing on me. And (due to lack of sleep) I don't think I would've been safe to drive, even the short distance to work, and time was too short to walk or bike. Luckily, Twig was around and drove me to work, and a colleague loaned me a laptop with a working Dreamweaver, and then late tonight after we launched, Kam came and picked me up and brought me home. And now I am going to sleep.

(Obligatory disclaimer: I do not, of course, speak for my company.)

2 Responses to “Google data APIs!”

  1. Benjamin Rosenbaum

    So what was your particular part of this project?

    reply

  2. Jed

    I “wrote” (in some sense) all of the documentation.

    More specifically, I took two existing internal docs written by the engineers and restructured them, cleaned them up, added material, made corrections, and so on; I also wrote three new documents, including all the Java code samples in those documents. (The last of the new documents was a translation of one of my documents, by one of the engineers, from Java to C#; then I did a little further cleanup on it.) I was also slightly involved in the reference documentation.

    But I put “wrote” in quotation marks up above because the docs were really a team effort; the engineers contributed quite a bit to the documentation at every level and every step. A great group to work with.

    reply

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