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seo Google Narratives Series: Chirag Mehta 2013
Seo Master present to you: 
It's time for another Google Narrative, highlighting a Google AJAX Search API developer, Chirag Mehta.
Chirag is developer in St. Petersburg, Florida who got started coding on a ZX Spectrum almost twenty years ago and has dabbled in graphics, animation, databases, ERP/CRMs, and productivity apps. He is currently working as an IT director and is in a graduate program in Technology Management at University of Tampa. He co-founded Chime.TV in 2007 and Sched.org in 2008. His favorite area of development is simple web utilities. Chirag and his wife love animals and when he's not coding or studying, he is either kayaking or playing with their pets.Q: Tell me about how you used Google AJAX Search API for Wiki Search and Drop Search and how you came up with the ideas.
A: My wife's currently in medical school and constantly doing searches online for medical terms. Wikipedia offered tons of information but she found their search feature to be insufficient for her needs. 90% of the time, you have no idea what you're searching for or guessing at it - it doesn't do anything to help you out. I wanted to help my wife have a faster, more dynamic experience so I brainstormed how to build a XML-type of search feature, similar to Google Search Suggest, while you were on Wikipedia. (It also helped that I'd always found Wikipedia interesting and researched databases that used it as a source of information.) That also led me to start looking at implementation options and of them all, AJAX Search seemed the easiest to integrate in a quick manner. Instead of taking two weeks to research documentation and then implement with other APIs, it took about an hour with Google AJAX Search. Also, I had worked with many Google APIs on other projects before, but the Google AJAX API was the best. The speed was amazing!
The idea for creating Drop Search came soon after fiddling with more Google AJAX search documentation. My implementation gives the everyday person without a programming background the ability to add a customized search engine to any site. It's code that you can copy and paste into your application and customize for your own needs using CSS, which I did for my own blog. A friend of mine at Rutgers University saw what I did and wanted the same type of feature for their professional development site so I released the code that I created to everyone on my projects page.
Q: Describe any obstacles you had with implementation.
A: There were none. Actually I had a couple of questions at first but I looked at the forums and got the answer fairly quickly. They were around legal issues - Am I allowed to query as I type? Is it legal that I'm doing this with Wiki search? I wish legal terms were much clearer on Google Code. I had some assumptions, only to find out they were recommendations rather than requirements. I do have to say that the documentation on Google Code is perfect. One minute you're reading documentation, the next you're in the forums reading about other developers' experiences. Help pages are broken down into every bit so it makes coding a cakewalk. It's a really good experience compared to other sites.
Q: Can you provide any tips for other developers using Google AJAX Search API?
A: Before you try to build something, find out if Google already has. Google will build 98% of your needs on the back end, leaving you 2% of the work to focus on making your user interface exactly what you need for the front end. Also, another tip... listen to your wife's complaints. Thanks for your time Chirag! We love hearing from developers in our community about inspiring stories, so if you have something you'd like to share, visit our online submission form. Or better yet, come to Google I/O and tell us your story in person.
2013, By: Seo Master
It's time for another Google Narrative, highlighting a Google AJAX Search API developer, Chirag Mehta.Chirag is developer in St. Petersburg, Florida who got started coding on a ZX Spectrum almost twenty years ago and has dabbled in graphics, animation, databases, ERP/CRMs, and productivity apps. He is currently working as an IT director and is in a graduate program in Technology Management at University of Tampa. He co-founded Chime.TV in 2007 and Sched.org in 2008. His favorite area of development is simple web utilities. Chirag and his wife love animals and when he's not coding or studying, he is either kayaking or playing with their pets.
A: My wife's currently in medical school and constantly doing searches online for medical terms. Wikipedia offered tons of information but she found their search feature to be insufficient for her needs. 90% of the time, you have no idea what you're searching for or guessing at it - it doesn't do anything to help you out. I wanted to help my wife have a faster, more dynamic experience so I brainstormed how to build a XML-type of search feature, similar to Google Search Suggest, while you were on Wikipedia. (It also helped that I'd always found Wikipedia interesting and researched databases that used it as a source of information.) That also led me to start looking at implementation options and of them all, AJAX Search seemed the easiest to integrate in a quick manner. Instead of taking two weeks to research documentation and then implement with other APIs, it took about an hour with Google AJAX Search. Also, I had worked with many Google APIs on other projects before, but the Google AJAX API was the best. The speed was amazing!
The idea for creating Drop Search came soon after fiddling with more Google AJAX search documentation. My implementation gives the everyday person without a programming background the ability to add a customized search engine to any site. It's code that you can copy and paste into your application and customize for your own needs using CSS, which I did for my own blog. A friend of mine at Rutgers University saw what I did and wanted the same type of feature for their professional development site so I released the code that I created to everyone on my projects page.
Q: Describe any obstacles you had with implementation.
A: There were none. Actually I had a couple of questions at first but I looked at the forums and got the answer fairly quickly. They were around legal issues - Am I allowed to query as I type? Is it legal that I'm doing this with Wiki search? I wish legal terms were much clearer on Google Code. I had some assumptions, only to find out they were recommendations rather than requirements. I do have to say that the documentation on Google Code is perfect. One minute you're reading documentation, the next you're in the forums reading about other developers' experiences. Help pages are broken down into every bit so it makes coding a cakewalk. It's a really good experience compared to other sites.
Q: Can you provide any tips for other developers using Google AJAX Search API?
A: Before you try to build something, find out if Google already has. Google will build 98% of your needs on the back end, leaving you 2% of the work to focus on making your user interface exactly what you need for the front end. Also, another tip... listen to your wife's complaints.
2013, By: Seo Master
seo Google Narratives Series: BuddyPoke 2013
Seo Master present to you: Continuing with the Google Narratives Series, we'd like to profile Google App Engine and OpenSocial developers, Dave Westwood and Randall Ho of BuddyPoke!
Dave and Randall both have backgrounds in 3D and avatars for the last 11+ years, with work in various web 3D games, facial tracking, facial animation, and mobile avatars. They've worked at five companies together - "Dave does all the technical stuff and I'm the technical artist." Simply put, they complement each other perfectly.
Q: Tell us the story of how BuddyPoke was envisioned.
A: We'd always worked for other companies, and disliked the company politics, etc, and always dreamed of just going and doing our own thing. When we saw the huge success of Slide's slide shows on MySpace, we quit our jobs and started work on a 3D pets widget. Facebook apps and OpenSocial weren't live yet and our first project failed miserably because we completely lacked a distribution model with viral channels. Fast forward a bit, and Nintendo Wii is huge with everyone making miis and talking about avatars. There was Playstation Home and Second Life. Also, the Simpsons Movie was just about to released and allowed for you to "Simsponize" yourself. We thought about the 30+ minutes people were putting into customizing their avatars, without any way of doing any cool interaction with friends. We also thought about the interesting fact that most people who installed these types of console games did it mostly for character personalization or "dress up," rather than to actually play the game. Bottom line, we knew we had to do something about it.
Facebook apps then started to take off, and OpenSocial came out. We closely watched what worked and what didn't on Facebook by looking at usage charts of the top 200 apps. After a lot of trial and error, we applied our 3D backgrounds to some of the ideas and came up with a way of doing the 3D rendering in Flash. That's when we came up with BuddyPoke.
Q: Describe your implementation and why you decided on Google App Engine.
A: During the time that we were focused on researching app usage, we noticed that most apps were struggling with scalability. Their difficulties sounded vaguely familiar with our current implementation and we knew we needed to find a platform that would help us avoid the same issue, especially since we were working on the version for MySpace. The main thing here was timing with the release of Google App Engine and the announcement of OpenSocial. All of a sudden we found ourselves able to quickly roll out our app to the various OpenSocial sites without having to worry about scaling.
Q: Tell us about your overall development experience and any obstacles you have encountered along the way.
A: When Google App Engine first came out, the big learning curve was BigTable. Our data models were horrible. Then, after watching Ryan and Brett's talks at I/O, we redid everything and it's running well now. Our only concern is the organization of our code on AppSpot - everything runs on one AppSpot site. If we knew ahead of time of our success, we would have broken the code up in groups to make updating easier. Also, our main ask is XMPP support so that we can implement chat on App Engine.
One last thing...we're thrilled about the success of BuddyPoke. The barrier to entry is so low from a developer's perspective. We never imagined having 3D characters seen by so many people, without having to even think about the technology behind them or without even having to buy a Wii.
We really enjoy hearing from developers in the community about inspiring stories, so if you have something you'd like to share, visit our online submission form. Better yet, come tell us your story at Google I/O. You can also check out Dave & Randall's cool story on the Ning blog!
Thanks Dave & Randall!
2013, By: Seo Master
Dave and Randall both have backgrounds in 3D and avatars for the last 11+ years, with work in various web 3D games, facial tracking, facial animation, and mobile avatars. They've worked at five companies together - "Dave does all the technical stuff and I'm the technical artist." Simply put, they complement each other perfectly.
A: We'd always worked for other companies, and disliked the company politics, etc, and always dreamed of just going and doing our own thing. When we saw the huge success of Slide's slide shows on MySpace, we quit our jobs and started work on a 3D pets widget. Facebook apps and OpenSocial weren't live yet and our first project failed miserably because we completely lacked a distribution model with viral channels. Fast forward a bit, and Nintendo Wii is huge with everyone making miis and talking about avatars. There was Playstation Home and Second Life. Also, the Simpsons Movie was just about to released and allowed for you to "Simsponize" yourself. We thought about the 30+ minutes people were putting into customizing their avatars, without any way of doing any cool interaction with friends. We also thought about the interesting fact that most people who installed these types of console games did it mostly for character personalization or "dress up," rather than to actually play the game. Bottom line, we knew we had to do something about it.
Facebook apps then started to take off, and OpenSocial came out. We closely watched what worked and what didn't on Facebook by looking at usage charts of the top 200 apps. After a lot of trial and error, we applied our 3D backgrounds to some of the ideas and came up with a way of doing the 3D rendering in Flash. That's when we came up with BuddyPoke.
Q: Describe your implementation and why you decided on Google App Engine.
A: During the time that we were focused on researching app usage, we noticed that most apps were struggling with scalability. Their difficulties sounded vaguely familiar with our current implementation and we knew we needed to find a platform that would help us avoid the same issue, especially since we were working on the version for MySpace. The main thing here was timing with the release of Google App Engine and the announcement of OpenSocial. All of a sudden we found ourselves able to quickly roll out our app to the various OpenSocial sites without having to worry about scaling.
Q: Tell us about your overall development experience and any obstacles you have encountered along the way.
A: When Google App Engine first came out, the big learning curve was BigTable. Our data models were horrible. Then, after watching Ryan and Brett's talks at I/O, we redid everything and it's running well now. Our only concern is the organization of our code on AppSpot - everything runs on one AppSpot site. If we knew ahead of time of our success, we would have broken the code up in groups to make updating easier. Also, our main ask is XMPP support so that we can implement chat on App Engine.
One last thing...we're thrilled about the success of BuddyPoke. The barrier to entry is so low from a developer's perspective. We never imagined having 3D characters seen by so many people, without having to even think about the technology behind them or without even having to buy a Wii.
We really enjoy hearing from developers in the community about inspiring stories, so if you have something you'd like to share, visit our online submission form. Better yet, come tell us your story at Google I/O. You can also check out Dave & Randall's cool story on the Ning blog!
Thanks Dave & Randall!
2013, By: Seo Master
seo Google Narratives Series 2013
Seo Master present to you: By Christine Songco, Google Developer Programs
Google Code has highlighted many developers who've created applications using AppEngine, OpenSocial, AdSense, and Google Maps, however, we often forget to reflect on the stories of the people behind the code. In a series of upcoming blog posts we're calling Google Narratives, we'll be telling these stories to allow our developer community to interact and inspire each other to create or even improve existing projects. At last year's Google I/O, we met Dan Shahin of Hijinx Comics, whose creativity in using open source projects to build his business really makes him stand out. Dan agreed to chat with us and share his story. Thanks, Dan!
2013, By: Seo Master
Google Code has highlighted many developers who've created applications using AppEngine, OpenSocial, AdSense, and Google Maps, however, we often forget to reflect on the stories of the people behind the code. In a series of upcoming blog posts we're calling Google Narratives, we'll be telling these stories to allow our developer community to interact and inspire each other to create or even improve existing projects. At last year's Google I/O, we met Dan Shahin of Hijinx Comics, whose creativity in using open source projects to build his business really makes him stand out. Dan agreed to chat with us and share his story. Thanks, Dan!
The story of Dan and how he came to own a comic book store.We're excited to kick off the Google Narratives Series and plan to highlight more developers in our community so if you have a story like Dan's that you'd like to share with us, we're accepting submissions via our online submission form. Better yet, come tell us your story at Google I/O!
At 28 years running, Hijinx Comics, is the oldest comic book store in San Jose, California. From both a personal and business perspective, Hijinx Comics holds a special place in Dan Shahin's life. At the early age of 11, Dan was hired at Hijinx, which was at the same location at the time but went by a different name. Dan continued to work there throughout high school, building his lifelong passion for comics. He left the comic store behind to attend college and later worked at a number of high tech jobs, gaining experience in UNIX systems administration, release management, and software engineering. But by the year 2000, still Dan couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing in his life. Hours of soul-searching revealed that the missing piece was the excitement and passion that he had once experienced when working with comics.
Dan decided to get in touch with the owner of the comic book store. It turned out to be perfect timing because the owner of the store was ready to sell. Dan picked up everything he owned and moved back to his old neighborhood to run the comic book store. He reopened the store as Hijinx Comics and expanded on the traditional business of collectible comics and novelty items with a new focus on graphic novels and books focused on entertainment reading.
Because of the amount of time Dan had worked with comics as a teenager, he had keen awareness of the pain points related to subscriptions and inventory. Drawing on these experiences, he developed a software suite to manage the subscriptions and inventory of his shop and of a brand new online bookstore. Best of all, he opensourced the whole offering to help other comic book stores alleviate the same issues. From there, a side business grew that involved him consulting and implementing a management system and hosting solution to other comic book stores across the nation.
Today, Dan's working on Ver.2 of his project while Ver.1 runs his current business needs. Below are some excerpts from our meeting with Dan.
Q: Tell me about your Google implementation and if there were any obstacles.
A: I use a lot of Google Code products to build my own open source comic shop management system. I use Google Checkout for my online bookstore ( http://www.comicbookshelf.com ) and did the level 2 integration myself in my custom LAMP application. I also make heavy use of Google Analytics [used to compare data from his own raw server logs], Charts API, Apps for Domains and thanks to last year's I/O, I'm getting into App Engine development as well as Gears, which is what really brought me to Google I/O. My web-based point of sale system uses all of the Gears APIs to bring down UI latency and to allow offline use, which are the two greatest sticking points to current adoption of similar systems. The documentation is well-written with one exception. It would be nice to have a cookbook section - that type is more helpful. More real-life examples in more detail, casual, reader friendly and a commonly used code section. They tend to have lots of detail and the high level can sometimes be fuzzy
Q: What effect have you seen with your customers as a result of the Google implementation?
A: Customers usually come to visit the store but can also log in and update their subscriptions on their own. There's a quicker checkout process since they do the rest of their browsing online. We have a book club where we collect email addresses for customers that buy certain novels online. Customers are also able to offer reviews or books we sell. These reviews are available both online and in the store. We keep track of this type of data in a CRM and based on it, can help recommend favorites and offer Netflix type suggestions.
2013, By: Seo Master