| | Since Google published its Maps API, numerous applications, called mash-ups, have been developed that integrate customized data on top of Google's map interface. With the Maps API, it's straightforward to center a map at a given location, add markers, and display content in info windows—especially if the location is static. However, if the location is driven by user input or retrieved dynamically, the process is somewhat more complex because of the need to geo-code the address. | Monday's announcement is the latest stage in Salesforce and Google's relationship -- which has also resulted in an integration between Salesforce and Google Apps -- and could prompt another round of speculation that the search engine giant will eventually buy Salesforce. | Independent researchers have found a security flaw in the first Android phones. Google says it is working to fix the problem. | When Scott Davis isn't editing AboutGroovy.com you'll find him on the No Fluff Just Stuff tour, where he is known as both the Groovy guy and the Google Maps guy. Here he talks with Andrew Glover about what Google Maps has done to make geomatics, or geographic information systems, more accessible to your average Web developer. He also discusses in-depth the options available for Java developers who require a more sophisticated, less closed-stack GIS solution than Google Maps provides. This is an informal primer from a leading authority on using geospatial data, Web services, and open source APIs in Java Web development. | Editor's note: With access to more than three million documents in over 30 languages, Google is a researcher's dream. But like any invaluable tool, knowing the insider tricks of the trade is a must to save time and needless effort. Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest, authors of Google Hacks, 2nd Edition, have set out to educate the masses to the ins and outs of Google. In today's excerpt, they offer the inside scoop on scattersearching, cartography, Google on the go, gmail-lite, and AdSense. With over 150 million Google searches conducted every day, why be just a number? | This actually is not as bad as it sounds. Most web interfaces are "primed" for synchronization because they already have to support clients that are connection-less and potentially out of synch. Just as an example, the Google Calendar API already has conflict detection baked in to the API. | Google maps isn't just useful when you're looking for the nearest pizza parlor. You can also integrate Google Maps capabilities into your own applications. Draw maps, add annotates and routes, and geocode your data: it's all in this concise guide. | | So I decided to explore the Google Collections Library further and find out what it had to offer a Java developer like me who's been using Jakarta Commons Collections. In this article, I describe the packages and classes in the Google Collections Library (hereafter referred to simply as the Library). I then compare and contrast these classes with those in the Apache Jakarta Commons Collections (hereafter referred to simply as Commons Collections). | By this point in the Mastering Grails series, you should have a fairly good idea how domain classes, controllers, and Groovy Server Pages (GSPs) all work together in a coordinated manner. They facilitate basic Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete (CRUD) operations on a single datatype. This geocoding service seems to go a bit beyond the scope of simple Grails Object Relational Mapping (GORM) transformations from relational database records to POGOs (plain old Groovy objects). Also, the service will most likely be used by more than one method. Both save and update will need to geocode the IATA code, as you'll see in just a moment. Grails gives you a place to store commonly used methods that transcend any single domain class: services. | Google's Android platform really took the developers' world by storm with the announcement of the 10 million dollar challenges. Since its inception in late 2007, almost 1,800 new software entries had been submitted from all over the world and some of them already made the technical news headlines because of their innovative ideas. A few interesting concepts have been introduced in this platform although, at the beginning, some developers thought it could be nothing but a combination of Linux and Java along with Google's own APIs. By way of focusing on image-related work, this article should give you an idea how easy it is to work with Android and how powerful this platform is. | Perhaps the most famous applications embracing the Ajax model is Google Maps. Surely you've played around with this website, perhaps entering your or other addresses of interest, and marveled as how the site responded to zooming and dragging around on the map in seeming real-time. Wouldn't it be great to incorporate Google's mapping capabilities into your applications, taking advantage of not only its enormous database, but also the eminently cool interface that comes with it? | The Google collections library has the potential to both increase your productivity and significantly clean up your code. I hope I have laid out the decision points clearly in this article for anyone thinking of using it on a project. Because the library is open source, the risks are relatively small, but the Java 7 standards may diverge from what this library does now, meaning that in the future some refactoring might be required to bring the code back into standards compliance. The alternatives would be to use another collection library, write your own, or just work with the standard libraries, and all of these may have similar problems long term. | Mobile devices are very often resource-limited. That means they usually do not have the CPU power, vast memory, or storage space commonly seen in modern computers. However, sometimes complicated operations are still required to perform many features currently used on these devices. Android engineers lay out some important rules in the design philosophy; you will focus on the part about how to make sure your software is responsive enough without interfering with the main thread and inadvertently causing the system to pop up an ANR (Application Not Responding) dialog. Furthermore, a message handling mechanism is introduced to post back the result and update the view in the main thread—the device screen users operate on most of the time. | Mapping functionality has become a must-have feature for new mobile devices. With all the new technology advances, mobile devices, especially cell phones, are more than capable of handling complicated mathematical calculations on their own or keeping up with the high-traffic communication with the servers. GPS devices used to be the dominant player with the mapping capabilities, but more and more mobile devices are offering almost full-featured GPS functionalities. Google's Android provides direct access to its popular mapping tools. You will explore key programming APIs that power its mapping features. | A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about the Google Collections Library (http://www.developer.com/java/ent/article.php/3735441), which gave some examples of the exciting features in this new open source library. The article carried a caveat that the 0.5 version of the library carried a few warnings, including the possibility that the API could change. |
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