After two nice days at the GTUG Bootcamp, today I was at the Google Developer Day
Here are some notes about the sessions I attended:
Native Client gives developers new programming language choices on the web. You can build rich applications with all of the safety and portability you expect from the web, while benefiting from the performance of native code. A demo showed how to access emerging capabilities on the web such as sound and 3D graphics.
Fred Sauer talks about a few of the features recently just launched on the Google App Engine platform:
You can find the demo app on appspot http://fredsa.appspot.com/.
Other new features mentioned were high performance image serving, OpenId OAuth integration, custom error pages, increased quotas (no longer 1000 entity limit), app.yaml now usable in Java apps, you can pause task queues and the dashboard graph now shows up to 30 days.
Ade Oshineye gave a talk about Google Buzz and Google's Social APIs.
Talk by Patrick Chanezon and Simon Meacham on Google's Cloud Offerings:
Google's machine learning technology, available as an on-demand RESTful HTTP web service. If you studied and implemented some machine learning algorithms yourself, this might not be for you because it is more like a black box. http://code.google.com/apis/predict/ Check out the v1.1 Api that includes goodies like multi tag suggestion.
Predict reddit category based on title and domain by Nick Johnson: http://redditguess.appspot.com/
Hear from professional investors and experienced founders who have raised money.
Don Dodge's focus is on helping developers work with Google Apps. Don joined Google after 5 years as a developer evangelist at Microsoft. Don is a veteran of five start-ups including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks and has been in the software business for more than 25 years. Don spent 5 years at Microsoft working with VCs and start-ups in the greater Boston area.
Question and answer with George Sperling founder of Altos Advisors and Yaron Valler partner at Hasso Plattner Ventures. Nice insights about the differences between silicon valley and German startups, like the lesser use of non-cash compensation stock options in small companies in Germany. A common exist strategy of German startups is to be bought by an American company. In the valley being at different companies every three years is a good sign (gained more experience) while it is seen more negative in Germany.
Set up your business where your market is. So for example have your business in America and your development in Europe if you want to go global.
Native apps or mobile web? It's often a hard choice when deciding where to invest your mobile development resources. While the mobile web continues to grow, native apps and App Stores are incredibly popular. Reto Meier and Michael Mahemoff present both perspectives before answering questions in a panel style debate.