I'm offering support to those affected by recent layoffs, including those at Google and across the tech industry. I can help with networking, introductions, LinkedIn recommendations, resume reviews, interview preparation, and just being a listening ear. I've been running support calls for over a year and want to continue helping as much as possible. My calendar is open for bookings if you think I can be of assistance.
The Chrome and Web Developer Relations team is significantly expanding in 2022. Open roles span program management, Chrome extensions, CSS, rendering, DevTools, web performance, the Privacy Sandbox, and web ecosystem. The team is seeking program managers, developer relations engineers, technical writers, and infrastructure specialists to contribute to various initiatives, including Chrome Dev Summit, Google I/O, web.dev, and improving the overall web platform.
Celebrating my 10th anniversary at Google working on Chrome and leading a Developer Relations team. As we plan for the next few years, I'm reflecting on how we can improve Developer Satisfaction. Inspired by recent feedback on Apple's developer relations, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what a web browser developer relations team should prioritize. What can we do more of? Less of? How can we best support you and your team? Share your opinions, especially broad strategic ideas.
This post discusses Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and why companies like Microsoft and Google are embracing them. While PWAs offer instant access to content and cross-device compatibility, a key concern is their isolated nature, making it difficult for them to share data and resources. This contradicts the core principles of the web, which should be linkable and interoperable. The increasing isolation of PWAs, along with the broken functionalities of basic web operations like copy/paste and drag/drop, contributes to the creation of unintended data silos on the modern web.
It's been an incredible two years at Google! The first year was amazing, but the second year was even better. I spoke at Google IO, traveled to numerous countries giving presentations, and saw Web Intents become a real project. I even got misquoted on TechCrunch! I also spent more time in Liverpool and worked with developers throughout the UK. I'm excited about the future and continuing to improve the user experience on the web.
At Google IO, we were asked how to optimize Google Fonts for mobile performance. We focused on visual appeal by using mobile-friendly fonts like Droid Sans and Lato. To minimize requests, we leveraged App Cache, storing the CSS and font files for faster subsequent loads. While the Web Font API abstracts URLs, we found the font URLs within the CSS response and cached them. Although subsetting fonts is possible, we didn't use it given the potential character range needed for news articles.
Another question that we didn't get to answer in our talk - Mobile web development: Zero to Hero - is basically the premis of the entire talk. We believe that in a large number of cases that it is entirely possible to build applications using one semantic document structure, a large swathe of common core logic whilst specializing for a given formfactor. From our talk, you can see that the User Interface is optimised for smartphone, tablet, desktop and TV - we believe that there are qualitatively different user interaction patterns in each form that it is important that you optimise for the different experiences, but for the developer experience it is not easy (or possible in some cases) to keep having to build one new app for each category of device that you want to target.
My first year at Google has been an incredible journey. It's been a whirlwind of experiences, from joining the company after selling my Twitter web-app to working alongside industry experts like Chris Messina and Tim Bray. I started as a Developer Programs Engineer for iGoogle and Google Chrome in London, and later transitioned to a Developer Advocate role. My first month at the Mountain View campus was an intense learning experience. I've traveled extensively, presented at various events (including Google Developer Days in Munich, Moscow, and Prague), and contributed to the launch of the Chrome Web Store. I'm excited to see what the future holds, including speaking at Google IO and working with more developers outside of London.
This Thursday, January 13th, 2010, I'll be working from TechHub in London with @mahemoff as part of my resolution to work more closely with developers outside of Google UK HQ. Stop by and say hello between 9:00 am and 3:30 pm if you're in the area!
2010 was a big year! Benjamin joined our family in June. I also joined Google as a Developer Programs Engineer, later transitioning to Developer Advocate, which has been an amazing experience. I've met tons of talented people, traveled a lot, and worked with developers worldwide. I've been busy with projects like creating a Chrome Web Store app, Chrome extensions showcasing the Management API, HTML5Rocks tutorials, and WebIntents. I even got a new LCD TV after years of waiting! In 2011, I'm aiming to code more, release more code, meet more developers, speak at more events, and most importantly, spend more time at home with my family.
Google's new data protocol, GData, has me wondering about the future of Blogger. Will Blogger integrate with GData? Blogger already uses Atom, so will that make integration easier? Or will Blogger's slow pace of development prevent them from adopting GData anytime soon? I'm skeptical.
I've updated my Opensearch implementation based on feedback from Michael Fagan. Changes include correcting the short name length, fixing capitalization issues, and adding an RSS search URL using Google Blog Search. Unfortunately, full A9.com integration isn't possible because the search engine isn't on my domain. While proxying results is an option, I feel that would be unfair to Google.
I contacted Google about using my AdSense account with IE7's SiteSearch through OpenSearch. Unfortunately, they don't currently allow anything but their own search boxes. I think this is a limitation and they said they'd consider it, but for now, using AdSense with IE7's OpenSearch provider is not permitted.
I wanted to use IE7 Beta 2's custom search providers with my Google AdSense for Search account to create a site search that generates revenue. Unfortunately, Google's terms of service explicitly prohibit this by requiring search queries to originate directly from user input in the search box. This restriction limits the potential of OpenSearch integration with AdSense for Search, which is disappointing.
I'm developing Ajax Tagger 2.0 and need ideas for displaying related blogs within the application and its output. I'm also searching for a good search engine (besides Technorati and Google) to find related blogs and feeds. Any suggestions? Please email me or leave a comment.
This post addresses the numerous Google searches related to ".NET framework" and "Xbox 360." Despite the search traffic, I currently have no information on this topic. It seems unlikely that .NET Framework would be available on the Xbox 360 due to the console's different chip architecture and the recent introduction of x86 64-bit support in .NET 2.0. However, I remain open to the possibility.
My website traffic this month is unusually high, almost matching the entire previous month's traffic in just eight days. Google seems to be the primary driver of this surge, sending a significantly larger number of visitors compared to other search engines like Yahoo and MSN. A majority of the searches are related to C#, which suggests I should continue focusing on that topic in my future posts.
This blog post explores the meaning behind the Google search query "oops c#." It questions whether the searcher was looking for information on Object Orientated Prototyping Systems, Object-Oriented Programming Systems, or general C# errors. The author requests that the original searcher contact them to clarify the intent behind their query.
I've just added a Google AdSense referral link to my blog! Google recently updated AdSense, including their terms and conditions. While I spotted mentions of "Feeds" and "Referrals" in the new terms, I haven't yet seen Feed Advertising in action. If you're interested in monetizing your blog, give AdSense a try!
Wow! Google Blog Search indexed my latest post in just minutes! I was amazed by how fast it appeared in the search results after uploading. I'm curious if other search engines are this quick. Technorati is fast, but I have to ping them. With Google, it just worked automatically. Big kudos to Google and possibly Blogger for the seamless integration!
I'm curious about the hype surrounding Page Rank, especially with the upcoming update. Personally, I don't have any Page Rank and question its significance. Is it just a placebo, creating a false sense of understanding Google's algorithms? What are your thoughts?
Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN) now offers ad category targeting, similar to Google AdSense. This feature allows publishers to specify categories for their ads, resulting in more relevant ads for their audience. I'm excited about the potential of this for my own site and hope Google implements a similar feature in AdSense. I'm even considering incorporating this into future versions of AjaxTagger.
I checked my website logs using AWStats and noticed a few searches from Google and MSN, but none from Yahoo. One search caught my attention: "does blogging make money." I tried searching this phrase on both Google and MSN but couldn't find my blog post within the first 15 pages of results. If the person who searched for this and found my blog is reading this, I'd love to know how they found me! And to answer the question, no, blogging doesn't make me money (yet!).
I uninstalled Google Desktop Search Beta 2 because it was slowing down my computer. I kept the search index, though, just in case I decide to reinstall it later. My computer's speed is back to normal now.
I've downloaded the Google Desktop Search 2.0 Beta and I'm liking it so far. My only complaint is not being able to force indexing when not idle. It seems to be lightweight, which is great for my computer. I've installed the Adsense plugin and the Gmail plugin is a plus. The feed detection is excellent, even better than IE7 Beta 1. I'll post more thoughts after I've used it longer.
I just completed all the questions on Start.com, and they gave me a link to their new beta site: http://www.start.com/myw3b/. It's supposed to be an all-in-one platform for RSS, search, info, and more. I'm really excited about this and the new Google services – they're making websites so much more interactive!
I'm exploring different web services, particularly for UK retailers like Tesco, Asda, or Virgin. I've tried Amazon's, which is decent, and Yahoo's, which I like. Ebay's looks interesting, but I'd rather not pay. I'm also looking at Alexa's and Google's. It's tough finding good resources on this, especially for UK retailers. I'd love to see APIs from companies like Tescos, Asda, Dixons, and others. If you know of any good web services, especially in the UK retail space, please share!
I've been exploring Amazon's SOAP API and Yahoo's REST API and I'm quite impressed with both. I'm thinking about ways to make these two APIs interact and will share my ideas in a future post. I've also been working on using REST in .Net 1.1, which is a little tricky but possible, thanks to Martin G. Brown's work. The process involves using an XSD of the response, running it through XSD.exe to generate a Dataset object, and then processing the results. It's a similar concept to WSDL, but without the automatic stub generation. I'll post some Yahoo API code examples soon. I plan to look into Google's API as well, even though it's in beta with usage restrictions.