Google Developer Day 2008 - Bangalore

I attended the Google Developer Day 2008 this Saturday held in The Chancery Pavilion, Bangalore.
I attended two sessions: "Google Desktop API" and "Google App Engine".
The Desktop API session was targeted for gadget developers; they had no session for "Desktop Search API".

The keynote was really good. They started with a dashing video about Google with stunning sound. After that the director of Google India introduced various products from Google, which will be of interest to developers. Like: -

GWT: Google Web Toolkit
Google Desktop and its API (focused on the Gadget API)
App Engine
Google Maps and its API
Google Map Maker
Open Social and its API
Google Indic for transliteration
Android
Google Chrome

He pointed out why Google makes everything (almost) available to the developers outside Google. He said as Google is born and based in the web, enrichment of web enriches Google. As more and more users start depending on the Internet, it benefits Google by increasing the target audience.

Then it was time for the sessions, of which I attended: -
Google Desktop API, and second part of Google App Engine.

During registration, they gave away 2G Moser Baer USB drives with the brochure which had the SDKs and tools required during the codelabs. The Wi-Fi connection was having some problem. The Internet was getting disconnected. They were trying to solve it.

I found GWT to be interesting. Which they said is a cross-compiler. You can program in Java, which will get converted to JavaScript to support cool Ajax interfaces. I'll dig into that in my spare time.

I did not attend the codelabs which happened after lunch.