Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Google Launches Web Elements
A new tool makes it easy to add Google products to a personal Web site.
By Kate Greene
There is a subset of software developers who are
forever trying to build software that's easier for non-developers to make. Google's Blogger is a good example of this: anyone can quickly
and easily set up a blog by walking through the steps; they don't need HTML
experience to start blogging in minutes.
In the spirit of simplifying software, Google announced a new way to easily
integrate its products, like News and Maps, into a personal website. The offering is called Web Elements and was demonstrated
today at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.
At the
event, DeWitt Clinton, the technical leader on Google's developer team, illustrated
how to use Web Elements within a blog. He embedded a Google News feed, a map,
and a live conversation widget in about the same amount of time it takes to embed a YouTube video. While similar tools have been available for some time,
it's interesting to see Google's take on letting users easily add some
of its popular products to their sites. Currently there are eight products
available, with the possibility of more to come.
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