Directory of shared gadgets

Over the weekend, I used the XMPP AppEngine API to hack together a showcase for gadgets that use the gadgets.sharedstate API that I've talked about before on this blog.

Here's the directory: http://chatgadget-directory.appspot.com/index.jsp

Basically gadget authors can list their gadgets, and users can sign up to "play" the gadget with another user. The app serves as matchmaker and message-relay -- its bot relays the XMPP messages (which are contained in stanzas) between endpoints. Doing so introduces a little more latency than Google Talk alone has, so this is much more suited to turn-based games than to anything "realtime".

You can only "play" these gadgets on the Talk Sandbox (http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/sandbox) or the orkut sandbox right now.

A caveat: as I mention on the text on the site, your email address will be exposed so if you're not comfortable with that, don't use this page, or create a test account.

There's a lot still in progress here, mostly related to detecting when the other player is online (I could be smarter with a queue of players who sign up to play only when they're online), and UI tweaks and so on, but it's mostly functional and I think interesting.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions!

Also: I'll be talking about XMPP/AppEngine, the gadgets.sharedstate API, and other Talk-related stuff at StartPad on Monday, November 16th. Here's the link for more info.

A nerdly confession, and a chance to get a T-Shirt

I started programming computers when I was in 5th grade, and bought myself a (crappy) computer in 6th grade with money I'd saved from a paper route coupled with "matching funds" from my parents. Believe it or not, this is not the nerdly confession referenced in the title.

When I was in 8th and 9th grade, I got really excited by computer graphics and animation. Join the club, right? If you're a kid who's into computers, there's a high likelihood that you want to make pretty pictures.

Anyway, I wrote all sorts of cool (in my mind, at the time) mathematical pictures, and plotted them on my crappy little Radio Shack plotter, or animated them with some kludgy hack.

So anyway, being in 8th or 9th grade, and a giant socially-awkward nerd, I of course had unrequited crushes on any number of girls. Obviously I was in no position to impress anyone with my athletic prowess or conversational skills so in my mind my only hope was to impress them with my programming acumen. How ludicrous this is must have occurred to me because thankfully I never actually tried this.

However! If you are the 2009 version of me in 1985, and use orkut, I am working on the tools to let you do something awesome! I've been working on making it easy to embed gadgets -- that you can write yourself! -- into IM conversations. So here is my formula for wooing a girl, young nerd:

NOTE: If you're a girl, just s/girl/boy/ below. Or you know, s/girl/boy/ at your discretion, no matter your gender.

• Join orkut. (you could do this all on facebook or probably most other social networks, too, but without the real-time awesomeness)
  
• Sign up for the orkut developer sandbox.
  
• Make friends online with a girl. This is way easier than being friends in real life!
  
• Make sure said girl is also on the orkut developer sandbox. Hopefully she's a nerd too.
  
• Write an awesome gadget. See the orkut chat gadgets documentation for more info.
  
• Send this gadget to the girl you're friends with.
  
• Impress her with the excellence of your programming skills.
  
• If you used the gadgets.sharedstate API, interact with the girl in real time!
  
• Figure the rest out on your own, buddy!
  

If you do this, PLEASE LET ME KNOW (with a link to your gadget). While supplies last, I will send you a Google T-shirt. These are way hotter than varsity jackets, trust me.

What I've been working on

I've been working on a javascript API to let gadget developers use realtime communication. I'll write in more depth later (I'm in the keynote at Google I/O right now).

Here's the documentation and here's a link to the discussion group.

There are a ton of cool things this will let developers do. For now, this is a developer preview and the feature's only available on the Talk Developer Sandbox, but it will be available soon in orkut and iGoogle. We wanted to get it out to developers as soon as possible for feedback on the API and to let you get a head start writing gadgets before we launch this to the public.

At SXSW

I'm back in Austin for the weekend at SXSW. I'll be at the Google both (421-423) in the exhibit hall from 4-6 today -- come by and say hi if you're in town!

Also I just added the FriendConnect "followers" gadget to my site -- try it out to follow me in reader and discover friends who also follow this site. FriendConnect's pretty cool and I hope to write more about it soon (when I'm not sitting on the floor at the convention center).

Interested in trying out some early Google tech?

My first post in a very long time, and I'm shilling :)

The project I'm working on is doing a limited invite-only release, and we're looking for some javascript developers to help test it. If you enjoy writing gadgets and want a chance to try out something fun, email me or leave a comment here!

UPDATE: please leave me an email address if you comment. I won't publish these comments so no worries about spam.

New experimental version of Talk

We just launched a version of Talk to Labs:

Talk Labs Edition.

Enjoy!

Chatback launched!

Another cool feature of Talk just shipped. Check out the link over on the right -- if I'm online, you can chat with me, even if you don't have a Google Talk account.

However, I won't be online for a while since I'm leaving for Hawaii early tomorrow morning :)