Digest of News from Day One of Google I/O

Right out the gate, Google’s I/O Conference became the epicenter for news generation around Recombinant Communications. During the opening keynote, no fewer than four major initiatives were launched to get the creative juices flowing for the myriad of cloud-inspired Google App developers. It started with the announcement of a Chrome Web Store, which is a URL that will act like a “swap meet” where developers can shop for and/or peddle the sorts of reusable code that are the raw material for “Recombinant Communications” applications.

Google has also opened up Wave, meaning that prospective users no longer have to wait for someone to invite them to jump in among the long-time Wavers. This means that the platform has become stable enough for its keepers to have confidence in its ability to scale. As an early invitee, I’ll be watching closely to see whether the timing (in the wake of Facebook’s privacy faux pas), combined with the enthusiasm of new entrants will make it a better (or at least busier) platform for collaboration and sharing.

The most interesting development may be the one that’s deepest in the multimedia communications weeds. It is the WebM Project WebM Project, an effort led by Google, Mozilla and Opera and endorsed by the likes of Skype, Broadcom, ARM, Logitech, MIPS and about thirty other firms. The product is a “royalty free” software codec that supports high-quality video and is rumored to ship “free of charge” with a future download of Flash Player. A friction-free, easily downloadable renderer of high quality video generated understandable levels of enthusiasm from the application generating public.

Other noteworthy announcements from Google I/O were more evolutionary in nature. Cloud computing giant, VMWare announced that it is jointly launching the Google AppEngine in VMWare’s “public cloud”. As Vic Gundotra (VP of Engineering at Google) explains in this summary post, in conjunction with the introduction of the Google App Engine for Business, there are now more options than ever for application developers to shop for application piece parts across multiple, virtual sources with confidence that they will still be operating on rock solid platforms (certified in some cases by VMWare).

Today was all about HTML5 and the cloud as a platform. Tomorrow promises to be just as inspirational and, we’ve been told, will have more of a focus on mobility and mobilization.



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