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May 05, 2007
Selling application space
Selling application space: This seems significant, but I don't feel confident I understand its ramifications yet... Google AdSense will broker Google Gadgets between webpage owners and advertisers. (A gadget is an XML file within inline HTML, with optional external resources such as SWF.) Google AdSense already brokers SWF ads, so this doesn't seem like much of a change in functionality. The difference seems to be that they're expanding this to JavaScript interactivity as well... this seems to mean that the JavaScripts your browser will be executing on your machine do not necessarily come from the site you're visiting, but also may come from strangers who rent space on pages you're visiting. Cross-site scripting issues have been ruthlessly stomped out by browser vendors the past few years, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out. As Niall Kennedy and Pete Cashmore discuss, Google is now actually selling application space on the world's websites... seems like a significant change.
Posted by JohnDowdell at May 5, 2007 12:30 PM
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Google Gadgets recently upgraded its Flash support by letting authors refer to SWF objects and their properties instead of worrying about correct tag soup for the rendering browser. Google can prompt the user for a Flash player upgrade if they do not meet the minimum requirements of the embedded SWF.
The big change for Flash developers using this library is getting and setting user preferences using Google's preference system instead of directly through Flash cookies or some other method. Not only will this method of preference setting match the look-and-feel of the Google interface, users will be able to fully configure their gadget and see a real preview before placing content on their site. In the future such preferences might also include a default user location from Google Maps or other behavioral and contextual data from the Google network.
Posted by: Niall Kennedy at May 5, 2007 04:04 PM