Google seems to be rolling out an interesting pack of security updates for their sites.  The only official announcement I’ve seen is for Gmail, but I’d expect this to come for many other services.

Currently a lot of Google services work fine with https (docs, calendar, blogger.com) but none seem to offer the same default options that Gmail has.  Hopefully that will change soon.

Co-incidentally, it may just have something to do with this recent announcement from their Chief Legal Eagle.

OpenID would be much easier to implement and use if the big-guns who’ve all promised support over a year ago actually have working production environments.   Yahoo! is currently the only one of the big three who properly support OpenID.  Google, Microsoft, where are you?  Enough with the usability testing – lets roll this shit out.

Firefox 3.5 added support for “My Location”; Google Maps added a feature “Show My Location.”

One random day I thought I’d try it out and see how well it does. I’m only using a laptop with no real GPS technology built in.  I have a phone, but it doesn’t support anything fancy. It’s just a phone.

When I first clicked the “Show My Location” circle on Google maps, Firefox was kind enough to ask me if it was OK for Google to know this. I said yes, because I wanted to know.  To my surprise, awe, and WTF? It had my location closer than I could have ever imagined. (more…)

I think Google has managed to create the most powerful multi-platform collaborative tool ever known to man.

This demo is long and very detailed but Google Wave implements so many different tools and concepts into one single point — it’s jaw dropping.

The craziest part of it is the near real-time updates, as well as the fact that multiple users can edit the same documents, with complete playback of changes

It implements these tools (and this is a short list):

• Email
• Instant Messaging
• Image Sharing/Gallery
• Wiki
• Searching
• Document Creation
• Games
• Maps
• … and more

On these platforms:

• Your web browser
• Your blog
• Your smart phone
• Your [insert whatever here]

Watch the Google Wave Preview.

Using my Google Maps API key I can geocode almost anything*.

And with Zend Framework, it’s f’n damn simple!

Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Rest_Client');
$rest = new Zend_Rest_Client('http://maps.google.com/maps/geo');
//?q=1600+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA&output=json&oe=utf8&sensor=true_or_false&key=your_api_key

$rest->key('YOUR_API_KEY');
$rest->q('1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA');
$rest->output('xml');
$rest->oe('utf8');

$result =  $rest->get();
// the whole $result is a SimpleXML object
print_r((string)$result->Response->Placemark->Point->coordinates);

And that’s it.  Save the results someplace useful so you don’t have to hammer the shizzle out of Google (there are query limitations per key).

* I mean almost anything, because you cannot geocode a UK Postal Code, because the Queen and her Royal Mail owns the copyrights on it. Silly, I know.