Present your server-side data in a powerful visual format

Google has publicly released it Google Visualization API. The  Google Visualization API helps developers in embedding visualizations and lets you turn structured data into charts, tables, maps, and more on your page.

What are Visualizations?: Visualizations are small embedded objects that take structured data from a variety of sources (including Google Spreadsheet) and present them in new and interesting ways. Visualizations can be embedded on any web page by adding some simple Javascript and HTML. Many visualizations have also been wrapped as gadgets, for display on web pages or additional targets.

In a blog post Google has indicated - "Today, we're publicly documenting the Google Visualization API's open-wire protocol, thus dramatically expanding the capabilities of this API beyond what had been available since we first launched in March of this year. Organizations can now expose their server-side data, such as in SQL databases and even in Excel spreadsheets, and display this data through visualizations from our growing directory. This flexibility makes it possible to connect easily almost any data source to a wealth of 40+ visualizations, including standard pie and line charts and complex heat maps and motion charts." Read more:

Google Code Blog: Introducing Powerful Visualizations for your server-side data

They have a gallery of Visualizations

http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery.html

In addition Salesforce.com has developed resources (on top of Google Visualization API) which will help Salesforce.com administartors to quickly add new dashboards and reporting applications on their data.

Google has documented an open-source Python library that enables any Python developer to quickly start using the API. What is more interesting  is that this library is that it also runs on Google's AppEngine.

Google Search integrated to Google Apps

Google Search is now integrated to Google Apps. Companies which are using Google Docs and Google sites have advantage of Google Search Appliance searching and indexing the Google Docs and Google Sites.



Google Apps Integration allows you to search your domain's Google Apps content using your Google Search Appliance. In just a few clicks, you can enable your search appliance to crawl, index, and serve your public Google Docs and Google Sites.

This is a very powerful feature as otherwise hidden documents can now be indexed and information will be unleashed for organization use. More details on this feature available with Google Search Appliance software version 5.2

http://code.google.com/apis/searchappliance/documentation/52/integrating_apps.html

This integration will be very useful for educational institutes and universities who have many users and large number of documents with useful information. Large organizations may also find this useful and can integrate them in existing Google Search Appliance setup.

Google Apps now can be managed with more powerful APIs

Google Apps enterprise customers who have large installations can take advantage of Google's new powerful APIs. This will make Google Apps fit into their unique businesses processes and technology environments. Recently they have released some of the APIs related to Gmail which we have covered in an earlier post.

Yesterday Google has release some more of the powerful API features:

* API for Google Docs: now capable of updating the actual content of documents, sharing documents, and moving documents into and out of folders programmatically. You can learn more about this API from Google's website at 

http://code.google.com/apis/documents/overview.html

* APIs are now more robust and versatile: Domain administrators can now use OAuth (#) authentication to access GData feeds for users on their domains. This means that admins can do things like integrate with document management systems, enable third-party workflow applications, centralize backup of documents and contacts, and monitor document sharing inside and outside of the company. Using OAuth, administrators can enable this type of functionality for end-users without any end-user involvement. 

# OAuth is an open standard authorization protocol which allows users to grant others access to their data without giving away their login credentials. Premier and Education Edition admins can enable OAuth in the Authentication section of the Advanced Tools tab of the Google Apps administrative control panel.