I'm just connecting fictitious dots here, but it seems a rather crafty move to launch a hotel search site in the midst of the Airbnb debacle. "Oh, I was going to use Airbnb, then I heard about so-and-so's experience with them and decided to book a hotel instead ... and oh look! A spiffy new hotel search service!"
Which reminds me--I think there was an article linked here on HN not long ago about Google's timing in releasing new products/features--can't find it now, but makes me wonder if Google doesn't keep a few projects in the wings, waiting for the opportune moment (i.e. best PR moment) to launch them.
I doubt it. Based on the number of sessions at Google IO this year for GWT (many) and the number of sessions for Closure (one?), I would say they were outwardly pushing GWT much more than Closure.
I wish they would come out with more JavaScript tools. I have used GWT for a couple side projects, and while the tools and library are amazing, writing an app the "GWT Way" (using all the design patterns) is cumbersome and difficult, especially for a one-man-show.
Closure is better in this regard (mostly by virtue of being a JavaScript library instead of a Java library, IMO), but it's still overkill for quick side projects where something like underscore.js would suffice.
Why would they use Closure instead of GWT? Closure is just JavaScript. No waiting for the GWT team to build the features you need, no having to build those features yourself. And in my experience, when I need cutting edge with GWT, I end up writing a bunch of wrappers for JavaScript functions, which makes me wonder why I'm not writing everything in JavaScript. (Like I said, the GWT library is very compelling and when planning a large project, Java often feels more comfortable for some.)
So no, I doubt they are killing GWT, but it would sure be nice to see them develop some comparable JavaScript tooling (as one of their main points for choosing Java as the language of GWT is because of the quality of the existing Java tools).
Couldn't this be used as a replacement for Flash? I know one of your selling points is that you can do some rather amazing visual imagery without needing any programming skills; but what if you coupled a basic image/video/animation editor with scripting abilities (javascript)? You would have a nice alternative for tired-of-flash developers who create sites like the Droid product page, pretty much every movie landing page, and every video game product page. You know Adobe is already working on it, and Dreamweaver is already integrating HTML5. But build something on open standards, not tightly integrated to any one image/vector editing software, and you would have a strong market.
Reasons you might consider using Closure instead of something like jQuery, plain-old-js:
1. Your javascript file is getting huge and you want to break things out into manageable pieces.
2. You find yourself needing namespaces that are easy to implement.
3. You want to learn how to build structured javascript (Closure is great at encouraging well documented, "object-oriented" coding)
4. You've got too many js files (2+) and you want to only have one in production for faster page loading (use closure compiler)
5. You're building an application with a team of developers; closure helps create modular, well documented code
6. You want to build a snappy, client-side heavy application
Before I ever used Closure, I used javascript more like frosting on a cake. Javascript can be frosting, but it can also do some amazing things. My biggest complaint with javascript in the past has been it's unwieldy nature in medium to large projects. I stuck to using javascript/jQuery to decorate html pages and had the page generation, business logic, templating, etc., on the server side (Python). Then I wrote a medium sized application in closure, and it worked, and it's maintainable, and it didn't require a lot of server side code, and it was fast.
I couldn't be happier.
My only complaint is it seems Closure development doesn't have the velocity that other projects like GWT have. Google, it seems, is putting it's money more on GWT than something like closure; or so it seems based on the amount of announcements for GWT, the quality of the tools and libraries being produced, the number of updates to closure compared to GWT. While GWT is a powerful tool, it's more complex (thanks to Java), harder to setup, harder to get started. In some ways I wish they would take the tools and frameworks they have for GWT and build them for Closure.
I know I'm greatly generalizing here, but when it comes to privacy there are two types of people: good people with legitimate things to hide and bad people with bad things to hide. Knowledge is everything. If I know the government is logging my chats and I'm in the "good people" category, I'll try not to say anything I don't want public and at the same time hope they are catching the "bad people" by logging their chats too.
But does that mean we only care about the privacy of good people? Or do we justify breaching the privacy of good people in order to "protect" them from the information bad people might have?
For me, I'll give up a lot of my privacy if it means less savory characters are stopped from doing bad things. But it's a fine line, and it can be crossed when so much of my privacy is given up that it becomes dangerous to me because of the usefulness or sensitivity of the information divulged.
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The death of privacy is quickly being carried out by the age of false privacy. It's the age of not knowing who is hearing what or even know how much you are sharing; but more so, it's the age of cover-up, where you buy privacy by putting forth a salted self. Those immersed in social media are getting increasingly apt at concealing the bad and accentuating the good. Personal blogging is usually nothing more than an exercise in deception. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't want to know your dirty secrets.
Reminds me of The Alliance by Gerald Lund. Pretty soon we'll all be implanted with these things to inhibit bad behavior like over-eating, unsightly public acts of nasal cleansing, or being stupid.
Which reminds me--I think there was an article linked here on HN not long ago about Google's timing in releasing new products/features--can't find it now, but makes me wonder if Google doesn't keep a few projects in the wings, waiting for the opportune moment (i.e. best PR moment) to launch them.