Yesterday's post about Web development and MVC was triggered by an article on Advogato by a guy who turns out to be the technical force behind an intriguing new Web app framework called Pyjamas. After I'd written the article, I spent a couple of hours with Pyjamas and was somewhat impressed with the work that's been done on it. Not only is the framework quite interesting (it's essentially Google Web Toolkit ported from Java to Python) but there's even a passable introductory book and some decent documentation.

Today, ReadWriteWebhas a very brief piece on Pyjamas. That will get the new Python framework a good bit of notice since ReadWriteWeb is one of the most popular in the blogosphere. Probably not as much as Friday's Slashdot story and discussion did, however.

It seems to me that Python has been getting more and more visibility in the Web developer community over the past several months. I'm not even looking for a new framework, having settled at least for now on the PHP framework NOLOH. But the old language junkie dies hard and my attraction to Smalltalk and Python occasionally resurfaces.

A few years back, I was working with Kevin Altis on his Pythoncard project when he decided that for his idea to gain some traction, Python itself needed better promotion and set out to help with that effort. I see Pythoncard has recently seen a resurgence of activity and with all of the online mentions of Python that I keep stumbling across, maybe the efforts of Altis and others are starting to pay off.

When Google announced the first release of its 3D virtual world technology Lively last week, they got the predictably huge press play anything from GoogleLand gets (and most often deserves). As it happens, I'm in the midst of a major project involving using such environments to create and conduct business, so I'm keeping a particularly keen eye on the market.

I will probably have more to say about the product itself when I have time to check it out. First, I have to install it on Windows. Yeah, that's right. Google, the folks who would be God of the Internet, still makes some products and technologies that don't work cross-browser or cross-platform. That's just stupid, bordering on unforgivable.

Is it easy to do great Web apps that run in all browsers on all OSes? Of course not. It should be, but it's not. But if anyone can and should be leading the way on that front, it's Google. That they couldn't be bothered to create this tool -- which is already such a Johnny=come-lately to the party that timeliness of delivery was clearly not an issue -- so it runs on Mac and Linux doesn't speak well for the company's understanding of the market.

There is simply no excuse for a Web-based product or tool that doesn't run across those boundaries. None. You could write the bulk of the app in NOLOH and accomplish it without a lot of sweat or thought or effort. It's just annoying when players like Google don't care enough about the need for platform agnosticism because it makes others think it's not a necessary consideration.

Columnist Mike Troiano of Adotas takes Google to task as a search engine because it falls short of some marks he's set for what makes for good search, principally it appears from an advertiser's limited world view.

Specifically, Troiano says Google sucks because:

• It fails to personalize search results for him based on his long history of Web search.
• It doesn't recognize where he is in the context of his Web travels, what he has evidenced interest in.
• It doesn't quite understand the meaning of terms (i.e., it is semantically weak).
• It hasn't changed its basic User Experience from the beginning, so it lacks doodads like dropdown lists and radio buttons.
• It doesn't even show up in the process of indexing the "stuff we're really interested in." As he says, "For the streaming video, music files, flash thingys and AJAX widgets that comprise a larger and larger share of our online media consumption, Google.com isn’t even in the game."

I find the first four items above relatively unimportant in my search experience and while I'd like to see Google do more with things like Troiano lists, he doesn't seem to want to give Google credit for other things it does that people obviously care a lot about, like maps and images, to mention just two.

I suspect Troiano was more intersted in trolling than in serious commentary and I don't agree with him on most points but he does end his column with a very good list of other approaches to search that you might find quite intriguing.

But you'll still likely default to Google. Because whether this guy thinks it sucks or not, it's way the heck ahead of whoever's second.

Google has opened its maps to user editing, a move I view with mixed emotions.

On the one hand, I have occasionally found flaws in Google's driving directions (though fewer than in other services I've used). Not all of them could be fixed by the kind of edit Google is allowing users to make now.

On the other hand, I can see unscrupulous users finding ways to take advantage of the ability to relocate a destination in such a way as to inconvenience or harm users and competitors. For example, if you own a liquor store and you have a nearby competitor, you could easily shift the Google Maps location of the other store and thus cause potential customers to be unable to find it. User-edited locations are clearly marked and the original location is preserved and available with a single click, but I suspect most users will assume the edit improved the accuracy of the map and use it without a second thought.

Wikipedia is of course the prototypical example of the dangers of providing user-editable content. Although I still use it as a resource, I never take it as the final word on a subject because uninformed and malicious reader-editors have frequently created erroneous entries. Some article topics on Wikipedia have become all but useless as "editors" with differing viewpoints edit and re-edit one anothers' postings.

While I have always been a huge proponent of user-contributed content, it is probably necessary and important for information sources who wish to be viewed as somewhat authoritative to have a layer of control and quality assurance that Wikipedia essentially eschews.

Hopefully, editable Google maps (wikimaps? mapkis?) won't suffer from some of the problems that have dogged Wikipedia in recent months.

Have you seen the new TV ads from Ask.com? (They might not actually be new. Since I use Tivo for all my broadcast TV, I don't generally see any commercials.) The one I saw asked, "Why does search have to look like this?" while showing the Google basic search screen (but not even honestly; see below) "when it could look like this", then showing a series of three different backgrounds on search request pages but not a single results page.

That has to be the most ineffective ad campaign I've ever seen. I mean, it makes the assumption that people would rather have their search requests entered on pages with cute pictures and lovely backgrounds than on plain white backgrounds. I doubt there are 20 people in the United States who give a crap about that. What they want is search that finds what they're looking for.

BTW, if Ask.com is going to continue this campaign, they ought to be honest about it. The default Google search page is not just a search box and a prompt and a button. It always has some minimalist graphics on it, some of which can be awfully cute and even attractive.

But seriously, folks. If the only way you can find to differentiate yourselves from the leader in your sector is by pretty pictures, maybe it's time you give up and go play in traffic.

Google is moving strongly into the social network space, but not by adding yet another social network to the dizzying array of such sites already vying for eyeballs. Instead, Google plans to offer a neutral JavaScript-based platform for creating apps that run inside social networks. This is a very smart position for Google to take. Its own social network, Orkut, has been a rare major bust for a company that often appears it can do no wrong. At the same time, Facebook has made great strides in gaining users of late, at least in part due to opening up its programming APIs to make it possible for third parties to develop apps that run in Facebook.

For security reasons, Facebook developed its own markup language called FBML and apps designed to work in Facebook must use that markup. This makes those apps unusable on other social networks (most notably perhaps MySpace).

Google chose JavaScript as the core language for developing the new cross-network apps. That's a smart move. JavaScript is clearly the client-side lingua franca of the Web, much as PHP is the de facto server-side scripting language, But while PHP has lots of competition, JavaScript all but owns the client side. The emergence of a loose bundle of technologies called AJAX, which makes it possible to create standalone application look and feel in a Web app, has really all but frozen out other languages in this important space.

Google has already lined up social networks Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle as partners, along with such rising app development stars as Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide. This leaves some awfully big social network players -- MySpace, Facebook, Microsoft, Bebo and Yahoo to name a few. But by choosing the gatekeeper role on the bridge between the social network and the end user, Google positions itself perfectly to ride above that fray. Eventually, assuming OpenSocial takes off as I suspect it will, those big guys will have to adopt Google's bridge even if only as a secondary, "also supported" technology alongside their own. And of course MySpace now has no such bridge; it will come as no shock to me if they adopt OpenSocial in the next 30-45 days.

I've been saying it since the early 90's at CNET: savvy Web developers need to master JavaScript. The case keeps getting stronger.

Holy Toledo! (Does anyone say that any more?) I received four -- count 'em! Four! -- spams this morning. That's a new one-day high in the past 60 days.

You just gotta love Google Mail for the outstanding job it does of spam filtering. I have been constantly amazed at how good it is and just figured it was time I stopped once again and said so.

It's nice when this tech stuff just works.

As time goes on, I become more and more uncomfortable with my interlocking relationship with Google. I have gradually -- almost insidiously -- become sucked into GoogleOrbit over the past few months and for the most part, I have been happy with the experience. gMail is absolutely the best email app I've ever used. Google Search is the gold standard. GoogleTalk inside gMail is nice and improving steadily. The ability to view and edit documents from gMail in Google's free productivity apps is sweet.

But I'm really tired of their pro-Windows focus. It seems to me they have shifted their attention a great deal recently to taking on Microsoft on the desktop to the point where their Google Pack offering for Windows users is now 3 or 4 times as large and good as that for Mac users. And that ticks me off. Web-based deliverable stuff should not be platform-specific. When it is, it's no longer the Web; it's Windows Comatose or something.

The straw landed on this camel's back today when Google announced it was making StarOffice available as part of Google Pack. Never mind that there is an Open Source equivalent called Open Office (NeoOffice on Mac) that is cross-platform and does 99% of what Sun's proprietary StarOffice product does. Google opted not to include OpenOffice in its offerings but instead to go with StarOffice, leaving OS X users in the dust. Again.

The day will come, Google, when Yahoo or some other bright light grasps the importance of the equation Web = platform-agnostic and will earn my loyalty as I switch to their stuff. I bet I'm not alone.

In a move that I think is about as dumb as any I've heard the company make, Google says it plans to open its news to restricted commentary. As John Murrell points out in today's edition of Good Morning Silicon Valley, this decision will open Google up to more legal problems than it has any apparent clue about. I'm blown away that their attorneys are allowing this.

Web sites that publish news and commentary from others are generally considered exempt from laws governing things like libel and copyright violation because they are viewed as "common carriers." Just as the phone company can't be held responsible for what you say or transmit over its wires, the theory goes, so Web sites can't be held accountable for information published on them by people other than the owner-publisher. Even that exception is pretty limited.

But if a site begins to monitor, evaluate and discriminate about publishing news commentary, it assumes the role of publisher. And in that role, it may well find itself liable for content that would otherwise not come under legal protection.

There are other reasons this is stupid and Murrell covers several of them. I hope Google re-thinks this policy that it describes as experimental.

I had a little extra time tonight and I was mapping a short trip tomorrow, so I figured I'd re-visit the main map sites to see if anything has changed in the time since my last "review."

Google is still the best because of one absolutely wonderful feature. As far as I can tell, none of the other maps have this feature; if they do, it's buried. Google surfaces it right on the map layout.

From my house, there are two routes to Salinas. One of them is obvious and is the default chosen by most of the map programs. The other is my preference. On Google, once it draws my map, I can click and drag the route over to the road I prefer to use and Google recalculates the route and redraws the map.

That, my friends, is way cool!

(For the record, the other maps I checked were Yahoo, Mapquest and Rand-McNally.)