What's That? Google Data Gadgets?

Posted by Eric Bidelman, Google Data APIs Team

Google just announced a new version of iGoogle that includes a special feature for gadget authentication called the OAuth Proxy. With the OAuth Proxy, developers can finally create secure Google Data gadgets.

Even Google teams are using this new feature to build gadgets such as the Google Book Search gadget which was announced today and is based on the new Google Book Search API.

The OAuth Proxy is built on top of OAuth and an open-source project called Shindig, an implementation of the gadget specification and OpenSocial. Using this platform, any OpenSocial gadget container can add support for OAuth-enabled gadgets. For Google Data developers, this means that a gadget you build for iGoogle will be able to run on other OpenSocial containers as well. Of course, you are not limited to using the Google Data APIs. The iGoogle OAuth Proxy works with any site that offers OAuth-enabled APIs, such as MySpace.

Interested in building a gadget? I've written an article that explains how to use the Javascript client library to create a Blogger gadget. If you're interested in diving straight in, detailed information can be found in the gadgets documentation.



There's never been a better time to mash up your Google Data!