I’m super excited about how the Google+ project brings the richness and nuance of real life sharing to software, and today we’re announcing our first step towards bringing this to your apps as well by launching the Google+ public data APIs.

The APIs are available at Google+ Platform Developers site, and an introductory article is also available at the Google+ Platform Blog.

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Original post from Appcelerator’s developer blog:

Tonight, we pushed the latest 1.3 update to distribution servers. You should be getting an update notification inside Titanium Developer if you haven’t already. It’s been a little over 4 weeks since our last release. We had promised to get out 1.3 before the end of May and we’re a little earlier than expected.

The 1.3 release included over 120+ fixes for both Android and iPhone/iPad. The Android team won the most bug fixes in this release clocking in 63 bug fixes to iPhone’s 61. Go Android! For a full list of all the changes, please see the Change Log. Great job to Don, Bill and Marshall for all the hard work on Android. We still have a ways to go to where we want with Android but we’re iterating quickly now. We also have some very exciting Android features coming soon.

This release does have one major notable item worth talking about here (we detailed more of the specifics in the Change Log). With 1.3 and iPhone/iPad, we now are generating full source as part of the XCode project created at project setup. This change provides several benefits in terms of ensuring that we’re in continued compliance with Apple’s Terms of Service, making it easier for debugging or environmental issues we sometimes run into and making it easier to export a project to another machine (useful for agency/development partners).

The updated the Kitchen Sink distribution for 1.3 and it can be downloaded either from github or in a zip distribution. For 1.3, we’ve also started a basic Kitchen Sink for iPad.

What’s next?

As soon as we finish one release, we’ve already begun the next – in some cases before the final release is out the door. The next release is expected to be 1.4 and should be released to the community in June. For 1.4, we’ll continue to focus primarily on maintenance issues, API parity for Android and full API support for the upcoming iPhone 4.0 OS.

We’ll be pushing the first drop for the Blackberry SDK very soon now that 1.3 is out the door. Blackberry work has been progressing in parallel and we hope to release it within the next couple of weeks to Professional/Enterprise subscribers and Partners. We anticipate the full community release of Blackberry will be late Summer. If you’re not currently a subscription customer and would like to get access to Blackberry, please signup here.

Developer Site Updates

We’re making a number of major improvements to the Developer website and hope to release them in waves over the next month. Besides a number of nagging issues/bugs that have been reported, we’re also improving site search, introducing a new forum-based discussions and rolling out a new help desk for subscription customers.

Desktop Plans

Many have asked why Mobile releases faster than Desktop. This is a good question and let me address it. Desktop has been a slightly more mature product and has been adopted by some rather very large companies (as long as a ton of projects from tiny to large). We’re continuing to make substantial investments in Desktop and will be having a big update in the summer for Desktop.

Module SDK

Quite a number of developers have used the current iPhone Module SDK to extend Titanium. In 1.4, we’re planning on introducing the new Android Module SDK. We’re also hard at work on a new product we’re calling Marketplace that relates to modules for mobile, tablet and desktop. If you’re interested in extending Titanium with your own unique stuff, please let us know.

Tooling

We have some new significant updates to the Titanium tooling in the works – including debugger support. Expect a refresh of the current tooling with massive improvements in the early Summer timeframe.

Improved Documentation

We continue with each release to improve the API reference documentation. However, we know we’ve got a long way to go to better documentation. We’ve been working with a professional training company to produce our first set of programming guides and I’m pleased to say that we’ve almost finished the first new Getting Started Guide. The guide will be much more comprehensive and will be the first of many new Guides we’ll be producing over the next few months.

Training

We’re very close to launching a new comprehensive, professionally produced AppU video training series. Our plan is to release new video content every month much like we do software. The training will include not only on-demand video based courseware, but also guides and sample code. Stay tuned for more updates.

Community Growth

The last 4 months have been a whirlwind for the Appcelerator team and we’re very proud of our accomplishments and all of the great applications that are being built from all over the world. Nothing makes us more happy than to hear about all the cool applications that you’re building every day. Thank you for sharing them with us.

With all of this growth, comes challenges that we’re trying to meet. In the past 4 weeks, we’ve had numerous website outages as we hurried to upgrade our Amazon AWS infrastructure to handle the growth. We think we’re now ready for the next wave of growth from a infrastructure standpoint. We’ve also found more places where we could add high-availability and load-balancing as well as invested in better monitoring tools.

We’ve also welcomed four new developers to the Appcelerator team in the past 2 weeks – all of which came directly from our community and who are passionate about what we’re trying to accomplish. With this we hope to be able to continue to accelerate development and make Titanium the best product available.

Thank you so much for your support, your passion and your patience as we continue on our journey together.

Codestrong!
Jeff

Go to simplecloud.org or check the announcement in Zend’s Developer Zone. The first version is already available to download (this is basically an alpha version, apparently the full version will be included in Zend Framework), and consists in three smaller APIs. The interfaces are:

File Storage API

/**
 * Simple interface for unstructured cloud storage.
 */
interface Zend_Cloud_StorageService
{
    /**
     * Get an item from the storage service.
     *
     * @param  string $path
     * @param  array $options
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function fetchItem($path, $options = null);

    /**
     * Store an item in the storage service.
     * WARNING: This operation overwrites any item that is located at
     * $destinationPath.
     * @param mixed  $data
     * @param string $destinationPath
     * @param  array $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function storeItem($data,
                              $destinationPath,
                              $options = null);

    /**
     * Delete an item in the storage service.
     *
     * @param  string $path
     * @param  array $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function deleteItem($path, $options = null);

    /**
     * Copy an item in the storage service to a given path.
     * WARNING: This operation is *very* expensive for services that do not
     * support copying an item natively.
     *
     * @param  string $sourcePath
     * @param  string $destination path
     * @param  array $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function copyItem($sourcePath, $destinationPath, $options = null);

    /**
     * Move an item in the storage service to a given path.
     * WARNING: This operation is *very* expensive for services that do not
     * support moving an item natively.
     *
     * @param  string $sourcePath
     * @param  string $destination path
     * @param  array $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function moveItem($sourcePath, $destinationPath, $options = null);

    /**
     * Get a key/value array of metadata for the given path.
     *
     * @param  string $path
     * @param  array $options
     * @return array
     */
    public function fetchMetadata($path, $options = null);

    /**
     * Store a key/value array of metadata at the given path.
     * WARNING: This operation overwrites any metadata that is located at
     * $destinationPath.
     *
     * @param  string $path
     * @param  array $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function storeMetadata($metadata, $destinationPath, $options = null);

    /**
     * Delete a key/value array of metadata at the given path.
     *
     * @param  string $path
     * @param  array $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function deleteMetadata($path);
}

Document Storage API

interface Zend_Cloud_DocumentService
{
    /**
     * Create collection.
     *
     * @param  string $name
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return array
     */
    public function createCollection($name, $options = null);

    /**
     * Delete collection.
     *
     * @param  string $name
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function deleteCollection($name, $options = null);

   	/**
     * List collections.
     *
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function listCollections($options = null);

    /**
     * List documents. Returns a key=>value array of document names to document objects.
     *
     * @param  array $options
     * @return array
     */
    public function listDocuments($options = null);

    /**
     * Insert document
     *
     * @param  Zend_Cloud_Document_Document $document
     * @param  array                 		$options
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function insertDocument($document, $options = null);

    /**
     * Update document. The new document replaces the existing document.
     *
     * @param  Zend_Cloud_Document_Document $document
     * @param  array                 		$options
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function updateDocument($document, $options = null);

    /**
     * Delete document.
     *
     * @param  mixed  $document Document ID or Document object.
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function deleteDocument($document, $options = null);

    /**
     * Query for documents stored in the document service. If a string is passed in
     * $query, the query string will be passed directly to the service.
     *
     * @param  mixed $query
     * @param  array $options
     * @return array
     */
    public function query($query, $options = null);
}

Simple Queues API

nterface Zend_Cloud_QueueService
{
    /**
     * Create a queue. Returns the URI of the created queue. It may take
     * some time to create the queue. Check your vendor's documentation for
     * details.
     *
     * @param  string $name
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return string
     */
    public function createQueue($name, $options = null);

    /**
     * Delete a queue. All messages in the queue will also be deleted.
     *
     * @param  string $name
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function deleteQueue($name, $options = null);

    /**
     * List all queues.
     *
     * @param  array $options
     * @return array
     */
    public function listQueues($options = null);

    /**
     * Get a key/value array of metadata for the given queue.
     *
     * @param  string $name
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return array
     */
    public function fetchQueueMetadata($name, $options = null);

    /**
     * Store a key/value array of metadata for the specified queue.
     * WARNING: This operation overwrites any metadata that is located at
     * $destinationPath. Some adapters may not support this method.
     *
     * @param  array  $metadata
     * @param  string $name
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function storeQueueMetadata($metadata, $name, $options = null);

    /**
     * Send a message to the specified queue.
     *
     * @param  string $message
     * @param  string $name
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function sendMessage($message, $queueName, $options = null);

    /**
     * Recieve at most $max messages from the specified queue and return the
     * message ids for messages recieved.
     *
     * @param  string $queueName
     * @param  int    $max
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return array
     */
    public function recieveMessages($queueName, $max = 1, $options = null);

    /**
     * Delete the specified message from the specified queue.
     *
     * @param  string $id
     * @param  string $queueName
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function deleteMessage($id, $queueName, $options = null);

    /**
     * Peek at the specified message from the specified queue.
     * WARNING: This operation may block other receivers from recieving the
     * message until the message is released from the peeker for services
     * that do not natively support message peeking. This may impact
     * performance and/or introduce concurrency issues in your applications.
     * Check your cloud vendor's documentation for more details.
     *
     * @param  string $id
     * @param  string $queueName
     * @param  array  $options
     * @return void
     */
    public function peekMessage($id, $queueName, $options = null);
}

The full press release is here.

All the Free Express editions (Basic, Web Developer, C# and C++) are available for download as a web install or as a DVD image for offline installs. The .net Framework Runtime is available as a separate install from here (67MB!).

For more details, visit SottGu’s Blog.

 The communication, available in Apple’s hotnews section (search for “Third party applications on the iPhone”) is the following:

“Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.”

Included is the source code for the .net Base Classes (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows).

This will allow programmers to debug within the Framework, including better Call stack descriptions and Step Into MS’s code, so everyone can see what is happening behind the scenes. See ScottGu’s blog for detailed information and screenshots.

LiveID is a unified login service, allowing users to log in many websites and services using only one account. MS uses it in Hotmail, XBOX Live, MSN Messenger Zune and others. Now Microsoft is allowing web site developers to use LiveID Auth, providing this SDK in a number of flavors: ASP.net/C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby.

If you want to start using LiveID Auth in your website you must first agree with the Live Application ID terms of use, then register your application in the Windows Live ID Application Center. The “Web Authentication SDK” itself is available for download here and the documentation is available here.