Google I/O: As Cool as JavaOne Used To Be?

[img_assist|nid=3191|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=172|height=90]Google I/O, the third annual Google developer gathering is kicking off later today, so we thought we'd speculate about what might be announced at the conference. It will be an interesting event, covering Android, Ajax and all those Google APIs and applications that have become integral in our everyday web experience.

Google App Engine

Perhaps one of the most interesting things that will be announced at the conference is the lifting of restriction to the Google App Engine. For those who may have missed the news, the app engine give 500MB of persistent storage and enough bandwidth/CPU for about 5 million page views. This might not be enough for those who wish to use the app engine, so the following pricing will be available

$0.10 - $0.12 per CPU core-hour
$0.15 - $0.18 per GB-month of storage
$0.11 - $0.13 per GB outgoing bandwidth
$0.09 - $0.11 per GB incoming bandwidth

TechCrunch report that two new tools will be added for App Engine developers, on top of the provided application environment which is based on Python. Memcache and an image manipulation API will be provided to allow scaling and rotating of images on the server. However, it seems there's no additional language support to be announced.

For those interested in finding out more, Mashable have a discussion in podcast format about the app engine and it's pricing schedule.

Android

The Top 50 applications in the developer challenge have been announced, so I guess there will be a chance to take a look at these in action. Of course, the best thing would be to see them running on an Android capable phone, rather than just on an emulator. As Michael Podrazik points out, a phone shipping with Android would take the wind out of Apple's upcoming iPhone announcement.

Talks

Looking at the two keynotes for the conference, it looks like cloud computing is going to get some coverage on day one, while Marissa Mayer will be giving "a little glimpse under the hood at Google". This should be interesting. If you look at the schedule you'll see that developers are spoilt for choice. There's an Effective Java Reloaded talk as well as some Gears based sessions and the potentially interesting Introduction to Google DocType: an Encyclopedia of the Open Web

GWT

With speculations abound, eWeek posing the question and release candidate version two released on 7 April 2008, everyone one is waiting with baited breath to find out whether Google is going to announce the general availability release of the Google Web Kit version 1.5.

Well, to add more fuel to the fire we here at DZone believe without a doubt that version 1.5 of the Google Web Kit will be annouced at Google IO this year, why? Well, from the sessions page of the Google IO web site:

Surprisingly Rockin' JavaScript and DOM Programming in GWT

"You may already know about GWT's nifty JavaScript Native Interface (JSNI), which allows you to define native Java methods with handwritten JavaScript. In GWT 1.5, there's an even more powerful way to program close to the metal. You can now model arbitrary JavaScript types directly as Java classes (specifically, as subclasses of GWT's JavaScriptObject class), yet there is no overhead in size or speed. You can code against any JavaScript object as if it were a regular old Java object. So, what does that buy you?"

So get ready to download GWT 1.5 and while you are at it stop by the GWT booth and get your very own GWT Refcard!

Will you be at the Google I/O Conference? What announcements are you wishing for?