Google Data » Brandon Bilinski

New Contacts Data API features are here!

Brandon Bilinski — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:25:00 +0000

A new version of the Contacts Data API has been made available. V3.0 of the API brings greatly expanded data schema, including support for structured name and postal address.

We have vastly extended the data schema for contacts to allow faithful synchronization of Google Contacts with other widely used contact databases, like Microsoft Outlook or Apple's Address Book. Besides the support for structured name and postal address, another highlight is the inclusion of the oft-requested birthday field.

We hope the new version of the Contacts Data API will allow developers to easily create more sophisticated and universally compatible contacts-enabled applications. For any questions about the new features, please visit the Google Contacts groups page.

Posted by Lukasz Fryz, Contacts Data API Team

OAuth Playground: Open-sourced

Brandon Bilinski — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:48:00 +0000

The OAuth Playground has proven to be an invaluable tool for developers. For one, it's handy for experimenting with the Google Data APIs, but more importantly, it gives developers the ability to debug their own OAuth implementations. Anyone who tinkered with the open protocol knows it has nuances! Many first-timers fall into the same pitfalls, so to help remedy that, I've decided to open-source the Playground in hopes that other OAuth service providers will create similar tools for their own APIs.

A lot has happened in the OAuth space since the Playground's release last fall. Included in that is Google's growing number of OAuth-related features and resources to aid developers. Here are just a few:

2 legged OAuth for Google Apps administrators
Hybrid (OpenID + OAuth) protocol
Client library OAuth samples in Python, App Engine Python, Java, App Engine Java, PHP
Article: Using OAuth with the Google Data APIs
Article: Using OAuth in the Google Data API Client Libraries

The feedback we have heard is that OAuth is difficult to implement and that it's tough to grasp the interactions between user, consumer and service provider. By open-sourcing the OAuth Playground, we really want to make it easier for developers to understand the OAuth flow and debug their own OAuth applications.

For even more information on OAuth and the OAuth proxy, check out our talk at Google I/O entitled Using Google Data APIs and OAuth to Create an OpenSocial Gadget.

If you have any questions, ask in the forums!

Posted by Eric Bidelman, Google Data APIs Team

Google Analytics Data Export API has Launched!

Brandon Bilinski — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:08:00 +0000

We are very excited to announce a new member to the Google Data API family, Google Analytics! For those of you who don't know, Analytics is a powerful web analysis tool that provides incredible amounts of data about where visitors come from, what they do while on your site and where they go from there. The best part is that it's free for everyone!

The new Google Analytics Data Export API is now publicly available to all Analytics users as a Labs API that provides an easy to use way to get read-only access to your Analytics data. All report data that is available to you through the web interface will also be available through this new Google Data API. In addition to the standard Google Data API protocol of making requests over HTTP and accessing your data in XML, we will also be providing both a Java and JavaScript client library to make it even easier to integrate with your Analytics information.

With the availability of this API, you all now have a standardized way to integrate your Google Analytics Data with your own business data to extend existing products or create new standalone applications. Want to see custom views of your Analytics data? Create your own dashboards and gadgets that pull from the Analytics API. Want features that aren't included in the web interface? Build them yourself instead of waiting for them to be developed. Take a look at this Android application from Actual Metrics or this desktop application from Desktop-Reporting to see examples of what some developers have already done.

To dive in and begin writing your own apps, make sure you go to the Analytics API section of the Google Code website to find all of the necessary documentation. For key announcements, code changes and updates, sign up for the Google Analytics API Notify e-mail group which we promise will only send out e-mails when there is something that directly affects developers. Lastly, to share ideas and and get feedback from other developers, join the Google Analytics API Group.

For more details on Google Analytics and the new API, check out the Analytics blog. For more information about building gadgets with the JavaScript library and other topics related to the Google Data APIs, make sure to check out the website for our developer conference, Google I/O, which will be taking place from May 27-28th in San Francisco.

[Updated on 05/22/2009] We are happy to also announce that we added the Google Analytics API to the Objective-C client library. Check out the library here and if you have any questions, please read the new post on the Objective-C group page.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Friends, Activities and You – Become a Socialite the .NET Way

Brandon Bilinski — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:58:00 +0000

Posted by Frank Mantek, Google Data APIs Team

The new .NET SDK has been released and is available for download. There are a lot of changes, and among the highlights you will find:

- Updated support for YouTube V2
- Support for Google Contacts V2
- Support for Google Documents List V2

For those 3 services, there is now a vertical object model that allows you to use local LINQ queries. Please go through the Google.YouTube, Google.Contacts and Google.Documents namespaces and see what's new there. We have some documentation for it here:

http://google-gdata.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/clients/cs/docs/AdditionalContent/YouTubeLinqExamples.html

The new Google Document project template in Visual Studio shows you how to retrieve all documents and populate a treeview with those documents. In addition there is a Document List Exporter sample application to showcase the new export functionality of the Google Documents service.

Last, but not least, there is the Notifier for YouTube sample application which showcases the activity feeds YouTube is exposing. You can subscribe to events from your friends and other YouTube users and get notified whenever they leave their marks in the YouTube universe. The sample is also available as a separate download on the download page mentioned before.

The complete release notes can be found here, and along with the notes is a list of all of the bugs fixed in this release. To report new bugs, you can go to the .NET library issue tracker.

Enjoy!

Google Data On Rails

Brandon Bilinski — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Bidelman, Google Data APIs Team

"Where's Ruby on the list of client libraries?"

My colleague Jeff Fisher recently open sourced a Ruby utility library for the Google Data APIs. Mind you, it's not a full-blown client library, but it does handle the fundamentals like authentication and basic XML manipulation using the REXML module.

We've got a comprehensive article and sample application, the DocList Manager (full source), to demonstrate the basics.

Please visit us in the Google Data APIs forum to ask questions or submit feedback.

Start the Downloads!

Brandon Bilinski — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:36:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Bidelman, Google Documents List APIs Team

Many of you have been waiting patiently for the ability to download your Google Documents using the Documents List Data API. Today, I am very happy to announce the API's top feature request is finally live.

The undocumented (but widely used) RawDocContents url has been replaced by a more versatile Export servlet. Authenticated applications can now download documents in a number of different formats including pdf, doc, ppt, swf, xls, and more.

Exporting is available to all three authentication methods (ClientLogin, AuthSub, OAuth) and will work for developers using the DocList API with a Google Apps hosted domain.

Lastly, we've got samples!

Java - an updated DocumentsListDemo.java
.NET - a new DocListExporter sample
Ruby on Rails - DocList Manager added to googlecodesamples.com (source coming soon)

For all the details on exporting your documents, see the documentation. As always, if you have questions, please visit us in the Documents List API forum.

This feature resolves the following issues: 70, 35, 542, 706, 810

Bringing OpenID and OAuth Together

Brandon Bilinski — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:47:00 +0000

Posted by Yariv Adan, Google Security Team

We are happy to announce an important enhancement to our recently launched OpenID endpoint. Google now supports the "Hybrid Protocol", combining OpenID federated login together with OAuth access authorization. Websites can now ask Google to sign-in a user using their Google Account, and at the same time request access to information available via OAuth-enabled APIs such as the Google Data APIs.

For example, the website www.Plaxo.com is an early adopter of the new service and has already released a beta version supporting it for some of its new users. Plaxo's UI provides both a richer sign-in offering, using the Federated Login OpenID API, and a simple and secure way to import their Google Contacts using OAuth. In the past, sign-in required multiple redirects between Plaxo and Google, and more importantly, multiple user approval pages, one for OpenID during sign-in and another for the OAuth access authorization request. No more!

The Hybrid Protocol allows Plaxo to encapsulate their OAuth authorization request inside the OpenID authentication request, letting Google know that the user wants to use both APIs. Google can now display a single approval page for both requests. Here is how the new user experience looks:

In their sign in page, Plaxo offers their users the option to sign in using their Google Account and import their Gmail Contacts.

The user is then redirected to the Google website and asked to confirm both sign in and access authorization requests.

Finally, the user is redirected back to Plaxo, where she is already signed in and her Google contacts are available. If it's the first time the user signed-in using the Federated Login API, an additional instructive window will be displayed to ensure that the next sign-in experience will be as easy and successful as the first.

Not only does the protocol allows a much better user experience as shown above, it also reduces the total number of browser redirects and roundtrips, reducing overall latency.
To learn more about this new API see http://groups.google.com/group/google-federated-login-api/web/oauth-support-in-googles-federated-login-api. To make it easier for you to use the new API, we created a collaborative Open Source project together with other major vendors where you can download open source implementations for your Relying Party component. You are invited to contribute your own code and suggested best practices to this website.

The Hybrid Protocol is a result of the ongoing effort by the OpenID and OAuth communities to make these protocols more useful for users and websites. Google is working together with the OpenID community to standardize the new protocol as a formal OpenID extension. If you want to help further these efforts and have an impact on what the next advancements are, you are welcome to join the OpenID and OAuth mailing lists.

If you're interested in looking at some code, check out our working sample using the Google Data PHP client library. The source code is available here.

Playing Around with Google AJAX and Data APIs

Brandon Bilinski — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:00:00 +0000

Posted by Monsur Hossain, Google Data APIs Team

Ben Lisbakken of the Google AJAX APIs team just launched the AJAX API Playground, which offers an intuitive interface for playing around with JavaScript code and immediately seeing the results. The playground features over 170 examples of how to use the various JavaScript APIs across Google, including examples using our Google Data JavaScript client to access data from Blogger and Calendar. The samples include retrieving posts from Blogger, listing events from a calendar, and running queries to grab a subset of data. Enjoy!

Launched: Google Health PHP Client Library

Brandon Bilinski — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:57:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Bidelman, Google Data APIs Team

Here's good news for all you PHP developers working with the Health Data API!

The Google Data PHP Client Library now includes support for the Google Health Data API. You can download the latest copy from the googlehealthsamples project page.

In addition to the download, we also have a few developer resources to get you started:
Getting Started with the PHP Client Library
PHP Developer's Guide
Sample Application

Google Base API Now in the JavaScript Client Library

Brandon Bilinski — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:41:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Bidelman, Google Data APIs Team

Today, we launched a new version of the JavaScript client library that includes the Google Base Data API.

The Base API is great for creating interesting JS mashups. With this new release, it's much easier to build gadgets, mashups and JS applications that reuse the content in Base. In addition, you can interact with your personal items feed to create, modify and delete existing items.

To get you started, we've published a new Interactive JavaScript Developer's Guide and created two samples that demonstrate the library's capabilities:

Base Items Mapper

A read-write mashup that lets users update their geocoded Base items using the Google Maps API.

Jobs Finder from Google Base

An iGoogle gadget that returns a list of nearby jobs. The listings are catered to the user's search preferences.

No, You Lock It Up!

Brandon Bilinski — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:19:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Bidelman & Kunal Shah, Google Data APIs Team

The latest realease of the Google Data Python client library (v1.2.3) includes the usual updates and bug fixes, but also adds two important features, OAuth and secure AuthSub. Both authorization mechanisms allow developers to make their web applications more secure by requiring API requests be digitally signed. Check out the sample applications to get started:

Secure AuthSub example using the Google Health Data API
http://code.google.com/p/gdata-python-client/source/browse/trunk/samples/authsub/secure_authsub.py

OAuth example using the Google Documents List Data API
http://code.google.com/p/gdata-python-client/source/browse/trunk/samples/oauth/oauth_example.py

You can download the latest client from the client's project page. As always, if you're interested in contributing, the door is always open. Drop by the contributors discussion group and jump right in.

Like a Version; AtomPub Compliant for the Very First Time

Brandon Bilinski — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:53:00 +0000

Posted by Brandon Bilinski, Google Data APIs Team

Since the Atom Publishing Protocol specification was finalized, we have been working on making the Google Data APIs compliant with the AtomPub standard. As of today, we are releasing a new version of most of our services that achieves full compliancy with RFC 5023.

If you're worried that this may break your current application, rest easy. This change will only be available in API version 2 and higher. If you are happy with the current version, you can keep doing what you've been doing and the API will continue to work as it always has. If instead you'd like to use the AtomPub compliant version (and the new v2 features), just specify API version 2 in an HTTP header, and you're good to go.

One of the new v2 features is the use of HTTP ETags for optimistic concurrency. ETags are a web standard that work well with HTTP caching. The client libraries that support version 2 will handle ETags automatically, but if you are interested in how ETags look at the protocol level, check out the details in the Google Data Protocol Documentation. Some services are using V2 to introduce additional improvements as well (for example, YouTube's new geo-search feature), so be sure to check out the documentation for your favorite service to see what's new.

For those of you who'd like to try out version 2 in our client libraries, the Java and .NET client libraries have been updated with V2 support. To see a list of the services who are V2 compliant and to find out how to migrate your apps to the new version, check out our migration guide. We recommend migrating to v2 if you can, as any future improvements will be introduced to version 2 and higher. For further information about the release, please check out the new Google Data documentation or head over to our discussion group.

Updated 11/20/2008 to correct RFC number

Federated Login For Google Account Users

Brandon Bilinski — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:10:00 +0000

Posted by Yariv Adan, Google Security Team

*Due to the strong interest from our developer community and the high registration rate, we decided to make it easier for websites to experience the new API and removed the registration requirement. For more information see the OpenID post on the Google Code blog.

Many of the developers who use the Google Data APIs have asked for a way to remove the need for a login system on their site. Today we announced that we are allowing websites to test an API that will permit single sign-on for Google Account users who visit your websites. The initial version of the API will enable websites to validate the identity of a Google Account user including the optional ability to request the user's e-mail address. Here are screenshots of the example flow that a user might see if he or she starts at a website that uses this new feature.

The user would open the homepage of a website that uses the Google Data APIs (KidMallPics, in this example), and instead of having to fill out a login box or account creation form, he or she would simply click the Google button.

The user would then be taken to the Google website, where they would confirm they want to sign in to KidMallPics.

Finally, the user would be sent back to the KidMallPics site, where he or she would be signed in. If the user had previously signed into KidMallPics and authorized them to access the user's photo account at Google, then the user could now perform actions on the KidMallPics website such as having his or her mall photos transferred to Google using the Google Data protocol.

This new API is already being used by www.buxfer.com and www.plaxo.com. Shashank Pandit at Buxfer says that "We now offer all our users the ability to login to Buxfer using their Google Account to avoid the need to create yet another login and password." Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo says, "It's great to see Google become an Open ID provider in addition to supporting OAuth, which we already use. We are thrilled to be among the first sites to allow users to login with their Google Accounts. This is going to be great for users, Plaxo and the web."

We chose OpenID as the protocol for our identity provider because it makes a large set of open source implementations available for many different development platforms used by Google Data API developers. To learn more about this new API see http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/OpenID.html.

Google is also working with the open source community on ways to combine the OAuth and OpenID protocol so a website can not only request the user's identity and e-mail address, but can at the same time request access to information available via OAuth-enabled APIs such as Google Data APIs as well as standard data formats such as Portable Contacts and OpenSocial REST APIs. In the future, this should allow a website to immediately provide a much more streamlined, personalized and socially relevant experience for users when they log in to trusted websites.

Updated 10/30/2008 to reflect changes to registration process

An Introduction to REST

Brandon Bilinski — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:40:00 +0000

Posted by Joe Gregorio, Google Data APIs Team

Google Data APIs are based on the Atom Publishing Protocol and both Google Data APIs and AtomPub get many advantages from being RESTful protocols. Often the meaning of REST and the advantages of RESTfulness go unexplained so I put together this short 15 minute video that explains REST and some of the advantages you get with a protocol built in that style.

* For higher quality, click through to YouTube.com and select the "watch in high quality" option.

Update, Share, File: Documents List API launches new features!

Brandon Bilinski — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:47:00 +0000

Posted by Jochen Hartmann, Google Data APIs Team

I am very happy to announce that three major features requests have been implemented in the Documents List Data API this week. These are:

Update document content: You can now issue PUT requests to your documents and modify contents, metadata or both. (Issue 277)
Share by programmatically controlling ownership: There is now an ACL feed for each document that you can modify by adding or removing entries. (Issue 311)
File your documents: You can now create new folders in the API, move documents in and out of folders and have full access to nested folders. (Issue 377, Issue 383)

Please check out the updated documentation and look for these features being implemented in our client libraries soon.

What’s That? Google Data Gadgets?

Brandon Bilinski — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:51:00 +0000

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!

PHP Documentation Just Got Better!

Brandon Bilinski — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:53:00 +0000

Posted by Jochen Hartmann, Google Data APIs Team

Just a quick note about a massive update to our Getting Started with the Google Data PHP Client Library article. Not only do we now have a new video in which Trevor Johns walks you through installing and using the client library, but we have also added some tips on how to use the new installation checker script which can help detect common installation issues.

While we are on the subject of getting started, you may also want to check out the new videos for the Python client library and for the .NET client library.

API Access to Gmail Settings with Google Apps

Brandon Bilinski — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:21:00 +0000

Posted by Andrew Olsen, Google Apps Team

New admin tool dawns
Settings change like the seasons
For hosted email

When small businesses use Google Apps, it's easy for administrators to help employees configure user settings account-by-account, but this approach doesn't scale up very well for larger companies.

Now that we have a growing list of customers with hundreds and even thousands of employees apiece, offering a streamlined way for admins to configure account settings is essential. With the release of the Google Email Settings API, Premier and Education Edition administrators can programmatically update Gmail settings for their users in bulk by making requests to a GData feed. Modifiable settings include labels, filters, signatures, vacation responders, "send mail as" aliases, interface language, email forwarding, POP, IMAP, and more.

For example, suppose you, an administrator, want to allow a certain set of users at your domain to send an email using the alias support@yourdomain.com, you could do the following:

First you would create a working nickname or group support@yourdomain.com, which could forward e-mails to your support team or to an issue tracking system.
Then you use the API to allow the team to send e-mail as this address. Each time a user joined the support team, you would simply make this POST request to the appropriate URL - like the following request when user liz@yourdomain.com joins the team.


POST https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/emailsettings/2.0/yourdomain.com/liz/sendas

For all the details, check out the Google Email Settings API documentation.

Saving Bandwidth Made Easy: Google Data JavaScript Packaging

Brandon Bilinski — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:04:00 +0000

Posted by Trevor Johns, Google Data APIs Team

At Google, we believe it’s important to conserve limited resources, whether it’s the environment or bandwidth. While it won’t help with global warming (we have other projects for that), our new support for packages in our Google Data JavaScript client library can help with the bandwidth.

This feature allows you to specify precisely which Google Data services you’ll be using in your applications. We then use this information to send just the library code you need, leaving out all the rest. Less code sent across the wire means faster page loads for your applications. Faster page loads mean happier users.

For comparison, the current version of the JavaScript client library is 47 KB in size. If you request only the Blogger package, that library shrinks to 37 KB, a 21% reduction.

To take advantage of this, just add a packages argument when you’re loading the client library. For example, the following statement would request only the code necessary for working with the Blogger and Contacts APIs:

google.load("gdata", "1.x", { packages : ["blogger", "contacts"] });

If you don’t specify a packages argument, you’ll receive all available packages, just as before. This means that your old code will continue to work just as it is.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop by our discussion groups where you’ll find other developers ready to lend a helping hand.

It’s… A LIVE Samples Demo Site

Brandon Bilinski — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:44:00 +0000

Posted by Jeff Fisher, Google Data APIs Team

Sometimes it's not enough that we give you the source code. Sometimes it takes a while for you to configure a local Apache server and try things out. Sometimes you just want to be wowed without having to do anything! Now you can see what our samples look like before you download our client libraries by visiting the following URL: http://www.googlecodesamples.com/

Holy Moving Pictures, Batman!

Brandon Bilinski — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:09:00 +0000

Posted by Jeff Fisher, Google Data APIs Team

In case you missed the news over at the Google Code Blog, you can now upload videos to Picasa Web Albums using its Data API. It's as easy as uploading a photo -- a POST to the album URL with a video format (video/quicktime, for example) specified as the Content-Type. You can also choose a custom thumbnail for the video. The Java client library is currently the only library with support, but the snippet to upload a video and set the thumbnail looks like this:

MediaFileSource myMedia = new MediaFileSource(
    new File("/home/liz/birthday.mov"), "video/quicktime");
PhotoEntry returnedVideo = myService.insert(feedUrl, PhotoEntry.class, myMedia);

MediaFileSource myThumb = new MediaFileSource(
    new File("/home/liz/birthday_title.jpg"), "image/jpeg");
returnedVideo.setMediaSource(myThumb);
PhotoEntry updatedEntry = returnedVideo.updateMedia(false);

Read up more in the docs.

A New Google Data API for Book Search

Brandon Bilinski — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:42:00 +0000

Posted by Guillaume Poncin, Google Book Search Team

To complement today's launch of the Embedded Viewer API, we are happy to announce a new Google Data API for Google Book Search.

The Book Search Data API lets your application perform full-text searches across our complete Book Search index. In addition to basic information about each book, you can use the results to link to book previews, show to cover thumbnails, and more.

And since a large part of joy of reading or looking for books lies in the sharing of that experience with others, we are also providing access to the social features of Google Book Search. The API lets your application retrieve and submit user ratings and reviews, and build personal My Library collections for your users. And because a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a quick snapshot of the features that the API supports, from search to rating a book:

Finally, to make the Data API easy to integrate into your application, we are launching a Java client library complete with code samples and documentation. We hope the Data API, together with the Embedded Viewer, will lead to many exciting, engaging, and educational applications built atop this rich corpus of books.

For more details on today's announcement, as well as a peek at who's already started to use these APIs, check out our post on the Book Search Blog.

Point, Click, Understand OAuth

Brandon Bilinski — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:39:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Bidelman, Google Data APIs Team

In June, we announced that all of the Google Data APIs adopted support for OAuth, an open protocol that aims to standardize the way desktop and web applications access a user's private data. As programmers, we're taught to reuse code wherever possible. OAuth helps developers reduce the amount of duplicate code they write and make it easier to create tools that work with multiple services from a variety of different providers.

I created the OAuth Playground as a tool to help developers make sense of their OAuth woes. Use the Playground to help debug problems, check your own implementation, and experiment with the Google Data APIs. I've also written an article on Using OAuth with the Google Data APIs that should help you get started.

In addition to the Playground, we're also happy to announce that HMAC-SHA1 is now supported, and that there's a new version of the Java client library available which includes OAuth helpers. If you're a Java developer eager to try OAuth, get started by downloading the latest version of the library.

Just Feeding While You Work

Brandon Bilinski — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:05:00 +0000

Posted by Frank Mantek, Google Data APIs Team

Did you ever want to just kick off the download of some videos, upload a few new ones and then go on editing the description of that new title you are working on while the heavy lifting is done in the background of your application?

Now you have a friend in the multithreaded business. With the latest release of the .NET SDK for the Google Data APIs, you can easily spawn background queries, updates and even batch operations without blocking your UI anymore. This is done by using the event-based asynchronous pattern that is also used in other .NET components, so you will feel right at home using this new feature set.

Here you can see the updated PhotoTool backing up two Picasa Albums while editing the metadata of another picture:

In addition, the release sports a number of other enhancements and bug fixes documented in the release notes.