by Gokul Nath Babu and Anupama Dutta, Software Engineers We're excited to announce a new addition to the AJAX Language API - the Transliteration API . Transliteration is the process of phonetically converting a word written in one script into another. We launched transliteration on India Labs a year ago to make it easier to type in Indian languages using an English keyboard. Since then, we've integrated this into a number of Google properties, such as orkut scraps ,

Have you ever gone to a site, looked at the page and wondered, "how did they do that?" Since we launched our 2008 U.S. Election site I am getting lots of questions about that nifty little "page element" sitting in the center of the page. Everyone wants to know, "how did you guys do that? how did you pack so much valuable and tightly scoped information in such a small amount of space?" Take a look at the page element below,

Google engineers spend a lot of time working on speeding up their Web applications. Performance is a key factor for our teams, and we recognize how important it is for the entire Web. When you take a look at the effort that it takes to setup work that should be simple, such as caching shared JavaScript libraries, you quickly realize that the Web could be faster than it currently is.

Google will be hosting a hackathon at the Mountain View campus on Friday, February 29th from 2pm until 10pm. The hackathon will be covering multiple JavaScript APIs, including our AJAX Search/Feeds APIs. There will be some quick introductions to the APIs, then we'll get you guys coding with our APIs )bring your laptops!(. This is a great chance to learn a bit about APIs you haven't played with and to ask more advanced questions about the ones you love.

A few weeks ago, our team received a call from the Executive Producer of EW.com , the online extension of Entertainment Weekly Magazine. She asked if our Feed API could be used to build a module that they could configure to promote and link to their partner's sites. The result of that phone call is our brand new PartnerBar control. Working closely with the Executive Producer and production staff, we developed the control to meet the demanding needs of EW.

Early this morning we turned on a highly requested feature... The AJAX Search API now supports up to 32 search results as well as pagination through result sets. I understand that this might not match everything that you have been asking for, but at this point in time, delivering a 4x increase in the number of available search results is all that we are able to support.

The Google AJAX Feed API's Slide Show got an update with the addition of a full control panel option. To see this new control panel in action, just hover your mouse over the sample below. To get all the information on the new feature, visit the Slide Show Programming Guide . And as always, let us know what you think in the developer forum .

This morning, we made an update to the AJAX Search API that provides you with direct access to YouTube Channels , Most Viewed Videos, Top Rated Videos, and Recently Featured Videos. As millions of you have already discovered, our insanely popular Video Bar Control is a great way to showcase your favorite videos on your site. Using this new feature, you will be able to "subscribe" a Video Bar to the lonelygirl15 channel, the Most Viewed YouTube Videos Channel,

The Google AJAX Feed API's got a small addition today in the form of the Dynamic Feed Control . It is a control that expands on the base FeedControl and allows user's to embed multiple feeds for convenient display on their webpage. It offers several layouts, including our popular horizontal layout similar to the NewsBar , and also two forms of vertical layout. You have access to the full source code . We include default CSS styling,

In case you missed the announcement today on the Maps API Blog , the AJAX Search API now supports Australia in GlocalSearch. Make sure you read Pamela's post and check out her inline sample. If you have a map on your site and want to add search, the Local Search Control , might be the perfect solution. Make sure to check it out.

Post by Ali Pasha, Product Manager Over the last few months, many of you provided input requesting that we take an active role in addressing namespace clutter in our JavaScript based APIs. Based on your feedback, this morning we updated the documentation in a way that we feel addresses your concerns while also respecting the considerable investment you have made in your applications.

Post by Mark Lucovsky, Software Engineer Yesterday was an exciting day for us over here on the Google AJAX Search API team. At 6:00 a.m. I flipped a bit on our servers, opening up Image Search as the newest addition to this very powerful, and increasingly popular API. We built several samples that highlight this new capability, including a sample designed specifically for the iPhone .

Post by Mark Lucovsky, Software Engineer Since its release last year, the Google AJAX Search API has given developers a simple way to add Google Web, Local, Video, Blog, and News search to their websites and web applications. In February 2007 , we extended the system to include Book Search. After a few months of focusing on the AJAX Feed API ,

The AJAX Feed API makes it easy to display RSS and Atom feeds on any web page. Unfortunately, its not always quite as easy to find the feed URL of the feed that you wanted. To help with discovering and finding feeds, today we launched two additional methods. The new findFeeds)( method searches for feeds based on a simple query. The new lookupFeed)( method accepts a url and then returns to you the primary feed associated with that URL.

Post by Ali Pasha, Product Manager We just launched a Google Search widget for Blogger built using the AJAX Search API. For more information, see the Blogger In Draft Post . One cool feature of the widget is the 'Linked From Here' feature that searches the pages you've linked to from your blog posts. If you are not using Blogger but use the AJAX Search API, you can still create something similar for your website using Linked Custom Search Engines .

Google Maps added local search support for Sweden and Denmark last month and we couldn't wait to get it into the Google AJAX Search API. You can now search for businesses in Sweden and Denmark through your local search-based mashup without making any additional code changes. Go ahead and try "hilton near stockholm" or "sushi near copenhagen" here and see what results you get. Ali Pasha,

The Google AJAX Feed API's Slide Show Control is now available as a Google Gadget that can be added to your iGoogle homepage . So this.. can now be on your iGoogle homepage with one click below. The Google Gadget supports any direct feed that uses the MediaRSS extensions . In addition, it has configuration support for discovery of public Picasa Web Albums and tag-based search over PhotoBucket . We will most likely add other tag-based domains in the near future. As always,

We just launched local search for the UK this morning. For users already using the AJAX Search API for local search, you should now be able to search for businesses in the United Kingdom without having to make any changes to your code. Go ahead and now try "Starbucks near London" in your App that uses the Google AJAX Search API. You should get something like the following: If you want to add local search to your web site, take a look at the AJAX Search API documentation .

This afternoon we released a Local Search Control for the Google Maps API . If you already have a Google Maps application, extending it to support local search doesn't get any easier: Include a reference to the AJAX Search API Include a reference to the Local Search Control Call map.addControl)new google.maps.LocalSearch)((; Take a look at the sample below. It's the canonical "hello world" of Google Maps with the addition of the Local Search Control in the lower left corner.

I was at Google Developer Day last week and ran into an old friend and blogger , Robert Scoble, VP Media Development at PodTech . Robert and I were discussing how the AJAX Feed API could be used to engage customers more deeply. During this conversation, we discussed the characteristics of the feeds produced by PodTech. It turns out that each entry contains a photo associated with the article, an audio or video stream, as well as text based content and related meta data.