It’s no surprise, then, that as those three aforementioned dinosaurs lumber into obscurity, Google keeps releasing features that are not only cutting-edge, but that are also, first and foremost, easy to use.

Example A: Google Maps just released Street View, a feature that will let you see a street level view of nearly any block in five major cities (San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, New York, and Miami). Not only that, you can pan 360 degrees around the street and “walk” down the street by clicking on navigation arrows. The system is Flash-based, and you will need version 9 to use Street View. I’m not sure what kind of practical application this will have (maybe to plan walking trips around cities or to see what’s around your hotel?), but it’s nice to see an application for which underlying technology existed years ago (remember Amazon A9′s visual yellow pages?) finally be put to use in a very cool way.

Example B: This may have come out a while back, but I just downloaded the Google Maps application for Windows Mobile 5.0 onto my T-Mobile MDA (HTC Wizard). For the longest time I’ve been lamenting the fact that it was impossible to use Google Maps on any mobile web browser (ordinarily I use Opera Mobile). The Google Maps application changes all that, allowing for use of Google Maps the same way you might on a regular desktop computer, with map scrolling, business searches, turn-by-turn directions, etc. If those features aren’t enough, you can also pair your mobile device with a bluetooth GPS device for GPS tracking. You basically have all the features of even the most advanced TomTom or Garmin GPS devices with a lifetime of free software updates. Thanks Google!

Language modules can be added/deleted from the navigation for further customization.

http://www.gotapi.com/

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1. Adaptive Path has formulated a very powerful tool for explaining the components needed to build a successful web team.

» The Nine Pillars of Successful Web Teams

This wasn’t the main point of their training, but I found it extremely valuable. We are a web only shop and sometimes our clients don’t fully appreciate what all that entails and what kind of expertise we bring to the table. The web is a multi-disciplinary animal and the 9 Pillars does a powerful job of showing the pieces. It’s also a great tool to think about your own career development and what may be missing from your team.

2. It’s great getting together with peers in the Web Development industry.

It’s rare that professionals from small and big companies, generalists and specialists, get together and talk shop. Our industry needs to make more efforts for collaboration and discussion. Maybe we should host an event in Santa Barbara?

-Michael

Symfony seems to be the most robust of these, but perhaps too complex for most basic web apps. Built around Mojavi, it is a fully robust framework. It’s main challenge will be in providing an easy to use scaffolding functionality that allows the developer to easily customize the resulting code.

WASP and Prado both are young and are developing the scaffolding alongside the core framework code. They could both evolve into strong frameworks.

Naturally, we at Pelago have found that there is no one-size-fits all framework. In the process of rolling our own framework, we’ve adapted the features we need from a variety of pre-existing frameworks. My guess is this will be the case for most web development shops building an app that goes beyond the basic app. I’m not saying that basic apps are bad, but i’m noticing a niche developing in the web app world. There are apps that do too much, which this new framework movement is rebelling against, and there are apps that do too little, which is all too often the aim of these new frameworks.

The success of these new frameworks will depend on providing a seamless setup experience for the basic web developer, while also allowing the more advanced web developer to customize and tweak the code to their needs.