Overview of Google Ajax Wizards

Ajax is simply a technology that provides one way to pull automated content from a server into your website. It could be considered something like a “feed” or a “stream” of content. In this case, there are various kinds of things you can get from Google, and then you can put them into a block on your Drupal site.

Here is a brief description of some of the Wizards. We’ll take a closer look at the News Wizard in particular. The links provide a description of what they do and previews.

• News Bar: Allows you to enter in terms for news you’d like to search for, and it will display a list of articles. www.google.com/uds/solutions/wizards/newsbar.html or http://tinyurl.com/newsbar

• Video Bar: Similar to the News Bar: Allows you to display videos from YouTube based on particular search terms. www.google.com/uds/solutions/videobar/index.html or http://tinyurl.com/videobar

• Book Bar: Displays covers of related books. www.google.com/uds/solutions/bookbar/ or http://tinyurl.com/bookbar

• News Show: Another news option. www.google.com/webelements/#show-news

• Maps: Allows you to embed a map. www.google.com/webelements/#show-maps

• Translate: Allows you to embed a “Google Translate” language menu on your site, so people can see your site in their native language. (Note: It uses computer translation, so it’s not as good as human translation, but if you write your content in simple language and stay away from idioms and slang as much as possible, it could be interesting. Try going to google.com/translate, entering some content, translating it into another language, and translating it “back” to English, to test it.) www.google.com/webelements/#show-translate

• YouTube News: Video news. www.google.com/webelements/#show-youtube-news