Joining the party after everyone's left

Righty. Some time back in the mid Sixteenth Century, I attempted to write a Google Wave robot to scan blips for protein ids, and, on finding any, query a database and show appropriate mass spectra in a wee Gadget.

Details on this fiasco are available in a previous post. It didn't work.

I attempted to write the Gadget as a wrapped up Java applet. This caused all manner of unpredictable mayhem and very rapidly justified my initial guess that it was a ludicrous idea to start with.

Anyways, the good news is that it now works. The bad news is that no-one gives a monkey's about Google Wave anymore.

Anyways, as opposed to my usual long, rambling posts, the long and short of things were thus:

• Rather than attempt to display mass spectra in a Java applet (so 1997), I used the rather nifty Google Chart Tools.

• I was attempting to use AJAX and XMLHttpRequest objects in the Gadget code. This was severely frowned upon by the Gods of Google (Gods know why). The recommended means of communicating with the outside world in a Gadget can be found by interrupting your evening's viewing of Man United being dumped out of the Champions League with the reading of the Remote Data Requests Developers Guide.

Currently to be found hanging out at: systems-biology-data@appspot.com.

So - hoorah - I now have a working Robot. Whether this is of use to anyone (particularly me) is another story. But life is a journey, not a destination, apparently, and in throwing all of this together, I've learned a bit about Wave and a lot more about AJAX, which will certainly be useful. The language, that is, not the football team.

Stop press: I've learnt since submitting this that people do care about Google Wave, and the party is not over. I've also learnt that this has been described as the "geekiest extension yet" to a Google Wave. Bloody cheek.