May 17, 2006
Google/Yahoo/Amazon Certified Professionals...
A couple of days ago (or was it just yesterday?) I posted on the topic of Google Certified Professionals as consultants who could go into SMEs and deliver training on getting a Google (or Windows Live etc.) web appliction office suite up and running. But it struck me that there may also be a need certification in the use of the code toolkits produced by the major webco's.
For example, Yahoo recently just announced an update to their User Interface Code and Design Pattern Library, which gives you industrial strength based widgets and CSS tricks. Now I know there are lots of toolkits out there, but the old saying goes that no-one ever got fired for buying IBM...
I wonder if there is potential in the future for saying that no-one ever got fired for using the example.com libraries?
And then last night Google announced the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) a Java coding environment with AJAX/JS code generation and whole lot more (early review here).
If I was Microsoft, I'd be getting twitchy. Surely Google can't be making a play to steal business from Microsoft's programming tools product line (speaking of which, there are Community Technology Previews of Microsoft's Expression web development product line currently available).
Amazon Certified Professional
Finally, I guess I should float the idea of an Amazon Certified Professional or eBay Certified Professional scheme which would certify the user as being competent at programming the APIs of the company in question.
(The Google Certified Professional would thus require three flavours of Certification: web application advice and training; expertise in using Google code libraries; and expertise in Google API programming.)
PS this is related too: "The Dojo Toolkit will be the first in a series of third-party AJAX components for GUI, communication, and data access that will be made available to users of TIBCO General Interface later this year." Ref: TIBCO Press Release
PPS: here's what a sample syllabus may look like, from eBay University
PPPS So here we go.... Google Certified Teachers:
The first 3 week's worth of study of Beyond Google cover Google power searching in depth, but not - admittedly - any of the other apps. I think it'd be fun to see how much of an ICT skills development course we could write if we just stayed Within Google?;-)
Posted by ajh59 at May 17, 2006 11:26 AM