FusedthoughtGoogleCL: Google's new command-line tool
June 19 2010Google recently released a little gem, called GoogleCL, a python-bsaed, command-line interface (CLI) for it's data APIs.
About the Tool
From the Google Open Source blog,
GoogleCL is a command-line utility that provides access to various Google services. It streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog, adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs.
Although it's more targeted at power users, I feel that non-power users or non-programming oriented users should not dismiss this CLI tool.
In my personal opinion, although Google does have excellent interfaces for their services, using this tool would make bulk uploading to services like picasa albums or uploading a youtube video much more streamlined and productive. All the fancy effects and scripts associated with a webpage are not present which would definitely have an impact. It's down to a simple one-line of command versus multiple clicks on a website.
Installing the Tool
As a python application, python is needed for GoogleCL to run. For developers, programmers and power users, this probably wouldn't be a problem as you'll probably have them installed already. For non-power users, Google has documented a small guide on setting up GoogleCL on your computer.
In summary, the following are required for GoogleCL to run:
Do check out Google's example scripts, as well as GoogleCL's manual page for more information.
Other Uses for this tool?
On another front, developers may be able to use this tool as a base and build a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the desktop. Instead of worrying on how to communicate with Google, developers can focus on the GUI while letting GoogleCL handle the API stuff.
It'll be interesting how developers can leverage on this tool as more services are supported.
Final Thoughts.
For a company I associate with minimalistic front-end designs, they probably have taken "minimalist" back to the very basic.