Your Call to Action

This chapter helps you discover some of the user - related elements of creating a Google Web Services application. Building a great application isn't a matter of simply presenting information on screen. The technique you use for presentation turns an adequate application into one that users really enjoy. The chapter also discusses the idea of combining Web services. This idea isn't all that new ”developers have combined applications in the past. However, it's important to examine this concept again in light of Web services. Instead of combining applications on a single machine or network, you're now combining applications that could exist anywhere in the world. This concept is another expansion of user-centric computing. Applications that combine the functionality of multiple resources make life easier for the user and therefore improves user productivity and efficiency.

The essential nugget of knowledge you can take from this chapter is that the user is important. Whether you have good communication skills or not, the user depends on you to create an application that not only works well but also meets specific needs. It's up to you to decide to put the user first and make your application both useful and friendly. Empowering the user is one way to gain an order of magnitude in application performance and efficiency.

Congratulations! You've reached the last chapter of the book. However, your journey should also include the appendices for this book. Appendix A helps you locate useful third party utilities. Use Appendix B to ensure your application meets all of the Google licensing requirements. Finally, use Appendix C to learn about breaking Google Web Services news ”new technologies made available as this book went to press. If you've read from the beginning to the end of the book, you know that it covers a lot of ground. I encourage you to continue to use the book as a reference. Google Web Services is a truly remarkable undertaking and I'd love to hear about your experiences with it. Make sure you contact me at [e-mail] if you have any questions about this book. Also, look on my Web site at http://www.mwt.net/~jmueller/ for updates and additional information.