Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all those who contributed their ideas and code for Google hacks to this book. Many thanks to Nelson Minar and the rest of the Google Engineering Team, Nate Tyler, and everyone else at Google who provided ideas, suggestions, and answers—not to mention the Google Web API itself. And to Andy Lester and Justin Blanton, our technical editors along the way, goes much appreciation for their thorough nitpicking.

Tara

Everyone at O'Reilly has been great in helping pull this book together, but I wouldn't have gotten to participate in this book if it hadn't been for Tim Allwine, who first helped me with Perl programs a couple of years ago.

My family, especially my husband, has been great about tolerating my distraction as I sat around muttering to myself about variables and subroutines.

Even as this book was being written, I needed help understanding what Perl could and couldn't do. Kevin Hemenway was an excellent teacher, patiently explaining, providing examples, and when all else failed, pointing and laughing at my code.

Of course, most of this book wouldn't exist without the release of Google's API. A big thanks to Google for building a playground for us thousands of search-engine junkies. And just as big a thanks to the many contributors who so generously allowed their applications to appear in this book.

Finally, a big, big, he-gets-his-own-paragraph thanks to Rael Dornfest, who is a great coauthor/editor and a lot of fun to work with.

Rael

First and foremost, to Asha, Sam, and Mira—always my inspiration, joy, and best friends.

My extended family and friends, both local and virtual, who'd begun to wonder if they needed to send in a rescue party.

Brian Sawyer has, over the course of the last year, been my production liaison, coeditor, editor, "man Friday," and friend. Hat's off ;-) to Brian, and long may he stet.

I'd like to thank Dale Dougherty for bringing me in to work on the Hacks series; it's been a circle of wide circumference from Google Hacks to Google Hacks, Second Edition, and quite the journey of discovery. The O'Reilly editors, production, product management, and marketing staff are consummate professionals, hackers, and mensches. Extra special thanks goes out to my virtual cube-mate, Nat Torkington, to Laurie Petrycki for showing me the ropes, and Tim O'Reilly for his unfailing support and friendship.

Tara, it's been fabulous traveling this road with you, and I intend to make sure our paths keep on crossing at interesting intersections.

Karma points to Clay Shirky and Steven Johnson for egging me on to do more with the Google API than late-night fiddling. And, of course, a shout-out goes to the blogosphere population and folks in my Google neighborhood for their inspired prattling on APIs and all other things geek-worthy.