The new Google Visualization API lets you access multiple sources of structured data that you can display, choosing from a large selection of visualizations. It also provides a platform that can be used to create, share and reuse visualizations written by the developer community at large. Several of the key benefits include:

* Embed visualizations directly into your website
* Write, share and reuse visualization apps
* Create extensions to Google products, such as Google Docs.
* Use many data sources, one API
* The Visualization API is AJAX-based and includes Gadget extensions so you can easily wrap your applications as Gadgets

This session is a practical introduction to building visual applications using the Google Visualization API. We'll walk through building an application and a Gadget that uses the API, using that application as the basis for discussing the various facets of the API.