Another huge Google milestone for independent developers
David April 8th, 2008
There are now thousands of instances where developers and businesses have used Google Maps APIs to create maps integrated with their own data (also called mashups). Where geographic data used to be limited to specialized developers and organizations with a large budget, this ability is now in the hands of high school students with pet projects.
Last night Google launched a preview release of Google App Engine, "a way for developers to run their web applications on Google’s infrastructure." This promises to be equally enabling but not limited to a specific function like mapping tools. Any generic application which requires an application server, web server, and database can be powered by this infrastructure.
With Google App Engine, developers can write web applications based on the same building blocks that Google uses, like GFS and Bigtable. Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow. This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications. (There’s more detail on the new App Engine Blog.)
…This preview of Google App Engine is available for the first 10,000 developers who sign up; we will increase that number in near future. So, developers, please sign up, download the SDK, and start your engines.
Here is a geeky step by step video for using Google App Engine with Python:
Here are a few early reviews from other blogs:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/07/google-jumps-head-first-into-web-services-with-google-app-engine/
http://ajaxian.com/archives/what-does-google-app-engine-mean-for-ajax-developers
Some developers are comparing Google’s service to Amazon S3, which has been out for several years now. One of the big differences right now is that this version of Google App Engine is that it only supports Python, where Amazon S3 supports C#, Java, PHP, and Ruby… a much more robust set of languages.
… and some more reviews…
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080408-analysis-google-app-engine-alluring-will-be-hard-to-escape.html
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=48994
Yes, this is making waves in the industry, but there some legitimate concerns about how this will actually work. I don’t know enough about this service to really say one way or another.
I think a more important Google development that will have a far more
greater impact on LDS families is the Google Books section. This last
week I’ve discovered several old rare books about my family tree
(published in 1880’s) and have submitted nearly a hundred names to LDS
New Family Search for Temple Work.
When will the LDS Church / BYU let Google Books scan in all of the old
rare pioneer books and Family History microfilm/microfiche?
@Roland
Actually, the LDS Church has been scanning the records from the Granite Mountain vault for several years now. They are soliciting volunteers to help with the indexing so that these images can be searched online. The indexing site is http://www.familysearchindexing.org and the records search site is still in development at http://search.labs.familysearch.org/recordsearch
There are a lot of other rare books that will be made available at the new Church History Library when it opens in Spring 2009. The Deseret News ran a story on the new library back in February.