practicehacker

This weekend I revisited the Google AppEngine – a project that has kicked around Google for some time but was heretofore confined to the company’s developer sandbox. But now Google has brought the AppEngine front and center, aiming it squarely at small businesses and setting off the latest salvo in the saga of Google v. Everyone (in this case, Google v. Microsoft and its entourage of high-priced application builders). I think it’s particularly cool that the Guardian, a British newspaper, has written about its own use of the AppEngine and development of its suit of company-specific, task-oriented apps or “Micro Apps” as they call it. Take a look and let me know what you think.

- M. Hedayat, Hacker in Chief

Today we’re launching a brand new product and framework called MicroApps which the diagram above describes. However, just as Google dogfoods its new products before launch, so do we, and we wanted to share some of the things we’ve been building as MicroApps using Google AppEngine for the storage and application development part. With 36 million unique and very engaged readers, everything we make has to scale, which is why AppEngine is ideal. With it’s highly scalable architecture and features such as task queues, built for creating loosely coupled apps, and memcache, AppEngine makes an excellent companion platform for MicroApps in which the apps can run anywhere in the cloud. The examples presented here range from new ways to find content which others are finding exciting or interesting, to live responses to the TV debates to ways to bring together all of the tweets of our journalists on specific subjects. <<Read the Full Article>>

From this piece in lifehacker.com comes some practical advice for those of us who use Google Apps in the office:

If your first stop after opening up your web browser is to load up various Google Apps, Gpanion is a sleek dashboard interface for all your favorites. Gpanion is a simple icon-based interface for easily loading your favorite Google Apps. The dashboard displays 14 applications out of 44 at a time. You can customize the layout so your most frequently used applications are shown prominently on the first page with less frequently used items tucked away down on the bottom row or second page. To save your configuration just sign in with Google.

If you’d prefer not to share any information with Gpanion, you can still use the site minus the customization. The links just pass you through to the actual Google services. The default setting puts Gmail, Gcal, Greader, Picasa Web, YouTube, and other Google-powered destinations at the forefront.

Have a favorite tool for getting more out of your browsing experience? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Gpanion [via Download Squad] via