Google App Engine »

Google announces Google App Engine, a complete web app hosting environment on the Google platform. Currently in a limited beta, with Python as the programming language

Google App Engine makes it easy to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data. The environment includes the following features:

• dynamic web serving, with full support for common web technologies
• persistent storage with queries, sorting and transactions
• automatic scaling and load balancing
• APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts
• a fully featured local development environment that simulates Google App Engine on your compute

The main demo that Google have made for it, HuddleChat, is a direct, “feature for feature, layout for layout”, clone of 37signal’s Campfire, a great web chat application made by a company of 10. “We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for.”

Update: Google have taken down HuddleChat, citing widespread complaints.

The mathematics of preservation and the future of urban ruins »

On bldblog: should we preserve civic infrastructure that is historically interesting, but no longer useful?

So the question becomes: at what point do we preserve something not for its historical value but for its topological interest? If a bridge, or a highway overpass, becomes functionally obsolete, is it still subject to the rules of architectural preservation — whether or not it’s mathematically unique or culturally intriguing? Surely infrastructure is just infrastructure — i.e. when it breaks you replace it? You don’t preserve infrastructure.

Or do you?

For visual reference here I mentioned architect Alberto Campo Baeza’s 2002 proposal for a Mercedes Benz Museum. Might Campo Baeza’s structure be a model for what the I-95/695 intersection would look like if it was detached from the highway system and left alone, to be surrounded by new freeways?

Scalr: auto-scaling web app hosting in EC2 »

Scalr is a fully redundant, self-curing and self-scaling hosting environment utilizing Amazon’s EC2.

It allows you to create server farms through a web-based interface using prebuilt AMI’s for load balancers (pound or nginx), app servers (apache, others), databases (mysql master-slave, others), and a generic AMI to build on top of.

The project is still very young, but we’re hoping that by open sourcing it the AWS development community can turn this into a robust hosting platform and give users an alternative to the current fee based services available.

This looks like it could be great when it develops. I kind of think that Amazon themselves should be providing this kind of executive service to auto-scale and -heal an application deployed in their grid (and wouldn’t be surprised if they add it as their service matures).

Simile Timeline, an AJAX widget for visualising time-based events »

Simile Timeline is an interactive widget for arbitrary timelines. It implements a data visualisation that is something like what Edward Tufte mocked up as an alternative to Gantt charts for project timelines.

It gives two views: a zoomed in view of the detail, and a zoomed out view to give context. Looks great.

Lifehacker has a good example of it being used to record a personal timeline — a CV of sorts.

Ask E.T.: Project management graphics »

In this thread on project management graphics, Edward Tufte shows a fantastic alternative solution to Gantt charts, which as implemented in MS Project scale badly both in the time and the task dimensions.

Would love to see an application implement this. Or maybe have a go myself.

Amazon adds static IP addresses to EC2 »

This is great news: Amazon EC2 now lets you reserve static IP addresses, and allocate them to your instances. Previously, IP addresses were dynamic — if you shutdown an instance, or it crashed, the IP that it had was lost: it would go back into the general allocation pool.

This makes EC2 much more viable for running public web sites, because now you can set up a load balancer on a static IP, and not have to worry about dynamic DNS, and clients that ignore TTLs.

Ross Gittins wants you to stop showering »

Ross Gittins, an otherwise seemingly sane economist opinion writer, wants you to go easy on your showering, in the name of energy savings. We’ve all been brainwashed by Dove ads, apparently, and can easily go a few days without a shower.

Ross Gittins hasn’t sat behind the guy on the bus that I did tonight, obviously.

MetaCarta GeoSearch News »

MetaCarta’s GeoSearch News is a newly launched service that indexes news articles from a bunch of sources (the wires and masthead news sites primarily), mines the content for location data, and then plots those on a searchable Google map.

Nifty!

Paul Keating on Woolley’s Opera House plan »

Paul Keating has a fun piece in the SMH about Ken Woolley’s plan for a new, unsympathetic opera theatre on Sydney’s Opera House forecourt:

Joern Utzon gave Sydney not only the greatest building of the 20th century but one unique in all history. Its plastic yet classic forms confounded his competitors, who entered designs based on their idolatry of the steel beam and the box-like structures which grew, Meccano-like, from their drawing boards.

A giant box dropped into this space, I believe, has absolutely no merit. And to provide a theatre on the scale proposed by Woolley would need to be much larger, far larger than that illustrated in the Herald. A major auditorium will look like a major auditorium.

Ken Woolley says:

“Some critics will feel it compromises Utzon’s original vision, while others will say it just will not work … It does demand courage. Only the brave would dare build something near the sacred monument.”

Wow, such clever and subtle mind-trickery there from Ken. We’re not cowards just because we don’t like your plan.

NSW photographer’s rights »

Andrew Nemeth:

An analysis of legal issues which apply to street photography in NSW Australia, written from a photographer’s perspective, with a focus on what rights shooters have (and don’t have) when it comes to candid photographs of people.

Even though “unauthorised” photography hasn’t been prohibited, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s open slather. Far from it! NSW Defamation and Offensive-behaviour laws still apply, as do common-law doctrines of Nuisance, Trespass, or statutory prohibitions arising out of the Commonwealth Trade Practices Act.