In the last period I’m spending some time working with Google AppEngine: if you don’t know what is it, be ashamed!

I would like to highlight a couple of interesting resources that can make the life of who works with this framework/hosting platform/cloud computing system easier:

• Google AppEngine Cookbook with a lot of good recipe (there are few now, written by the Googlers, but I’m sure it’s gona blow up soon)
• The App Gallery, with a lot of interesting applications already in production phase
• A set of Articles on “how to do this and that” (sort of little CookBook)
• The Django Documentation about Templates (v0.96): the Template engine used in AppEngine (a superb one, I must say)
• The official Project Blog, with news, tips, tricks and other stuff

It was long time I was planning to learn Python: AppEngine looked like the right way to do so and jump on the Guido’s carriage.

What I’m working on? Nothing special, nothing comples, nothing huge. This time, Simplicity is the keyword.

Hi Guys.
I’m part of a very little Gooooogle Group (only 5 members) discussing about an interesting project, PySync.

I’ll not go in details (everything is in the “3″ discussions inside the group), but some interesting ideas are “popping-out”.

Share if you have something to.

Edit: Added a link to the Google Group of the project of Mal about the sync-stuff. It’s name is PySync.

Yesterday I went with a collegue (thank you Serage, particularly for the pictures ) to this event that the Google’s London Office sort twice (or more?) a year. Google London Open Source Jam.

I went for one main reason and other two minors (and… I didn’t know that the most important was another one ):

1. The Topic
2. To take a look to the Google Office in London (very very close to Victoria Station)
3. Free Food (very nice pizza )

(What’s the “main one” is up to you… ).

The Topic

This time, our topic of interest is Mobile.

1. Linux on phones
2. JavaME vs JavaSE vs .NET CF vs Native
3. Browser technologies: AJAX and Flash
4. Building native apps that port to multiple architectures
5. Open platforms (e.g. OpenMoko)
6. Cross platform testing
7. Making the most of mobile hardware (camera, voice, bluetooth, GPS, etc)
8. Phone bling

Continue…

A collection of howto on Gtk+ on the rich DeveloperWorks website from IBM.

2 articles are available right now:

1. Why use Gtk+?
2. How to use Gtk+

Source, OSSBlog.

The language of choice for large, high-performance applications in Linux is almost always C, or somewhat less often C++. Both are powerful languages that allow you to create high-performance natively compiled programs. However, they are not languages that lend themselves to runtime flexibility. Once a C/C++ application is compiled, its code is pretty much static. At times, that can be a real hindrance. For example, if you want to allow users of a program to create plugins easily that extend the application’s functionality, you have to deal with complex dynamic linking issues that can cause no end of headaches. Additionally, your users will have to know C/C++ in order to extend the application, which severely limits the number of people capable of writing extensions.

A much better solution is to provide your users with a scripting language they can use to extend your application. With a scripting language, you will tend to have much more runtime flexibility, as well as shorter development times and a lower learning curve that will extend the base of users capable of creating extensions.

Unfortunately, creating a scripting language is very much a nontrivial task that easily could become a major portion of your program. Fortunately, you don’t need to create a scripting language. With Python, you can embed the interpreter directly into your application and expose the full power and flexibility of Python without adding very much code at all to your application.

E VERY VERY INTERESTING howto: here.
Thanks much too much to William Nagel.

Google assumes the creator of Python.
As you (probably) know, Python is one of the most used language in G. (together with C++ and Java).

A good thing (evolution and power for Python development) or the transformation of Python in a “Google only oriented language”?

Stay tuned.