Google introduced Google App Engine as a way to simplify the job of creating, running and scaling web applications at Campfire One on April 7th, 2008. Google App Engine lets developers run web applications on Google’s infrastructure. The idea is to simplify the infrastructure needed to build, to maintain (no servers to maintain), and to scale with traffic & data storage needs.

Google App Engine applications are implemented using the Python programming language. The runtime environment includes the full Python language and most of the Python standard library. Although Python is currently the only language supported by Google App Engine, I am sure Google is pulling out all stops to push more languages shortly to increase developer adoption of this new platform.

This was a preview release; it’s not feature complete and there is a quota system, a set of limits in terms of storage, CPU and bandwidth that applications can use during the preview period, right now for free. Once the preview period is over, that quota will remain free, but developers will be able to purchase additional resources as needed. The cost at this moment has not been disclosed.

The quotas in the preview release included: 3 apps per developer, 500MB storage per app, and per day (rolling 24 hour) quotas of 2000 emails, 10 GB bandwidth in, 10 GB bandwidth out, 200M CPU Megacycles, 650k HTTP Requests, 2.5M datastore API calls and 160k URLFetch API calls.

I have been tracking reactions and there are interesting mixed opinions:

• For some the free 500MB worth of storage was attractive.
• Almost everybody wants more languages supported.
• Business owners are contemplating the dependency factor on Google. This means that early adopters would be independent developers and startups.
• Farhan Mashraqi said that this gives the Python language “a big boost”; so also did blist.
• A Digg comment by Fuzzmeister suggests that this could have a strong impact, “this could evolve into something that fundamentally changes the way websites are hosted and run”.
• Wayne Pan believes that the ‘free’ angle is the biggest news, and that App Engine needs other languages and an external service model to really gain traction.
• Few people see some important privacy and security concerns here.
• Few think this as a very clever move by Google for more domination.

I think last is an interesting angle. Also it will be interesting to see how this will play in Google app framework and Google’s enterprise play. Stay tuned, the story in not over yet.

I came across this paid ad and found it interesting and contrasting. Now Google Analytics is a ‘free’ tool as advertised in the ad and as we all know, but why is Google checkout button next to the ad? Possible reasons:

1. Google wants to draw attention to this ad and feels that the button will direct people’s attention

2. There is a checkout process in Google Analytics, which has been discontinued, but Google Checkout is not able to determine.

Anyways, one of the small bugs, I guess

Analysts from IDC to eMarketer are expecting the market for video ads to rocket to $1 billion or higher in 2008. AdSense for Video, (an extension of Google’s In-Stream Video Ads) started in beta on Thursday, the 21st February, 2008 with about 20 partners’ Web sites including eHow, Brightcove, YuMe, ExpertVillage, PinkBike, TheNewsRoom and Blip.tv.

Advertisers will have to choose between video or text ads, which will be overlaid on the video clip. The text ads will rotate every 20 seconds. Unlike the TV style Preroll ads, overlay video ads are non-intrusive. The overlay/InVideo ads are a semi-transparent video or text ad that pops up on the bottom of the screen in the first 15 seconds. When users click on the overlay, it pauses the video, so they can watch the ad. Once the ad is over, the video will resume automatically. If the overlay is not clicked by the user, the ad disappears in 10 seconds.

I personally believe that 2008 will be year when video will become ubiquitous and present in every vertical & domain. Now 2006-2007 was year of advent of video from user content perspective. 2008 will be marked by the fact that almost every popular site will have video content. I am not sure that ad sense is the best way to monetize video or the preroll ads. I would like to see more innovations on this front- interactive ad model or may be pay per engagement model.

Today I attended Lunch2.0 @spigit. It was very well organized, even though it happened to be one of the hottest days in SF Bay Area. Spigit is one of our clients and it was great to interact with their enthusiastic Lunch 2.0 participants.

This event, combined with the BarCampBlock Conference, which I attended last week, led me to thinking how the conference landscape is changing dramatically. Earlier, most of us paid very high fees to attend conferences.

Now, conference fees are gradually disappearing! Some are free, yes absolutely free. These new age conferences have evolved into a different, more productive vehicle for professionals. Participants are active players in the industry; there are very few casual spectators. Casual, basic lunches have replaced time-consuming elaborate affairs. The main focus is to network with other professionals in the business and learn about new trends. It’s refreshing to cut out the social noise and pick on the essential stuff.

Here are some examples: O’Reilly’s FOO camp (FOO = Friends of O’Reilly)

BarCamp

Mashup Camp

More power to new age conferences, keep them coming!

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

This time Barcamp was in SocialText offices, Palo Alto and was really well attended - more than 600 attendees in the camp and lot of early idea folks checking whether market was ready for their innovations. I think this is a special feature of BarCamp. Agreed, that demo’s in Demo Camp were not well organized and rehearsed but the learning experience and fun in participation makes up for more than anything else. I have always believed that every idea is great and it is the execution that makes the difference. I can definitely say that these BarCamps are a great way to start building experience which can lead to understanding what it takes to execute well- finances, legal, building team and of course, networking.

Here is my picture from the conference - http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1192/1164244077_f6888c7d72.jpg?v=0 talking to Podtech founder Jeremiah Owyang.

Skype generated news when it went down last week. There is also Techcrunch analysis on how competitors profited from the Skype’s downtime.

This also brings one more important point not covered in any analysis- how fast skype has moved into essential category. If you look into the past, electricity took a lot of time moving into cannot-live-without-it category. Next good example was computers which was faster cycle into the category followed by internet, then email and now Skype in a very short timeframe has attained the ‘essential’ status. Lot of smaller companies which have distributed work force are totally reliant on Skype for connecting their workforce. These companies had to scramble to find alternatives.

Which is the next ‘essential’? Any guesses?

How should platform be defined? Official definition is that platform describes some sort of software framework, which allows other software to run.

Let me go ahead and attempt to capture the current broader thinking- Platform is the software/internet/digital medium possibility of reaching out to broad user base.

Microsoft Windows established some time back as platform of great scale. Microsoft guarded it with all its might for a very long time. Applications designed for this platform could reach out to maximum and also Microsoft’s marketing push helped the cause. Then J2EE came around and challenged with its build once and run anywhere appeal. The real shift happened though when Google established search platform- gateway to the web. This platform was open and the deployment here was ‘links’ just like application on windows.

Strategically or unknowingly, Google is moving towards a much bigger play as a platform- iGoogle (where widgets can be deployed), small business strategy and overall tool utilities, all point towards a broader platform. It’s Google applications are available at an amazing cost- Free, we at OuterJoin are also consumers here.

Are we now witnessing birth of another platform- Facebook which would be the Social Platform? Check out the campaign - Save Business 2.0 in Facebook. It is clear that such use cases of strong social affinities will continue to evolve in Facebook, now with the strong adoption by older folks as well.

That also brings to an interesting question, in spite of being number one destination on the web- why hasn’t Yahoo been ever considered as a platform. Is it because of diverse businesses and absence of single focus?

Clearly platforms will evolve at a more rapid rate than it used to. Apple’s iPhones have potential to become mobile platform and we will see more similar innovations.

Checkout- http://www.spigit.com. Spigit is one of our clients. They went live early morning today. They have been working really really hard (and the website shows - great UI and great content). We have been working hard to ensure that their hard work gets all the spotlight it deserves
Spigit is a platform that provides professionals the ability to showcase new ideas and innovations and in the process build their professional network. Companies and Entrepreneurs can obtain feedback-contributions-ratings from employees, partners and customers. Spigit has a simulation engine which helps in building and refining an idea, find the right resources to contribute, create buzz, and calculate a multitude of targeted metrics to provide insight into viability and simulate the likelihood of success.

Cool, right! The simulation engine is great, gives people an opportunity to test their ideas against simulated market forces.

Digg + Second Life + Linkedin, Give your idea a spin!