Some small updates!

We're happy to announce we've released some small updates to Google App Engine. Among the more significant changes:

• More apps: Want to create more than 3 applications with your App Engine account? Now you can now create up to 10!
• Time windows for Dashboard graphs: Zoom in on the data in your dashboard to get a more accurate picture of whats going on. You can zoom in to see graphs for the last 24, 12, and 6 hour periods.
  
• Logs export: You can now use appcfg.py to download your application's logs in plaintext format. Use appcfg.py --help for more information on how to download your logs.
  
• Send email as logged in user: If you're using the users API, you can now send email from the email address of the currently-logged-in user.

Be sure to update your SDK and check the release notes for a full list of changes. Have more changes you'd like to see with App Engine? Let us know in our Google Group!



Posted by Paul McDonald, App Engine Team

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Google Code Jam up and running on App Engine

Google Code Jam is a coding competition in which professional and student programmers are asked to solve complex algorithmic challenges in a limited amount of time. The contest is all-inclusive: Google Code Jam lets you program in the coding language and development environment of your choice. The Top 500 participants will advance to onsite competitions at a local Google office to compete against those in their region (Asia Pacific; Europe, Middle East and Africa; and the Americas). The Top 100 will participate in the final round at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California.


The application that runs the competition is built on App Engine. It was developed by a few Google engineers in their 20% time and is currently serving about 200 requests per second.


If you are interested in participating you still have a few hours to register. Go to the Code Jam site and check out the live scoreboard!


Posted byPaul McDonald, App Engine Team

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App Engine Community Update

Posted by Marzia Niccolai, Google App Engine Team

Having spent the past two weeks tracking a hamster across America, creating collaborative pictures, and planning plenty of parties, I think it's time to get together another community update.

We were excited to find that one of our developers has started tracking App Engine performance, and hope to see more along these lines in the future. Developers continue to contribute information relating to the bulk loader, including an article that discusses UTF-8 and HandleEntity. And finally, Adobe AIR and Flex developers might be interested in this article about creating a photo application on Google App Engine.

Those of you who aren't content to just read may wish to get your hands dirty with some Open Source App Engine code. We've had 10 more additions to our Open Source project page, including projects that will interest all you Scrabble players, radio listeners, and RESTful developers.

Lastly, the forum discussion continues to keep pace, with topics that include IP geocoding, domain configuration, and continued discussion about the cap on indexed properties for an entity.

Keep letting us know what you've been up to!

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App Engine Hack-a-thon: Chicago

Posted by Marzia Niccolai, Google App Engine Team

Please join us on July 31st for a Google App Engine Hack-a-thon in the Windy City.

Learn about Google App Engine

The events will include training on the major features of Google App Engine, including data modeling, the App Engine APIs, some aspects of Django, and how to mashup App Engine with other web services. Google Engineers and Product Managers will be on hand to help and to answer questions throughout the day.

For a better idea of what goes on at our hack-a-thons, see our previous posts about the New York and San Francisco hack-a-thons.

Build With Us, or Build Your Own

Throughout the day, we will be building a complete App Engine application, and sharing the code with you so you can code along with us. If, on the other hand, you already have a great idea for what to build, bring that idea along. Even better, bring along anything you can prepare ahead of time (sketches, designs, web page mock ups, etc.) and use the time and information provided to develop your idea into a working application, then share it with the world.

At the end of the day, we'll invite you to share your App Engine applications with the group.

What Do I Need?

We will provide facilities, power, food and refreshments and experts to help you learn to use Google App Engine and write your application. Just bring your laptops, ideas and enthusiasm to complete the mix.

When and Where?

The Chicago hack-a-thon will take place Thursday July 31st, 2008 from 10AM-6PM. It will be held in Google's Chicago Office at 20 W. Kinzie St.

Space is limited so Sign Up now.

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