App Engine Impressions

Its been three days since the Google App-Engine Announcement and the release of the SDK (available Here). So far the installation of the environment is easy as pie and the tutorials and documentation of the APIs and some basic python commands is great. The Getting Started documents show some of the potential that app-engine has (Available Here)

I thought it would be a good test of my skills and a great way to learn python to try and make a calculator site. I started with a simple Area calculation (Length X Width), starting from the guest book application in the documentation. I got everything to work until I tried to actually do the calculation. I know I’m not a programming genius, but I have all of the basic concepts down yet I still couldn’t get a simple multiplication problem to work. It seems that all form input is in unicode and I have no idea how to work with that.

Using the function “self.request.get(”)” I was able to gather the input from the fields. I then used the “int()” function to convert the string input to an integer and I got an error that said something like “Coercing the Unicode : Integer found”

Though I only worked with the code for about three hours, It seems that I still have a lot to learn about python. If anyone has any great books or tutorials for python let me know in the comments.

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Google App Engine

I know this has been all over the world and back, but I still find it interesting. Google has released a new service or a Platform for web developers called App Engine. It allows for web developers to focus in on the applications and features of their code instead of worrying about the server side implications of scaling and even user management.

“Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data. The development environment includes the following features:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions)
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
• Fully featured local development environment

Google App Engine packages these building blocks and takes care of the infrastructure stack, leaving you more time to focus on writing code and improving your application.”

One of the “bad” things that the servers only support Python. Though a little inconvient it still gives the oportunity to learn a new language. Looks like I will be learning Python.

Look forward to tutorials and tips on python as I move forward.

Source [Google App Engine Blog]

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Note Site Idea

When I first saw this I was excited. Macminicolo is having a contest for the best idea of how one would use their service and this is what I have come up with so far. Were I to have a co located mac mini I would run it as a web, svn, and MySQL server. I would like to create a website and cross platform desktop application for taking notes and doing research for students.

For the note taking portion of the site, some features would be note taking while in class within the website online or for those without Internet access in class with off line support through Google gears or using the desktop application then allowing the user to sync back to the website. The Off line application would be for notes like ecto or marsedit are for off line blogging. Users would be able to share their notes with classmates in a wiki style way. Teachers would be able to upload class notes and presentations for the classes and create class home pages for reminders and such.

The research part of the site would allow students to upload PDFs and web clippings to the site. Each resource saved would have a form available to gather all information about the resource and will automatically create citations for that resource in multiple formats (ex. MLA, APA.). Research can be done with the web application as well as the off line application. This would act very much like the FireFox extension Zotero.

• Cell phone upload of drawings through email or mms. Partner with Jott and/or Qipit?
  • phone pictures or txt msg of ISBN etc. with options to add resource to site’s list. email?
  • iPhone note site
• Do testing with with students at delta or Ferris in alpha or beta all who participate get the chance to win and ipod or something
• Ask for bug reports
• Create training videos on use of site & app
• Training videos on note taking styles from a teacher
  • Cornell
  • SQ3R
• Allow linking of notes to pg numbers of eBooks, pdfs, and physical books or websites and have links at end of notes
• Brain storming for papers feature
• Note carding feature for research papers
• Outline tool for papers that auto generates the first draft for editing to add in transitions
• Writing center for style and writing help for students
• Teacher advice Q&A section like yahoo answers
• Allow students to help each other in above ( If a student helps to a certain amount and keeps their rating above a certain level get free paid services)
• Paid services at different levels like the scifidb donation model? Pay yearly for amounts of service
• Alpha & Beta Testers get 1st level paid for free for a year as payment/thank you
• High lighting note taking of PDFs, docs, etc. (highlight the text in the pdf and is auto added to notes)
• Auto Generate indices for class notes (Glossary, numbers etc)
• Cross reference words/vocabulary between pages of notes
• Export
  • export all notes for class as printable PDF book including indices
  • support all major formats doc, open office, pdf etc.
• eBook reader integrated into app to read textbooks for note taking
• research tool searches databases
• allow to save searches
• Mind mapping in any format
• Create polls through different quiz/poll sites to aggregate data for papers
• import
  • documents
  • pdf
  • other note taking sites formats
• Max storage of 5GB for each free account
• Different amounts for varying levels of service

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Scout Site Idea

I’ve been developing an idea for a site that we could create as a
portfolio stuffer to get our names out there. This site would be a
huge project that would take a while to do but if it works it could be
a nice money maker.

The main hitches to the idea that I see is the major amount of programming that needs to be done, If I were the only one doing it would take me forever to get done even if we divided the features into
phases (Which we would).

I’m thinking a creating a Scout Troop management site.

These are some of the features that I’ve thought up so far.

Website that allows for Scoutmaster, Chairman, records person to keep track of….

• advancement
• Attendance
• community service hours
• report sendable to OA
• camping record
• OA eligibility
• OA election vote polling
• patrol management w/ nested troop features available to patrol
• Auto Time for ranks
• requirement database for MB & ranks
• Check box based blue card printer
• skill inventory tracker
• profiles for scouts/adults
• contact forms / address change info

summer camp scheduling for camp directors

• online registration
• automated class creation based on registrations
• create schedules printouts for scouts
• master lists for scoutmasters
• class rosters for instructors
• balanced to certain class size
• Create instructor schedules
• rate instructors by scouts
• availability of sites for week
• registration for summer
• camp inventories

* Some of these Ed said he had in Maine and were awesome

• make e-blucard service to councils to eliminate paper
• work with non bluecard councils to develop their forms
• scoutrak
• make camps pay to use service
• troops are free
• import other management systems into new system
• pay to have misc system imported into the new system

Long term to work with Cub packs, Boy Scout Troops, OA, Girl Scouts, Venture, Sea Scouts, maybe go international

World / National Jamboree management for contingents, contact utilities

Use Ruby on Rails and/or PHP w/ MySQL database-Negotiable depends on what we find to be the most usable

Let me know what features you think of other than these and if you think it is a good idea or if I’m just a crackpot that should go back to my corner and be quiet.

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