The Sebastian

Read this article:

http://www.dougma.com/archives/81

Doug does a terrific technical analysis.

Google recently launched their Google App Engine, a Python-based web application development framework you can use to easily create your own web application and, most importantly, deploy to Google's own scalable infrastructure. For free, you get 500MB of persistent storage space and enough bandwidth and CPU power to support about 5 million page views per month. This is a terrific initiative from Google which could easily extend their advertisement space, but could also enable developers to potentially earn revenue as well from simple web applications they develop and deploy by leveraging on the readily available infrastructure.

What's also interesting is that the environment has native support to interact with Google accounts, meaning that developers can leverage from the Google account infrastructure to manage the users registration, login, logout, security, etc., but also to profit from the huge, established user base. On the other hand, Google gets new users as applications become popular and new users which did not have a Google account before register for using the application. This is clearly a very smart move from Google and, depending on implementation details, could work as a great viral marketing strategy, besides the data collection / analysis and advertising potential behind the applications and users.

There is also a web app gallery. This new platform, combined with other google services such as gmail and the Open Social initiative seem to align into a plan where Google gets to play more strongly on the social networking space, probably competing more closely with Facebook. We have seen this game before: provide the infrastructure, the environment, the buzz, the documentation, the goodies, the networking, then enable third-parties to develop things on top, then benefit from the power of the whole network. See, for example, the Java Card Technology.

Maybe this is pushing it a bit too much, but I also think it is interesting to think about all this having in mind that also more and more PC desktop applications are moving to the web (see, for example, Adobe's photoshop express). Thinking of it that way, Google seems to be positioning itself as the Microsoft of the future online "OS", which turns out to be a web app framework with social networking capabilities and a terrific scalable platform behind it...

Just sharing one of the slides from a Web 2.0 Technology & Marketing course I (created for and) used to teach at the University of Texas (UT) Informal Classes program. This particular slide shows a simple model for understanding some of the basics of social networking sites. Comments?

Clients and friends have asked me, on different occasions: Can I / How do I perform a reverse look-up from an IP address. In other words, Can I know who's behind an IP address? Sometimes this comes from curiosity (e.g.: analysing a web server log file), or sometimes from attempting to control abuse / spam on other systems. Since this seems to be a common question, here go my two googable cents...

The short answer is, yes, you can. One of the simplest ways to do a reverse look-up on an IP address is by using the whois service from ARIN (American Registry for Internet Addresses). Go to:

http://ws.arin.net/whois/

Enter the IP address and hit the Submit Query button. Depending on the IP address you have entered, you will get a more precise or less precise answer. Sometimes you might get, for example, a company name (meaning that IP address belongs to the company network), or an university name (meaning the IP address belongs to the university network), or an internet provider which provides access to several consumers (less detail). In any case, this is the starting point to figure out a first contact, then if you need so, you could try figuring out some more information by contacting the listed entity.

I know, I know... It's been quite a while since my last post. I've been really busy with my custom web application development and technology consulting business, Neomelon. While most of my efforts with Neomelon are spent working for clients, I have finally managed to come up with the time and resources needed to span-off another business which I've been working on for quite a while: BestAustinJobs.com.


Best Austin Jobs is a completely new site for the Austin, TX job market where job seekers, recruiters and employers can connect and interact using state-of-the-art tools and yet through a very simple web interface that doesn't get on their way. In case you are curious, yes, I think it is much simpler, to-the-point and less scary than the huge monster, yet much better than the boring list.


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