The Google App Engine blog is moving!

Since this blog's inception, Google App Engine has gone from the primary component of our nascent Cloud Platform to one of the many services we offer developers building in the cloud. In recognition of the growth of the platform in both usage and number of components, it's time to take a more holistic approach to our communications channels. With this in mind, we are introducing a new, comprehensive Google Cloud Platform blog.

The Google Cloud Platform blog will be the home for all new App Engine blog content: the release updates, tips and tricks and customer stories you've grown accustomed to finding here. You'll still be able to read existing posts in the archives, and all links to this blog should continue to function.

App Engine has been, and continues to be, one of the cornerstones of our vision for developing in the cloud. It has been exciting to see what over 300,000 of you have built and we can’t wait to see what you do next.

-Posted by Chris Ramsdale, Product Manager

Tune in live to Google Cloud Platform at Google I/O 2013

Google I/O 2013 is only a week away!  We look forward to sharing updates across Google Cloud Platform.  Here’s everything you need to know to keep up with the latest happenings at I/O.

This year, we will have a Google Cloud Platform track kickoff given by Urs Holzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure, on Wednesday, May 15th at 12:45 PM Pacific. You can watch the stream on the I/O Live Stream page.  Urs will make a few special announcements, so you won’t want to miss it.

At I/O, we have an entire Cloud Platform track complete with code labs and conference sessions. Even if you aren’t attending, you can still tune in to the following sessions on the live stream, which you’ll also be able to find on the homepage of cloud.google.com:

• Track Kickoff: Ushering in the Next Generation of Cloud Computing (5/1512:45PM PT)
• From Nothing to Nirvana in Minutes: Cloud Backend for Your Android Application (5/16 3:30PM PT)
• What’s New and Cool with Google Compute Engine (5/15 3:50PM PT)
• A New Language for App Engine (5/16 3:30PM PT)

All of our sessions (including the live ones above) will be available on demand as soon as we can get them posted.  We’ll post live updates on Google+ and Twitter, so be sure to follow us and take part in the conversation.  

Until I/O!

-Posted by Zafir Khan, Product Marketing Manager

Bringing Debian to Google Compute Engine

This was an exciting week for the Debian community who released Debian 7.0 “wheezy” that brings big improvements including hardened security, improved 32/64-bit compatibility and addresses a lot of community feedback.  Today we’re adding Debian images for Google Compute Engine.  Debian, in collaboration with us, is providing images for both Debian 7.0 “wheezy” and the previous stable release, Debian 6.0 “squeeze.”   This support will make it easy for anyone using Debian today to migrate their workloads onto Compute Engine.

For fast performance and to reduce bandwidth costs, Google is hosting a Debian package mirror for use by Google Compute Engine Debian instances. We’ve updated our docs and will support Debian via our usual support options or you can also check out what Debian offers.  

We are continually evaluating other operating systems that we can enable with Compute Engine. However, going forward, Debian will be the default image type for Compute Engine.  We look forward to hearing your feedback.

-Posted by Jimmy Kaplowitz, Site Reliability Engineer and Debian developer

Automatically Process Cloud Storage Uploads with Change Notifications

Do your customers upload files to Google Cloud Storage for your applications to process? For example, a photo app may want to create thumbnails of new images as soon as they are uploaded. Normally you would have to poll for updated objects which can be a resource waste or cause you to react slowly. Most times writing and deploying custom scripts to trigger your application is cumbersome.

Today, we're releasing object change notification as a preview feature, allowing you to watch your Google Cloud Storage buckets for new, modified, or deleted objects with a webhook you provide. Now your application can be automatically triggered when an important change happens and start processing data immediately. We've also updated gsutil with a notifyconfig command. A Google App Engine webhook can be as simple as the following:

We're also releasing an update to the Google Cloud Storage JSON API, bringing it into parity with our existing XML API, including exposing new methods such as Copy and Compose. As a part of this release, we are making the API available to everyone without requiring an invitation.

Enjoy, and as always, we watch StackOverflow.

- Posted by Dave Barth, Product Manager