Google I/O playlist, day 2: Google Storage for Developers

This is the second in a series of posts providing a day-by-day playlist to help break up the Google I/O session videos - specifically the App Engine ones - into manageable chunks for those that haven't seen them.

Today's video is on Google Storage for Developers. Google Storage for Developers is a new API for storing, serving, and sharing large numbers of files, of nearly any size. While Google Storage isn't directly linked to App Engine, it's likely to be of interest to many App Engine developers. It's also the foundation for the BigQuery and Prediction APIs, which I discussed earlier.

The talk is language-agnostic, so both Python and Java developers will find it of interest. Currently, the only officially supported client library is the Python one, but the protocol is deliberately compatible with other similar services, so the Boto library works as-is, as will other libraries. Further, the API is simple enough that I expect Google-Storage-specific libraries will quickly spring up in most major languages.

Google I/O playlist, day 1: Appstats

With the full videos of the App Engine sessions at I/O now released, those who missed I/O, or, like me, didn't have time to catch all the sessions can now catch up on what they missed out on. The list is quite intimidating, though - there's a lot of content there, and most of us have a limited amount of time to spend watching each day.

With that in mind, over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be posting session videos, one or two each day, in an order that's hopefully useful and makes sense to people. I'll also explicitly note who'll find each video of interest, and what other videos, if any, you should watch first.

First in the lineup is Guido's Appstats talk. This talk will be of interest to both Python and App Engine developers, at all levels of skill. There's some Python-specific code in the talk, but it mostly applies to both languages.

What's that, you say? You already know about appstats? Even if you do, there's almost certainly something you didn't know in Guido's talk. If you're already familiar ...

The wonders of HDMI

Recently, we embarked upon an update of our 'media center' / 'home theater' setup. Our projector had reached the end of its 2000 hour bulb life, and since it was a cheap projector to start, a replacement bulb would've cost nearly as much as the projector itself did a couple of years ago. Also, it's become extremely unreliable - 9 times out of 10, pressing the power button results in a brief flash of light from the bulb, followed by nothing. Plus, we promised ourselves that when the bulb ran out, we'd buy an HD projector, as they ought to be affordable by then.

Well, that time has come, and we've done the upgrade. Since we were upgrading to HD, it seemed necessary to get an AV receiver that supports HDMI to replace our 2-channel amplifier and let us switch audio and video at the same time. And if we have that, we may as well get a blu-ray player, too - after all, they're pretty cheap now.

Here's our new setup:

Going by the letters, we have:

  1. Our HTPC media box (Existing)
  2. Netgear XAVB1004 powerline networking switch (Existing)
  3. Philips BD3000/05 Blu-ray player (New)
  4. Yamaha RX-V367 ...