Rumor: Java Coming to Google App Engine in May

While Java support in Google App Engine was promised a while ago, it's only now that we are getting a sense of the release date.

According to TechCrunch, the grand announcement should happen during Google I/O developer conference to be held at Moscone Center, San Francisco on May 27-28.

Google Friend Connect Drupal Plugin

Over the weekend I gave a test drive to Google Friend Connect Drupal plugin.

It seems like the plugin is currently work in progress meaning it's not yet stable enough to be considered "production" quality meaning it doesn't handle some use cases properly meaning I couldn't get it working.

Muthu, the author of the plugin, responded promptly, despite being on vacation. However there are still issues to be resolved.

Priced Android Apps Avaliable in UK, Germany and Austria Coming Soon

According to an email I received from Android Market Support, priced applications are now available in UK. I'll appreciate if someone confirms it really is the case. You can use ActionComplete as an example ;-)

Germany and Austria are next on the list for priced applications support roll-out. No firm date when it happens was given.

Free applications will be available in France starting March 15.

Google Introduces Friend Connect API

As reported on Google Social Web Blog, Friend Connect API is available for us to enjoy.

Friend Connect API is not really an API, strictly speaking. It's a mixed bowl of technologies targeted at a wide audience ranging from site owners to gadget developers.

The technology mix behind Friend Connect API includes HTML, AJAX, JavaScript, OpenSocial RESTful and RPC protocols, as well as OpenSocial API.

Interestingly, three CMS plugins are provided as a starter - for WordPress, Drupal, and phpBB.

The Drupal plugin, which I'm very curious about, claims to take care of OpenID authentication with Google, Yahoo, or AOL credentials on a Drupal-based site. The plugin was built by Muthu Muthusrinivasan of Google during his 20% time.

Over the weekend I'm going to try the Drupal plugin on actioncomplete.com and will report the results.

MSE360 - a Surprisingly Good Search Engine

Today I stumbled upon a new search engine - MSE360. Yes, you got it right, the search engine with its own web crawler and the whole nine yards. Currently it says it indexed about 2 billion web sites.

For things I care about, it brings search results better than or comparable with Google, noticeably better than MS search whatever its name currently is, and way better than Yahoo.

A neat twist is you can provide it with your site RSS feed URL and it's going to update the index close to real time.

Hopefully the guys will be able to cope with the traffic soon...

How to Install a Non-Market Application on Android/G1 Phone

If you are reading this page the odds are you've got a promotional version of ActionComplete productivity application for Android-based mobile phones from me and want to install it on your Android-based/G1 phone. If not, you can still proceed with reading as the installation instructions below are fairly generic.

So you've got an application apk file and want to install it on your phone. For the sake of being concrete we'll use ActionComplete as an example.

To install the app on your device:

1. On your phone, go to Settings/Applications and make sure Unknown sources checkbox is checked.
2. Connect the phone to your computer via the USB cable.
   
3. When "USB Connected" message appears in the phone notification area, swipe the notifications open with your finger.
4. Tap "USB Connected" notification, then tap Mount button in the dialog that appears. Now you are ready to copy files between your computer and the phone.
5. On your computer you should see the connected phone drive. Copy ActionComplete-x.y.z.apk to the mapped drive that represents SD card of your phone.
6. Go to Android Market and install AppsInstaller (this is a free application that helps install non-market apps).
7. Disconnect the phone from the computer.
8. Run AppsInstaller. You should see ActionComplete in the list of the applications ready to be installed.
9. Tap ActionComplete. The installation process should commence.
10. Have fun with the application!

Grails 1.1 Released

Graeme Rocher has just twitted the release of Grails 1.1.

There is a slew of new features in the release. The ones that caught my attention are support for JSP tag libraries in Groovy Server Pages and integration with Maven and Ivy.

The release notes page contains the full list of new features.

Ext GWT (GXT) 2.0 to be Released on April 14

Darrell Meyer of Ext posts in the support forum that Ext GWT 2.0, aka GXT 2.0, will be released on April 14 and will be officially announced at the beginning of the first Ext Conference.

Ext GWT is a Java library for building rich internet applications with GWT.

GXT 2.0 will be based on GWT 1.6. GWT 1.6 M2 was released on Feb 24.

Support for REST in Spring 3.0

Arjen Poutsma of SpringSource introduces REST in Spring 3.0.

The short article outlines how Spring @MVC framework is augmented in release 3.0 to handle incoming RESTful requests.

At the core of RESTful support are URI templates:

A URI template is a URI-like string, containing one or more variable names. When these variables are substituted for values, the template becomes a URI.

The templates are handled by @PathVariable annotation(s). Here's a code snippet illustrating the concept:

@RequestMapping("/hotels/{hotelId}")
public String getHotel(@PathVariable hotelId, Model model) {
List hotels = hotelService.getHotels();
model.addAttribute("hotels", hotels);
return "hotels";
}

The support of REST-style requests seems to be very intuitive and blends naturally into the @MVC paradigm.