Sep 23, 2009

Panoramio Photo API (II)

It seems somebody in Panoramio listened to my prayers and they were fast to respond. So according to their official Forum ( http://www.panoramio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20934 )
" Panoramio API: "count" is not working and changes in call back function. We are working in bringing them back."

Sep 22, 2009

Google Maps API V3

Some good news about API's now.
Today Google has released a new version of v3 maps API today, with a nice surprise this time it has included a badly needed feature, Poly-lines and Polygon overlays !.

Panoramio Photo API

I am using  Panoramio JSON Photo API since quite some time.
Well, during last weekend they have a major maintenance of their platform.
Unfortunately after this maintenance the API format has been changed without any notice, It took me half a night to realize what was happening and fix my mash-up application.
I have filled a report here ( http://www.panoramio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=239662#239662 )
Lessons learned : If  you are using any third party APIs - have a plan and be ready for surprises !.

Sep 12, 2009

Server Instance Life time (part II)

I got some remarks on the above mentioned post today at :
http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine-python/browse_thread/thread/2337166b90dcce14?hl=en
Following is my response :
"server-instance-life-time"    "that's not my experience.  In the early days an instance of my app  would live for about half day between hits,"  Well it depends on how we define 'early days' - I am talking about circa  May 2008 since when I started keeping an eye on instance life time. It used to be a some seconds value, now it is something like a minute  class value for me.  I do not dispute other values given by some members of the group here since (I) some other -  application specific parameters could be possibly (?) -  used by the environment to  determine how long it keeps an instance running. And (II) ... may be a particular application has a request served by a new instance although previous instance is still up and running. ? (just food for thinking).   Anyway I do not see the point made by Mr. BJörn Lindqvist of pinging at 5'' intervals.  It is a waste of recourses (let's think Green !). There are other solutions even if his numbers are right. i.e: {I really hate this initials reminding me of Internet explorer}  think ...  of a static landing page which will ping the server preparing it for successive visits etc. etc..  If we are talking about sub 30'' lifetime something must be really wrong, why you don't try a with a simple 'hello-world- application' to check the figures.  By the way, i have a handler which was always giving me red figures in the vicinity of 1000 + cpu_ms. I was happy to see it going purple at around 750 cpu_ms since a week or so without me touching anything for this particular handler.  Anybody else experienced something similar ?   Happy coding  Nick

Sep 3, 2009

Google Maps API V3 (part II)

Glad to see that my bug issue report mentioned in a previous post was verified, accepted and fixed by Google's developers team in ZERO time (whole process took less than 1 working day). This tells me a lot about the quality of their work.
It is a pity that I have to revisit my code now and remove the work around I devised.
Lesson learned: If you run into a bug and you are damn sure it is a real bug and not your lousy code causing the problem do not hesitate, fill a report and wait a little before you start waisting your time devising a work around.

Sep 2, 2009

Gmail failure today.

Well it happened again, after last February  there was one more outage  of Gmail for some hours today.

But ...  a small remark -  What was down and not functioning was  only Gmail's web interface - Email Servers were up and running and we could send-receive through POP / IMAP agents.

And that was the case with (almost) all major Gmail failures - no real service interruption.  I am sure it will make headlines tomorrow but nobody (well .. almost) will mention this fact.

Hm .... It has started already : "This is one of the reasons that corporate e-mail has not moved to the cloud," said Tim whatever, president of Creative Strategies in Campbell. "Under no circumstances do they want to have the system taken down."

Hope somebody tells this guy of Creative Stratospheric Disasters  in Com(p)eBackToFortran  that most of Corporate Email is in the cloud already one way or the other.

For system admins that were prepared for this it was really NO EVENT at all.

And ... for people asking what this has to do with Application Engine  the answer  is obvious :
This (non) event will be used by people of   BackToEarthFromCloud  camp   to spread around FUD  (Fear Uncertainty Doubt)  for cloud computing in general - just because they were very late in this game or they do not really understand it. :)