Running Commentary

Getting heapdump for our services is very important for doing any memory profiling to debug any leaks or performance issues. Unfortunately it is not that straight forward. Fortunately, it is not impossible either! We need to SSH in the container in which our service is running. Go to App Engine → Instances page and select your service from the 'services' dropdown. SSH into any of the instances: Ignore this and SSH into VM. Once you SSH, you should be able to see cloud shell as below. If you are logging in for the first time, there may be some questions asking for SSH key. You can leave the key blank and continue. This shell is the Linux VM on which our docker image is running. We need to find out more details about it before we can do anything with it.   There are a bunch of images running. We are interested in the first one ('us.gcr.io/.....') running in a container named 'gaeapp'. Now we need to go inside this docker c...

If you are here I am assuming that you are looking to migrate the data from Cloud Datastore to Big Query because you want to do some analysis and are frustrated by limitations imposed by GQL (Google Query Language). First of all you need to create a backup of the data in datastore. Use the Datastore Admin tool provided by Google to take a backup and store it automatically in the Cloud Storage bucket. Select all the entities and press 'Backup Entities'. Give a backup name, select Google Cloud Storage as backup storage destination and specify a bucket name. Once the backup job is completed, you will see the backup listed. You can select a backup and press 'Info' and see the details (Entities are masked in the screenshot below). Go to the bucket mentioned in 'Handle' and you will see the file mentioned above. You will also see many more files with similar names, ending with .backup_info (e.g. ahRzfmpkYS1wZC1zbG8tc2FuZGJveHJBCxIcX0FFX0RhdGFzdG9yZUFk...

You would already be aware that there are multiple options given by Google Cloud Platform to store data. Here is  Google documentation  on when to use which option: Google recommends using Google Cloud Storage (GCS) to store static content like files/videos etc. There is something called 'Blobstore' as well which is also used to store such content but it is on the way to being deprecated. This page talks about using GCS to store images. Look at  this page  to understand basic requirements for setup of GCS. In the Cloud Store Browser below following buckets are already available. If you select any bucket, you would be able to see the objects created in it.  Here you can see the image file in the 'jda-pd-slo-sandbox.appspot.com' bucket. You won't be able to add/delete files or folder from the browser if you don't have proper access but through code (running with the service account) it should not be a problem. Objects on GCS are immutable so you ca...

I think before we woke up to Twitter, status messages in GTalk were (and are still are) the easiest way to spread a message, show off some geeky/cheesy/funny/wise quote or post your blog link for others to see without pushing it! Now my Twitter is connected to my Facebook and when I post anything on Twitter, my Facebook status is updated. But I still post blog/photo links in my gtalk status message and so do many of my contacts. So I was thinking yesterday if there is some mechanism which would let me post to Twitter as well. Just imagine, how cool it will be. I write something in Gtalk status message and that is posted on twitter and that goes to Facebook! Now does Google provide an API which would let export/import status from GTalk status? Or do you know any such mechanism?

Reliance Energy is the only Indian company among select few in the world, which have been announced as first allies for Google's PowerMeter project. (source: Engadget ) PowerMeter will help you monitor your power consumption on your home PC. I don't know if they would ship Itron's meters here in India also or any other local manufacturer (Reliance's existing vendor most probably) will be given license to use Google's software. Whatever happens, this is a news worth watching.

For a moment, I thought this is the most enjoyable week of my life as far as search engines are concerned! This headline 'Yahoo Exec Makes Yuil: Looks Like Cuil, With Better Results' on WashingtonPost.com (courtesy TechCrunch) was enough to make me smile as I was thinking of writing on how easily Cuil has generated so much noise. Unfortunately 'Yuil' built by a Yahoo! engineer using Yahoo's recently release BOSS API has been now taken off the web. For those who don't know, BOSS stands for 'Build Your Own Search Service'. Yahoo recently opened its entire search technology to developers as now they can access almost all the services and functionalities given by Yahoo search. I could not use Yuil, but comments on the page and even TechCrunch report said Yuil performed better than Cuil. I am not at all surprised. Cuil is so pathetically bad at the moment that any thing will perform better and since Yuil was based on Yahoo Search, you can great results (seco...

Suddenly I saw that Google's now familiar 'G' icon has been replaced by 'g'. And it looks better actually! I don't want to read more into it but I am very sure there will be much talk about it in blogosphere.

Just saw another feature on Google search results page. I searched for LonelyPlanet and the first result which usually gives bunch of options related to a result, now shows another option: search that site from results page directly. I repeated the experiment with National Geographic and Discovery Channel and got the search box, but it didn't appear for BBC, Rediff, Hindustan Times, TCS, Animal Planet and Al Jazeera. Is it only for travel and wildlife sites?

After toying a lot with IM features in GMail and Google Desktop Gtalk Gadget, Google finally released new version of Gtalk, named 'Gtalk Labs Edition'. This is second release of popular IM client which has given Yahoo! Messenger, AIM and MSN Messenger a run for their money. The success was due to extremely light weight size, a clean and easy interface and simplicity in use. All of these features seem to be on their way out, if Labs edition is any indicator. I remember the earliest version of Gtalk was 900 kb. The one I have got installed is 3.5 MB. Labs edition is more than 8 MB. However install is still very fast and simple as compared to any other IM client. The interface seems a little crowded but still is passable! Most of the features of Gtalk Desktop gadget have been incorporated in this version. So you have group chat, tabbed conversations and what I wanted most: good smilies :) There is tighter integration with Orkut and Calendar and you can even snooze Calendar notific...

Good news is hard to come by for Yahoo these days. South is the direction for company's search market share, advertising revenue and stock prices. As its future remains shrouded in uncertainty, a number of good engineers have left Yahoo for Google. No soap Opera for Yahoo! The recent spate of bad news is from mobile market where Opera has recently replaced Yahoo! One search with Google search . Yahoo! One search had been the default search engine in Opera Mini browser for handsets. It used to show the search results from web, mobile web and image search in the first search result page and users could choose their required search category after that. Google too gives you option of Mobile or Classic version of search page. Nokia-Google Alliance Nokia mobile phones come preloaded with Yahoo! Go, a software suite for mobile devices. But now Nokia too has announced that they are collaborating with Google . As a consolation T-Mobile has signed up Yahoo for providing search to their custo...

When Steve Ballmer said pompously (yeah, that was downright pompous!) 'We won the desktop. We won the server. We will win the Web. We will move fast, we will get there. We will win the Web.', everyone thought this is version 2.0 of Bill Gates's infamous outburst against Google and its founders. But fed on the Windows and Office dollars, Microsoft actually seems to be pushing towards being a VERY significant player in web domain, if not the winner. Talking in terms of web-search pie, Microsoft's Live Search is still distant 3rd behind Google and Yahoo, but consider this: While Google Search grew by 44% YoY iin terams of search volume and Yahoo managed only 20%, Live Search leapt by 77%. MS is also in fierce competition with Google in race of acquiring nice search providers (like MedStory ,a medical provider) And to Microsoft's credit, Live Search has also begun impressing cynics and critics. Though they had to tone down their radically new search interface, they stil...

Being in a product development company, I can very well understand the emotions and fears developers undergo when their company goes ahead and buys out their biggest competitor which overshadows the product these guys were working on! So in this sense, Yahoo Photos developers must be bit relaxed now, that Yahoo has finally decided to lay it to rest. Yahoo has decided to march ahead in photo management arena with Flickr which it bought long back and which it has been trying to position in photo management as well as community networking segments. Flickr had generated a lot of buzzword and gained a lot many eyeballs as soon as it was launched, with its theme of 'sharing' and extensive use of tagging concept. Somehow Yahoo Photos had started losing steam and even its albums though lot more intuitive and familiar seemed outdated as compared to Flickr tags! But now I am speculating about the future of Google Videos. Now that Big G has in its kitty the Big Y (YouTube, YouMoron!), doe...

Doomsayers have had their field day! Viacom has filed a 1bn$ lawsuit against YouTube and its parent company Google for copyright infringement and also wants YouTube to be prohibited from hosting anyother video of theirs. Blogdom is buzzing with experts analyzing this news and almost everybody is anticipating more lawsuits coming Google's way. Larry Dignan calls it nearing of 'YouTube's end game' and Donna Bogatin goes to extent of calling Google as 'Internet Bubble 2.0' I feel Donna might have gone too far with that statement but the fact remains that atleast one of the fears of Larry Page and Sergey Brin about making Google a public company has indeed proved to be true. Google has become a behemoth and that makes it much more enviable and much more susceptible to scrutiny and scathing rival attacks. People are suing Google left, right and centre over any issue they can find. So if AFP and Belgian Newspapers have to sue Google News for showing their news (which...

If you have been singing praises of Google for Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets and Google Calendar, I would recommend that you test other options as well. 30boxes.com : Hailed by Kiko.com (First online calendar service, that went out of business and ultimately put itself for sale on Amazon, and hence created more news than they ever did while still in business!) as the reason they were outdone. It may not be 'your life', but still a good for everything service. You can add entries, search through them, share with your friends ('buddies'), subscribe in Google, Yahoo etc. There is even a 'webtop' (looks pretty much same as the Goowy webtop) BillMonk.com : Ah, this is something I am in real love with! If you are sharing flat with other roommates, or sharing the expenses of your sunday dinner with 5 other colleagues or have been exchanging novels with friends and find it a little incovenient to keep a track of who-has-to-pay-how-much-to-whom and who-spent-how-much...

Microsoft may not yet be losing sleep over Google's seemingly real WebOffice threat, as yet (and I think some of the things they are saying may be correct as well,combined with present user behavior) but are they really being arrogant or online Productivity Applications (MS Office or Open Office like applications such as PowerPoint or Excel or Calendar) a fad which eventually will pass? Well leaving that debate to MS and Google, I decided to use Google Spreadsheets. Again you have to sign up and wait for the invite: "First Come,First Served". I had read earlier that Spreadsheets will affect Excel usage heavily. Can't predict that as yet,but if your use is limited to entering/importing data (.xls and .csv supported) and performing mathematical,financial or statistical formulae on it and you don't need to advanced stuff like creating macros (in short use it like a basic spreadsheet only!) then you are in familiar territory. So apart from allowing importing and expo...

Really. Honestly. Truly. I feel blessed! After all, The God of All Things (Big and Small), the great Google allowed me to access its service! And I was 'invited' to do so! So ladies and gentlemen, I was given an 'invitation' (after I requested one by signing up on their site) from Google to try another new offering from Google stable, Google PageCreator. PageCreator is a WYSIWYG ('What You See Is What You Get') tool that enables you to create a web page, using available templates and FrontPage like controls (e.g. inserting image or formatting text). Your pages are saved automatically and you can publish them on a 100 MB server space provided by Google, accessible by domain name: .googlepages.com(e.g. my homepage URL is http://iabhishek.googlepages.com ). What is so special about PageCreator? The controls are very elementary in nature. You can't access or edit the source-code of the page being generated. There are a number of page templates available but almo...

I like the way Google presents its new services to world. There is just the right amount of buzz about the service which gets magnified 100 times due to the air of exclusivity which surrounds its availability! So either you will need to have an 'invitation' (in case of GMail or new Joga.com) or the launch news will be heard so softly that you will think yourself lucky to even know about it (and when you come to know of it, you will definitely scramble to get a taste of it!). So when almost all my news feeds were telling me that Google is to launch their Calendar service ‘soon', Google Calendar was happily up there. (Thanks to CNetNews.com for informing me) So what is so special about Google Calendar? Honestly speaking nothing much! If you have used Microsoft Outlook Calendar, you will find the interface very similar. Your calendar can be viewed according to Day, Week, Month and next four days (in Outlook it is 'Work Week', which I think is more sensible). Adding an ...