Recently, MVK, my friend, told me about Google's App Engine. Call me disconnected but I had no clue about this fantastic service from Google. They have this whole infrastructure where you can run web applications on their servers. And this is not just simple static websites but full featured applications!
They have a choice of two development environments you can use - Java and Python. They also have a persistent store that your apps can use. So, you can pretty much have everything on their server. And like most things Google - the basic service is free! You can also serve the application from your own domain name.
I was really thrilled when I got to know this and explored it a little. It is a pretty decent service. Well, they have a few restrictions but what the heck - its free! Nothing problematic at first sight. But I am guessing you can't use it if you are going to have hundreds of users hitting your app every hour. For anything from simple to medium complexity and traffic, you should be able to use this.
I haven't yet done anything significant with this so far. But I do plan to take it for a spin soon. I have a requirement that I have been trying to have a decent solution for, for some time now. This should be ideal.
The only thing that worries me is the extent to which we are all dependent on Google!
... http://www.kamaldshah.com/2011/02/have-you-tried-googles-app-engine.html
