marram

I had "vaccumed" all indices referencing those entities before issuing a delete. Albeit, there was only once index per purged entity type. So this would not explain the 20x write operations.

Also, note that the deletions were through the "Datasore Admin" app, which was recently added. It is different from the classic Datastore Viewer.

I deleted all indices referencing those entities before starting the entity deletions.

I meant that I needed 3k requests to finish the job, deleting 1k entities in each request :).

I have been using GAE Python since it came out. Used it to build www.thesponty.com and www.gamedaytycoon.com (social game on FB). The latter has thousands of users and GAE scales super well. We deploy > 10 times a day. GAE is really awesome.

Yes

Yes. Happens when you enqueue a task with the same name as a previously enqueued task.

This is awesome! I shared it on Facebook, but your mugshot showed up in the preview rather than say a ShelfLuv logo. The latter would probably be more enticing for my friends to check out!

I've been using Remember The Milk as a GTD tool and I highly recommend it! Rather than moving your your tasks between notebooks, you move them between lists. The Gears/Chrome client is much faster than the Evernote desktop client, and there is even a Launchy plugin that allows you to insert tasks into RTM quickly straight from Launchy. There are also keyboard shortcuts, which make it even easier. Totally worth the $25 a year to get the iPhone app.

I always thought GTD was neat, but never had the gumption to create a physical filing system. RTM changes that by making GTD much more convenient.

I would suggest Python. It is easy to learn and can be used in many different projects including web apps.

You can then use your new skill and build web apps on Google App Engine. It's great because you won't have to worry about the non-so-fun bits, like configuring servers.

Remember The Milk (http://www.rememberthemilk.com) is a life saver. It's a task list that runs on your phone and browser. I can't recommend it enough.

I agree. I was uber social after spending a couple of days handing out schwag and chatting with random people at SXSW.

Have you heard of Boston based Sponty? http://www.thesponty.com

Our original idea was exactly what you describe: organize casual events with friends. But that didn't gain traction.

What we've empirically verified, is that this is not a big enough pain point to get people to ditch the default position. The default position being: 1. SMS or 2. Facebook status updates. Not even structured events, even though Facebook just made creating the latter much easier.

So we pivoted. The new incarnation was: Discover events through taste makers.

This -we thought- allowed us to short circuit the "I don't have enough friends on the service" argument. So now you can follow people who share your cultural interests and discover events through them so that you can drag your friends along.

This newest incarnation is too hard to distribute. By distribution I mean: user acquisition. We had/have an awesome website, a native iPhone app, cool graphics and even a gaming element.

You need to convince enough people to post events, and then convince others to follow them and like/attend those events.

So my 2.0 cents: 1. Think about distribution: How are you going to get users? 2. Is this a big enough pain point to convince people to ditch the default? (I don't believe so, and I brought a similar product to market).

EDIT: Sponty is still running and we do have users. But we've moved on and are now working on social games.

Cheers, M

I would suggest starting with Google App Engine (the Python version). For the following reasons:

1. Python is a good language to learn. You can use it for other things beside building a web app. GAE is similar to Django.

2. The GAE datastore is easier to fathom than a traditional database. For some reason, I always found databases hard to understand, and it seems that designing schemas for non trivial projects is a separate and distinct skill set from software engineering.

3. GAE solves the updating/patching of working code by providing a sane environment and tools to update and version your app. You can easily switch back to a previous version. Patching datastore schemas is slightly harder.

4. You get scalability out of the box. You don't have to worry about hardware, or even configuring "virtual" instances. None of that. But you probably won't have to worry about scalability for a while.

5. You can easily deploy code to multiple environments. You just need to signup for more apps, and update your app.yaml file to point to a new app name. You can do this in a simple build script.

I hope this helps.

Cheers.

Hacking in Boston is usually up to date with software related entrepreneurial/hacking events: http://www.thesponty.com/profile/251336/Hacking_in_Boston/

Maybe he just burnt-out and wants to move on to something else?

Freshman year in college. Ten years ago. At a math class.

You can also grab the RSS feed here: http://www.thesponty.com/profile.rss/251336/Hacking_in_Bosto...

We'll be updating this very regularly.

Hey! Thanks for posting your notes. You pretty much captures all the important ideas.

Oh oh. Seems to be down now.

Some feedback: 1. It is not clear to me what happens after updating the keyword list. Would the program then go find people and follow them based on those keywords?

2. "People you have followed (controlpanel.php?p=following)" is empty. Shouldn't this fill up instantaneously?

Here is one problem: After I authenticated my twitter account, I got the following error message: """ You registered the Twitter screen name foobar but authenticated the Twitter screen name fooBar. """

I'm sure you know you should convert strings to lowercase before comparing them! :)

I met Dan at a house party last summer. He was a great guy. I only talked to him for a few minutes, but he and his cofounder ended up leaving Boston just a week or two later. I just got an email with the news from a mutual friend, and I'm at a loss of words.

http://www.thesponty.com/events/242040/Unveiling_of_The_Book...

Why would anyone want to be notified whenever they get an email? People are already incessantly and compulsively checking their email every few minutes, to the detriment of their sociability.

This makes email less fun. The few seconds of anticipation when you hit the refresh button on the email client and it starts downloading emails are enthralling; Did that girl from Match.com reply? or is it yet another spam from Amazon/Dell?

We use Google App Engine because we lack serious sys-admin skills, and GAE abstracts all that away from us. Also, the datastore was much easier for us to understand and hack than relational databases.

For project hosting, we use hosted-projects.com because it gives us SVN+track+bugzilla and wires them together, and they have good tech support. I also like Beanstalk, but it doesn't come with a bug tracker.

Sponty actually does this. When you change the details, it emails everyone. On an iPhone, email is just as good as SMS. People compulsively check their email on their iPhones.

"""I am not convinced that very many people care about discovering new events in the first place, at least not events that don't have an immediate impact on one's social status."""

My definition of an event is: A social gathering of my friends, or friends of friends. I don't care about random trivia nights, but I might check them out if my immediate friends are going to them.

I believe that an "event community" is a misguided notion. Going to the same event as a perfect stranger is not a strong enough context for socialization.

We have a json API that we're using to implement an iPhone version. Open up Charles (an HTTP proxy/monitor) when using Sponty, the web interface almost directly uses the API as well.

I would crowd source it.

Try: http://www.thesponty.com