The Google Perftools, especially tcmalloc (Thread Caching Malloc), can be very useful to speed up your applications, depending on your environment :
TCMalloc is faster than the glibc 2.3 malloc (available as a separate library called ptmalloc2) and other mallocs that I have tested. ptmalloc2 takes approximately 300 nanoseconds to execute a malloc/free pair on a 2.8 GHz P4 (for small objects). The TCMalloc implementation takes approximately 50 nanoseconds for the same operation pair.
The Google Map Image Cutter is an application designed to take any image or digital photo and cut it into tiles which are displayed on a Google Map. Using this tool, large images can be published on the web in a format that allows the user to pan and zoom using the standard Google Maps interface. Although publishing large digital photos is the most obvious application, this technique can also be used for annotated maps of an area that are not to scale e.g. directions for how to get to the office.
Google launched their Google App Engine (GAE) a year ago. The free hosting in App Engine is allocated 500 MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. Also, if you really want more you can see pricing plans.
GAE will support Java going forward. Unfortunately PHP support on the App Engine is still left as the top item in the wishlist.
Google has added the Java runtime to its App Engine, that (semi-)free service that lets you build and host web apps on Google's very own cloud distributed infrastructure.
When App Engine was first introduced, almost a year ago to the day, it stuck with Python, a favorite among code-happy Google Oompa Loompas. But after countless request from developers outside the Mountain View Chocolate Factory, the platform has now embraced Java as well.
Ubuntu users (or users of a Ubuntu-based distro) who have been waiting patiently for the chance to play with Google Chrome, there's now a dead simple way for you to do it. Thanks to the PPA (personal package archive) for Chromium daily builds team, getting the pre-alpha Chromium browser running on your system is about as painless as it can be at this stage.
Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users.
You can serve your app using a free domain name on the appspot.com domain, or use Google Apps to serve it from your own domain. You can share your application with the world, or limit access to members of your organization.
