Greetings from I/O 2012!

I'm writing this in the late evening on day two of Google I/O 2012, from my hotel in downtown San Francisco. I've had a great time meeting people at I/O and chatting about App Engine. If you're reading this after having met me at the conference, welcome to the book blog!

By now you've probably heard about the boatload of awesome stuff Google has announced at the conference, not the least of which is Google Compute Engine, a new sister service to App Engine for large-scale computing with Linux virtual machines on efficient and robust infrastructure. Be sure to check out the new cloud.google.com site for overview and pricing information on all of Google's cloud products.

Earlier this week, App Engine 1.7.0 launched with several major new features, such as SSL for custom domains, a new EU hosting option, GeoPoint searches in the Search service, and more. Launcher and Eclipse updates should be propagating shortly, and you can download fresh SDKs—including a new Go SDK for Windows!

The video archive of my June 14 webcast is now available for viewing at your leisure. You can also download the slides. Links and resources for both of the webcasts I've done so far are now on the Code & Extras page.

As for book progress: the next update still isn't quite done, but I'm gunning for an update for next week, and draft complete (yikes!) in July. I'll finish the 2nd edition downloadable code samples some time after that, so don't expect it right away. I'm trying not to let this last deadline slip, but there's still a ton of important stuff I haven't gotten to yet. For just one example, I'm increasingly convinced that the 2nd edition needs to cover ndb for Python, either by replacing the ext.db material or by adding a new chapter. Progress waits for no one, not the least of which book authors, and we gotta stop this train somewhere. (Did you know Eclipse 4 just came out?) But if it's stable tech and it's a major part of the AE development experience, I want it in the book, and I'm sure you do too.

There's still one more full day of I/O remaining! If you're not at the conference, stay tuned for the session videos. Just like past years, we're sitting on a gold mine.