15 cool apps from the Google Applications Gallery

Google's App Engine, which lets developers run their Web apps on Google's infrastructure, enjoyed its one-year anniversary Tuesday. To mark the occasion, let's take a look at 15 applications from the company's Applications Gallery. (All of the apps are ordered by the category listing on the Applications Gallery.)

Web Tools

PrintWhatYouLike: Instead of printing out an entire Web page, PrintWhatYouLike lets you remove elements from the page that you don't want to print, set the page to a particular width, or print specific areas of a site. Even though I found this utility last night, I've used it multiple times already. It's a great tool.

URLMetrix: URLMetrix fills you in on SEO information about your site. From your Compete.com rankings to the number of Google backlinks related to your site, you'll find it all in a matter of seconds after inputting your site's URL into the URLMetrix search field. It's simple and useful.

Communication

TaPingYa brings chatting to the App gallery.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)

TaPingYa: TaPingYa is a full-featured communication platform that lets you create a chat room to talk it up with friends. The service also boasts a Twitter-like micro-blog and a place to work with team members on a project. You can even keep a private journal.

TwitExplorer: TwitExplorer features a four-column design that lets you look up Twitter users, view their followers, see their posts, and most importantly, find others worth following. You can follow anyone directly from the site. You can also view your Twitter timeline. It's not a pretty app, but it works well.

Games

Arkanoid: If you want to control a paddle moving laterally across the screen to hit a ball into blocks, Arkanoid is for you. This type of game is available all over the Web, but Arkanoid throws in different block designs to add some flavor to it. I spent an hour playing the game. Definitely try it out.

Conquer on Contact: simple, but fun.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)

Conquer on Contact: It might take some time to get used to playing Conquer on Contact, but once you figure it out, you'll be hooked. The game makes you an military commander who needs to conquer up to eight armies on the board, which are controlled by other players around the world. If you win a battle against the foe, your army will grow. If you lose, you need to restart the game. It's simple, it's fun, it's addicting.

Text Based Adventure: It's a little "old school," but Text Based Adventure is actually quite fun. It starts out giving you a storyline, offering you four options to move the story forward. Choose one and move on to the next page, which features even more options. I played through the story a few times. Each time, the ending was different. It's worth trying out if you want to waste some time.

Finance

Loan Amortization Calculator: Loan Amortization Calculator will figure out how much a monthly payment on a loan will be. It displays your full payment, the amount that will be attributed to principal, and the amount of interest you'll pay. It even displays graphs showing all that information over the life of the loan. It's a simple tool, but it's worth trying out.

Sports

Fitness Chart: It's a little bare-bones, but Fitness Chart lets you monitor your weight, body fat, and progress as you workout. When you first sign up, the site requires you to input your weight and body fat percentage. Each day you do that, it plots a point on a graph. Over time, you'll be able to see, visually, how your fitness training is going.

Lifestyle

Chartle lets you create quick graphs.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)

Bookdope: If you want to find out about all the best books currently on store shelves or if you want to peruse the New York Times Bestsellers list, Bookdope will let you do it. You can click on any book, read a brief preview, and see who commented on it in Facebook with the help of its Facebook Connect integration. It even has a link directing you to the book's page on Amazon.

JeeyO: If you're looking to carpool with someone, see JeeyO will help. The site lets you connect with others around any area in the U.S. and set a time to ride with them to an event. So far, the company claims it has saved users 255 liters of fuel.

Life Log: Life Log is a personal journal that allows you to catalog your life. You input what you're doing at any given moment and assign tags for future inspection. It's a neat utility that's worth keeping up-to-date and will be worth checking out years from now -- if it's still up and running.

Technology

ATopical: The earch engine ATopical features two search boxes -- one for your desired search keyword and another asking which topic area you want to search in. So, if you put "Webware" into the keyword search field and "tech news" in the second search field, ATopical will automatically search Google for all instances of Webware mentioned with tech news. It's not Google Search, but it might be useful for some.

Next Page: Next Page makes it easy to switch between sites you read on a regular basis. For example, if you read Webware and CNET Reviews each day, you can click the Webware bookmark in your browser. Once you're done reading all the stories, you can click the "Next Page" link added to your browser's toolbar, and it will automatically bring you to the next site -- in this case, CNET Reviews -- you cataloged with Next Page. It makes switching between your favorite sites somewhat easier.

Enterprise

Chartle: Chartle is a well-designed service that lets you create bar graphs, pie charts, and line graphs. Just add data, pick your graph type, and Chartle will take care of the rest. It's a great tool.

30 popular baseball sites 2009

Baseball season is finally here, so it's time we take a look at some of the best baseball resources across the Web. Whether it's fantasy sports, news, or statistics, you'll find all the best right here.

Fantasy baseball

BenchCoach: After you sign up for BenchCoach, it imports your fantasy baseball team and analyzes your roster. Once complete, it offers advice on how to improve the team. It even projects your success.

CBS Sports: CBS Sports' free Fantasy Baseball league provides real-time scoring and live chat. Its player news and stats features help you pick the right players for your team. It's highly-recommended if you want a full-featured, yet intuitive fantasy baseball league. Disclosure: CBS Sports and CNET are both owned by parent company CBS.

DraftHelp: DraftHelp gives you team depth charts to help you pick the right players in your fantasy draft. But its most useful feature is its "projected stats" tool, which tells you how well a player should perform for the year.

ESPN Fantasy Baseball: ESPN Fantasy Baseball Leagues are free. Users can create a public or private league. The tool's player news and stats come straight from ESPN.com. But beware: ESPN charges a fee for access to its in-depth news articles.

FantasyBaseballChamp: FantasyBaseballChamp provides users with real-time player rankings. Those rankings are based on how they're performing so far this year and how they should perform going forward. The site also has advice columns offering tips on who to add to your fantasy team. That said, don't consider it an ideal resource. It's a backup.

MLB.com: Major League Baseball's free fantasy baseball service is one of the simplest in this roundup. It boasts team management, stat tracking, and a league message board so team owners can communicate. That's about it.

ProFantasyBaseball: ProFantasyBaseball helps you pick the right players for your fantasy baseball team. Its "sleepers" section gives you information on players who might be off your radar but worth adding to your team. All the information is free.

RotoAuthority: RotoAuthority tells you who the top players are this year, based on current and projected performance. The site's blog is updated daily, providing guidance on who you should add to or drop from your team.

TG Fantasy Baseball: TG Fantasy Baseball offers basic player reports and depth charts. The site's Dollar Values tool tells you how many players at each position you should have on your roster. Its Projections tool gives you information on how well your players should perform during the season.

Yahoo Sports: Yahoo's fantasy baseball leagues are free, player information is always up-to-date, and the service's stat tracking is outstanding. But if you want a draft kit or scouting reports, you'll need to pay $9.99 and $14.99, respectively. Even though you'll have to pay for that information, Yahoo's fantasy baseball league is great. It's worth trying out.

News

Baseball America: Since there's more to Major League Baseball than the "bigs", Baseball America provides news on the minor leagues. The site offers stats, news, and star player information. It also tells you when players are being called up to the Major Leagues. Highly recommended as a source for baseball news.

BaseballNewsCentral: BaseballNewsCentral separates news by team. Each time the Associated Press releases a story about something related to baseball, BaseballNewsCentral immediately catalogs it under the appropriate team.

CBSSports: CBS Sports does more than just provide you with fantasy baseball services. If you want MLB news, standings, stats, or insight into the teams and players, you can find it all on the site.

ESPN: ESPN is another great resource for finding important topics on Major League Baseball. Since it's such a powerful brand in sports, it often breaks stories before other publications, making it a fine source for baseball news.

Fox Sports: Fox Sports' MLB page is designed well and provides all the headlines from the world of baseball. It has stats, standings, and more.

RotoTimes has basic stats and statistical news on major league ballplayers. RotoTimes stories report on the news, but at the end of each article, they provide a "fantasy league" section, letting you know how the particular story impacts your fantasy players.

SandlotShrink: SandlotShrink requires you to pay $89 for a one-year subscription to its articles, but it's worth it. The site's content comes from some of the top sports journalists in the U.S. It boasts in-depth player projections, sports columns, and much more. It might be costly, but it's worth every penny.

Sports Illustrated: Sports Illustrated is synonymous with sports news. And its coverage of baseball, the players, and the teams is worth checking out each day. It might not provide the kind of depth you get from ESPN, but it's still a fine source for baseball information.

SportingNews: SportingNews categorizes its baseball news by team, player, or injuries. It also provides updates on a major league team's status. All of the stories are well-researched.

Yahoo Sports: Yahoo's MLB page features scores, news, depth charts, injury reports, standings, and much more. Its news is always up-to-date. Its score tracker is a great tool to use when you can't sit in front of a TV to watch a game.

Scores and stats

At Bat 2009: Developed by Major League Baseball for the iPhone and iPod Touch, At Bat 2009 gives you real-time updates on what's going on in a game. But it provides that information in a video game-like interface, showing a pitcher throwing the ball towards the batter. The $10 app updates with the speed of the pitch, location, type, and play result. I highly recommend it if you don't mind buying the software.

BaseballHQ: BaseballHQ boasts some of the best stats of any site in this roundup. The site includes player projections, depth charts, and draft guides.

Baseball Monster: Baseball Monster allows you to find players by any stat. Want to know who leads the league in on-base percentage? Baseball Monster will tell you. Want to find out which first baseman has the best average with hitters in scoring position over the past three days for an American League East team? Baseball Monster will deliver that answer, too. Its stat-tracking is second to none. Check it out.

Baseball Prospectus: Baseball Prospectus gives you projections for the future of your favorite team or players. It analyzes teams, delivers their projected performance, and gives you insight into how players will perform throughout the year.

Baseball Reference: Baseball Reference, from the Sports Reference family of sites, boasts exhaustive research on every known baseball player from the minor leagues to the majors. It gives you the result of every play in every game dating back decades. But it's that complexity that might scare some off. Use Baseball Reference only if you want to be drowned in numbers.

Box Score: If you don't want to pay for At Bat, Box Score will provide you with real-time updates on your iPhone and iPod Touch about what's going on in every game around the league. It's an ugly app, but it's free.

FanBook: A Facebook app designed by Major League Baseball, FanBook displays real-time scores on all the day's games. It also provides you with player stats, team schedules, and more.

FanGraphs: FanGraphs lets you search for any player or team and project their future success based on prior performances. The site graphs statistical data and helps you see, visually, how your team should perform going forward. Think of it as a financial graph for baseball.

MLB.com: MLB.com has up-to-date scores and stats on every player in the league. It even has the player's career stats and personal information.

USA Today: USA Today has real-time score updates on its Web site. With each pitch, the box score is updated. The information is readily available any time of the day.

Google adding Java support to App Engine

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google announced Tuesday it's adding support for Java to App Engine, its service for running software on Google's own computing infrastructure.

Today, Google offers only applications written in Python, a language that's popular among the search giant's engineers but not as widely used in the outside world. Java, though, is commonplace among organizations' server software, and Java support was the top-requested feature for Google App Engine.

"I'm really excited to give you an early preview of Java language support on App Engine," Graham Spencer, a Google engineering director, said at the company's Campfire One event for developers Tuesday evening, one year after the initial Google App Engine launch.

Google also announced other features for Google App Engine, including a "cron" feature that lets people schedule specific jobs such as sending weekly reports, and a Secure Data Connector that lets Google App Engine employ private data stored behind a company firewall, said Kevin Gibbs, App Engine's technical leader. Also new is a large-scale data import tool designed to ease the movement of gigabytes of data to App Engine, which uses Google's BigTable technology for storing information.

The Java support is in a testing mode so Google can iron out issues such as compatibility with existing Java software development tools and frameworks, Gibbs said.

"We feel the support we're launching is not yet complete," Gibbs said.

The software is running a full version 1.6 Java virtual machine (JVM), the Java software component that actually runs Java programs once they're converted into an intermediate form called bytecode, Gibbs said. Because the JVM is running bytecode, other programming languages that can be converted to bytecode, including Ruby and JavaScript, also can run on App Engine, though Gibbs cautioned there could be bumps on that particular road.

Virus to build a better battery

Virus to build a better battery


Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have demonstrated how a genetically modified virus can be used to construct both the cathode and anode of a lithium-ion battery.

Virus-built rechargeable batteries would have the same power capacity as the batteries used to power hybrid cars, project leader Professor Angela Belcher said in an MIT press statement on Thursday.

In a paper published in the journal Science, the research team explained that they manipulated two genes of the M13 virus to equip the bacteriophage with peptide groups that attract single-walled carbon nanotubes at one end, while the other end of the virus was equipped with peptides that nucleate amorphous iron phosphate.

Combining the nanotubes with the iron phosphate created a highly conductive material that was used in a cathode, said the MIT statement. Battery energy was transferred in "a very short time", as electrons could travel along the carbon nanotube networks and percolate throughout the electrodes.

Three years ago, a research team led by Belcher used a similar virus-modification technique to build an anode — the genetically modified virus coated itself with cobalt oxide and gold to assemble a nanowire.

In tests, researchers found the virus-built battery could be recharged 100 times without losing capacitance. The incorporation of carbon nanotubes increased battery conductivity without adding too much weight, said the statement.

The team now plans to genetically modify microbes to assemble materials with higher voltage and capacitance, such as manganese phosphate and nickel phosphate. Once this is achieved the technology could go into commercial production, said Belcher.

These advances feed into wider cross-disciplinary investigations into energy harvesting: the technique of extracting power from the environment. Current research efforts focus on both biological and non-biological systems. Non-biological study includes research into mechanical, thermal and electromagnetic systems. Biological systems such as photosynthesis and metabolic pathways, already closely analyzed for medical and scientific purposes, are also seen as potential sources of energy for electronic systems, with a cross-over field — synthetic biology — using ideas from living systems in designed processes.

This article was originally posted on ZDNet UK