This is so cool.. Google are beta-testing a totally free hosting and cloud-computing resource called Google App Engine. The caveat is that your hosted app must be written in Python. Python is amazing anyway, and if you don’t know it, now is the perfect time to learn. Check this out for more information about Google App Engine:

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html

They’re giving away a very generous 500MB disk space and enough processing power to serve 5 million pages a month. Awesome!

The Stanford engineering department, often regarded as the best in the world for computer science education, has made its core CS curriculum free for anyone with an internet connection. There are some catches, ie: you don’t get your assignments marked, you have no contact with the lecturer, but all the same, it is really a great resource. The material is very high-quality, professionally filmed lectures and a full compliment of handouts and course notes. It also does not even assume knowledge of programming – it teaches you right from the basics.

If I was trying to teach myself CS again, these courses would be an ideal place to start:

Stanford Engineering Everywhere

I passed the adExcellence exam first time.. woo! It wasn’t that difficult really.

“David Craddock of iCrossing is accredited as an official Microsoft adExcellence Member. A Microsoft adExcellence Member has completed comprehensive online training on managing Microsoft adCenter search engine marketing campaigns and has demonstrated expert knowledge by passing the Microsoft adExcellence accreditation exam.”

As of 21/3/08, I’m somehow also now #1 on Google.co.uk for the keyword “adExcellence exam”.. if that’s what you googled for, you probably want the adExcellence main site instead. Or use Live Search.

I have just seen Yahoo! Pipes, and am convinced this is going to change the web. For real.

Data source sites will become ‘content providers’, data will be aggregated and filtered from multiple content providers, either by the user or by ‘intermediary’ sites. The user will be able to choose his ‘data view’ of the content on the internet, just as Google is currently doing.

This is fascinating stuff if you’re involved in the web industry.

We’ve been working on a Brighton music events Google maps mashup project:

www.BrightonSound.com

It’s still developing, but it looks quite good, and we’re ready to start showing it off to people. So check it out!