It’s been a while since Google AppEngine was first released to the public. I liked the idea ever since. When it comes to testing I fell short on it, simply because I do not like running yet another Hello World application.
A couple of days ago I wanted to get some of my Flickr sets into iPhoto. I did not want any fancy two way sync but just read them in. I discovered that iPhoto can read RSS feeds in a format that Apple calls a Photocast. Unfortunately the RSS feeds from Flickr are limited to your public content and only return the last 20 or so results. Translating this information from the Flickr API into the RSS format should be a simple thing to do. I’ve used the Flickr API before so that was the first thing I went for. I briefly thought where I would want to deploy this – I am not a big fan of maintaining infrastructure for things like this. I remembered that Google AppEngine should be able to do this. Within a couple of hours I was able to whip up what I now call Photocastr in Python using Django. Overall the experience of creating something like this could hardly be better. Deployment is simple and the learning curve is steep. Know the limitations of the platform (granted, I already did before) and you have results very quickly.
So if you are interested in the result and have a Flickr account – give it a go. It’s free as long as it stays within the limits of the free quota provided by Google. Find it here: http://photocastr.appspot.com
