ReadWriteWeb

Google today released a new tool that will make learning and testing code for Google's Javascript APIs a lot easier. Google's interactive AJAX API Playground gives developers an easy to use interface to write some basic Javascript code for Google's eight Javascript APIs (Maps, Search, Feeds, Calendar, Visualization, Language, Blogger, Libraries, and Earth).

The API Playground will also become Google's official way to show Javascript samples.

During the PC era, the technology stack was controlled by Microsoft Windows and Wintel - the "Wintel" era. We are now entering a new era, called variously 'Cloud' or 'SaaS' or 'Enterprise 2.0'.

In this era everything is different - the stack, the players and the potential for value creation. Let's outline the basic shape of this emerging era, in particular defining what makes up the new stack.

Lately, Google has rolled out new features for its experimental Google Labs functionality in Gmail at a rapid pace. Today, Google announced a similar product that will bring experimental features to enterprise and small business customers: Labs for Google Apps. These apps are built on top of the Google App Engine, which launched in April, and include Google Moderator, Google Code Reviews, and Google Short Links.

When Google acquired the microblogging service Jaiku in October of last year, many people had high hopes for Jaiku's future. Would a Google-flavored Twitter soon show up everywhere from iGoogle to the upcoming Android handset, we wondered? Instead, news from the company slowed to a trickle and the doors stayed locked to newcomers - signs that many took to mean Google had essentially abandoned the service. But today, things are happening at Jaiku once again - most notably, unlimited invites are now available. Is Jaiku poised to make a comeback?

At tomorrow's Google I/O conference, the App Engine team will be making a number of announcements. In advance of the conference, we interviewed Paul McDonald and Pete Koomen, two App Engine product managers, on our podcast show ReadWriteTalk. Specifically, Google will be announcing:

• Pricing options for additional App Engine resources
• Two new App Engine APIs
• Opening up the waiting list

Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. The big news was Google App Engine - we provided extensive coverage and analysis. Also this week we looked into further use cases for Twitter, we analyzed the pros and cons of offline access to web apps, as well as why we need web apps on the desktop. We gave you seven tips to make the best use of your RSS Reader, we advised on the best places to find open data, and we looked at business development 2.0 and marketing 2.0 trends.

There has been a lot of talk on the web over the last few days about Google App Engine. We've analyzed it here on ReadWriteWeb. Now it's your turn to have your say. We've created, via a new app from Impact Games, an interactive game that will let you model Google App Engine's impact in the marketplace. You can play the game below:

Earlier today our Josh Catone interviewed 37Signal founder Jason Fried about the striking similarities between one of Google's App Engine demos, HuddleChat (a real-time chat application) and the Campfire app from 37Signals. Fried told RWW that "we're flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product, we're just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout". He went on to say that "we thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for." Well Fried's protests seem to have worked, as Google has now taken down HuddleChat.

Google's new App Engine will let application developers outsource hosting and data storage for their applications by using key elements of Google's infrastructure.

As many people have noticed, the announcement just screams out for analysis in light of Nick Carr's new book The Big Switch.

Google has just launched Google App Engine, "a developer tool that enables you to run your web applications on Google's infrastructure." This will allow startups to use Google's web servers, APIs, and other developer tools to build a web app on top of. Google clearly has the scale and smarts to provide this platform service to developers. However, it begs the question: why would a startup want to hand over that much control and dependence to a big Internet company?