Does AWS have an image processing service? - google-app-engine

At past I have used ImageMagick in order to code some web app that performs some image processing.
Then I encountered this from Google App engine -
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/images/
Which looks quite interesting, however I would like to work with AWS related technologies, and I wonder if AWS have a similar service?
Thanks,
Yair

No they don't have an image processing service. They do have transcoding services for audio and video, though:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elastictranscoder/latest/developerguide/introduction.html
But that's not what you are looking for. The closest you can get to that with AWS is probably by creating your own on-demand instance which can process a batch of images and then stops again. Or maybe have a look into Data Pipelines or Simple Workflows. Might be overkill for what you want to achieve, though, depending on the scale.

Related

Parse limits uploads to 1MB. Looking for a workaround or an alternative platform

I'm using Parse to host the backend for a mobile app that I am writing for Android and ios. I'm running into a major roadblock when trying to send data from the phone to a Parse cloud function that I've written, because Parse limits these requests to 1MB in size, which is not suitable for uploading images, etc. Basically, I'd have to make several requests to send the data, which would start to rack up charges.
I've tried contacting the Parse community directly to see if there is a way around this, either by purchasing a paid account or programmatically, and no one has responded to me.
So, does anyone here know of a workaround? Or, can anyone recommend a mobile app hosting provider other than Parse? I'm currently using them only because they make it so easy to get a prototype up and running, but I'm starting to have serious concerns about long-term use and scalability.
Thanks for your help, really starting to pull out my hair on this one :|
What are you trying to upload? I had issues uploading images taken with the phone, so I use a compression ratio of .25, which cut the file size down by about 1/8th, and I was able to upload.

Common file system API for files in the cloud?

Our app is a sort-of self-service website builder for a particular industry. We need to be able to store the HTML and image files for each customer's site so that users can easily access and edit them. I'd really like to be able to store the files on S3, but potentially other places like Box.net, Google Docs, Dropbox, and Rackspace Cloud Files.
It would be easiest if there there some common file system API that I could use over these repositories, but unfortunately everything is proprietary. So I've got to implement something. FTP or SFTP is the obvious choice, but it's a lot of work. WebDAV will also be a pain.
Our server-side code is Java.
Please someone give me a magic solution which is fast, easy, standards-based, and will solve all my problems perfectly without any effort on my part. Please?
Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for but we built http://mover.io to address this kind of thing. We currently support 13 different end points and we have a GUI interface and an API for interfacing with all these cloud storage providers.

Writing files to the system in my GWT - Google App Engine (GAE) application

I have created a GWT application and now want to deploy it outside GAE. The reason I wish to deploy outside the GAE is the Sandbox security feature of GAE, which disallows me from writing files to my system. I store my data in the form of an ontology (.owl file) under my '/war/WEB_INF' and I want the end user to be able to modify (write to / save) this file through the server.
I understand that GAE does not let me do this, but is there a paid Google Service (e.g. google apps) that would allow hosting a GWT application which would allow writing files to the system? For instance, like an add-on to GAE?
If not, what solution would you recommend to host a GWT application (that would let me write a file to the WEB-INF folder) on the web?
EDIT: I solved this by deploying the GWT project as a .war file and hosting in TomCat.
I'm very new to GAE, but in case you haven't looked at their experimental write/read blobstore services you can check that out here. They have a similar API for python I believe. It's ofcourse stored on the GAE blobstore and not under /war/WEB-INF/ directory but It does allow a possible solution to what you're looking for.
Also, if you're looking to run your own server (possibly on EC2 for example), then you might want to look into AppScale. But I, personally, would stay away from that as a solution because I highly doubt that AppScale performs as well as google's GAE web servers and furthermore lacks the same degree of support/development.
Have you ruled out something like creating an Owl Entity to hold your ontologies, and arranging for *.owl requests to be handled by using that as a key name to find and serve the corresponding Owl? That's really simple code.
GWT is primarily a client side technology. GAE is a server side technology. You seem to be getting GWT and GAE engine mixed up with each other. GAE can work with almost any client side technology, and GWT can connect to many different back end platforms.
Are you trying to move your back end code directly to a new platform? Are you planning on rewriting the back end for a new platform, but keep the GWT code? What is your goal for this application? To be used by you and a few friends, or by thousands of people? For free or paying customers?
If you want to move off of AppEngine, you can switch to pretty much any java hosting service that you want - anything from a tiny shared VPS up to a Amazon EC2 mini cloud of your own. I don't think google offers generic java hosting. I don't know how you have built your application's back end, but you probably used servlets, which you should be able to get working pretty much anywhere.
If you want to stay on AppEngine, you should think about whether or not you can break your owl file into smaller sections that can be stored as entities in the database.
Whichever platform you choose, if you are planning on serving more than a few people, you will need some way to prevent one giant owl file from becoming a huge bottleneck.

Is it possible to deploy ColdFusion code on Google App Engine for Java?

Since ColdFusion is itself Java-based, I would imagine it's not too much of a stretch to suggest that CFML code could be deployed on Google App Engine.
BlueDragon is a commercial solution for deploying CFML code on Java servers.
It's described in this thread how someone got OpenBD (Blue Dragon) running on App Engine:
OpenBD on Google App Engine for Java
Are there any open source alternatives
that could be used for App Engine?
Railo is another obvious candidate here, and some people appear to be trying to tweak it for use on Google App Engine.
I am putting together some demos that run on Open BlueDragon, which in turn is running on Google App Engine. The list is small at the moment, but eventually it should give you a good idea of what is opssible with OpenBD and GAE.
http://www.brighthub.com/hubfolio/matthew-casperson/blog/archive/2010/05/12/cold-fusion-demos.aspx
Check out
http://www.stax.net/ - Stax networks made by a former Allaire(r)?
Works great, supports coldfusion out of the ..cloud. You download a precompiled source file, put your stuff in, upload it and it all works, no fighting with it.
I know google app engine is quite restrictive, it will involve opening up the source and removing everything that attempts to write to the file system, and changing your database interaction.
You can checkout this thread and group as a resource for Open BlueDragon as well as the wiki. Looks like they have a branch already which is working towards GAE compatibility.
On the Railo side of the CFML open source pond you can reference this article from help compiling Railo on your own from the source.
Joining both of their respective google groups and asking questions should yield fruitful as well.
Good Luck!

Download satellite/maps images (from Google Maps or Live Maps?)

I'm building a little play project and I'd like to use satellite images of a town inside deepzoom, what's the easiest way to get them? I'm sure there's a MUCH better way than PrtScn, I've tried google maps downloader but it doesn't download satellite images and it's company don't seem to be offering it anymore.
Take a look at Deep Earth, unless what you're trying to build is what deep earth give you - in which case it may remove all the fun ;)
http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth
If you want to go your own way, then it used to be that you could just manually request the various image tiles directly from the MS Virtual Earth server hosting them, if you could calculate the quad keys and build the correct URL, thus bypassing their payment model. Whilst I know they were looking to cut out this loop hole, that's certainly what early versions of Deep Earth did.
Microsoft Virtual Earth has SOAP and AJAX-based services that you can use in your application. The service has a Staging and Production version. Using the Staging version is free, and could easily serve the needs of a "play project." The Production version costs money and can serve info to a large application with many users.
http://dev.live.com/VirtualEarth/
However there is some registration required to get working with the Staging sdk. You can get started here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc980844.aspx

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