Too bad Devlyn isn't back, i would finally be "the one with the better team". 

I was playing with the new HTML canvas element the other day and it reminded me of the Shining Flash days.

Are you familiar with GWT (Google Web Toolkit)? It compiles Java to HTML/JavaScript. Some guys at Google (i'm working there now btw) ported an open-source version of Quake to the browser using GWT and Canvas, plus Ajax to talk to the server:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW--Wlf9EFs

It would be cool to do the same for an established Java tile/game engine and use it to build canvas based games.

Ooo, I care, but don't know what you mean  

Baby? 

No, just Hattrick. 

I know no one cares, but I just bought an extra-terrestrial forward. 

I'm back, team #70382. Why not.

I've been in the news three times, but none intentionally really. Once when i was born and then later again because i have twin brothers and then last time a few years ago, when i took a course on Mad-Cow disease (i needed the 1 credit to be full-time) and some reporter started asking me questions about the course. Over here it's really easy to be in the news .

We're so popular

Any hints on what you want to show? It's the start of a new year, so don't be afraid of making grand promises you'll never keep

Nothing outstanding, basically i want to adapt my Javascript TileEngine to load maps dynamically and then put a simple battle engine on top and that's it. I figure that by initially targeting a battle engine rather than an RPG i can avoid alot of the stuff that usually gets in the way (graphics, storyline) and focus on something concrete that is realistic and that i (or others) can later build on.

Sounds good. What other kinds of things could it be used for?

Anything really. I'm using it to host a LaTeX plugin for Google Docs and i'm moving my personal site over there as well (there's a Django implementation for the AppEngine and that's what i'm using but it's in an early stage and it isn't perfect).

It's the same concept of a web host but with scalability in mind. For example the site's files, scripts and database can be distributed across Google's server infrastructure (some database tables may be in one server node and the others elsewhere). So as your site grows they can increase performance by mirroring or distributing the content in more places but you never really see this directly so you manage your apps as you would in a traditional host.
 
To make this possible they're providing a simple, non-relational database implementation, which in my experience is perfectly sufficient. They used some Django principles in the AppEngine, so for example you have full control over URLs (unlike PHP, it's easy to assign a script to handle all requests made to URLs under /mydir/ so you can have RESTfull URLs), they have a database Model implementation (almost identical to Django) which allows you to store data in the database as objects, without writing any SQL, for example:

Code:

aPerson = PersonModel()
aPerson.FirstName = 'John'
aPerson.LastName = 'Doe'
aPerson.put() //stores or updates object

They also have some Memory caching implementation where you can store commonly accessed data and a few different built in APIs.

Currently it only supports Python (easy language to learn) but i hear they're adding support for Java as well.

I don't know what I was on when I came up with those titles.

Posted about the new demos at Shining Force Central ( Topic is here ). TSS has also had a mention on SegaSaturno.com (in Spanish).

Nice reception at SFC . Anyway, you may see some stuff from me this year, i have some cutting edge stuff i want to try.

Google released AppEngine which is basically an auto-scalable web host with a few limitations:
http://code.google.com/appengine/
Development is in Python.

It's free and very fast (you have to pay if go above the basic usage quotas but the quotas start out fairly decent). I think maybe this would be the ideal place to host server-based games (such as the Javascript/Ajax game Elvenfyre was working on recently). If i can adapt the Javascript TileEngine i already have to dynamically load maps as needed with Ajax (like the Map applications do) and put it on the AppEngine, we won't be too far away from a scalable game (technologically speaking) that can handle as many Ajax requests as needed.

I've been using it lately and i'm liking it.

Can someone check where my team is (Loose RS) if it's still around as a bot? I can't believe they let m go bankrupt - talk about turning away paying customers. 

There's a P2P API using XMPP for multiuser apps through Google's servers.
http://code.google.com/android/toolbox/google-apis.html

ActionScript 3 is a move towards a more JAVA like language, which started with ActionScript 2. There are some game-friendly additions such as the introduction of sprites. It's definitely more organized. I haven't been able to play much with it yet but i've heard good things. It does encourage better programming practices and open source projects (which flash was lacking greatly, even with the introduction of components a while back).

Android is Google's open source mobile platform. To promote it they're giving away $10 million in awards to fund Android development.
http://code.google.com/android/

The first deadline is April 14th (i think), and they'll give out 50 $25,000 awards, the winners of which then become elligible for a number of $250,000 and $100,000 grants.

Money aside, this is a great chance to get acquainted with making games and apps for a mobile platform - JAVA is required, OpenGL and hardware accelerometers and an Android emulator (Eclipse plugin) are available.

I'll be entering with an audio synth/drum machine (that's all i could think of and i'm well acquainted with direct audio manipulation in JAVA). But if you have games in java already, i would consider porting them.

If you have any good ideas for a mobile app, post them.

Not generally, but that sounds like a great idea!