This week saw big announcements for both Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine, Flash SEO is revisited, SilverlightContrib brings open source Silverlight controls, Google Gears improves its Geolocation API, and Quake gets ported to Silverlight. All this and more on the Weekly RIA RoundUp from InsideRIA.

FEATURED: Cloud Computing Evolves

While Cloud Computing does not necessarily relate to a specific RIA technology, it is no secret that many RIA's would not be possible if it weren't for it. This has enabled many small companies to develop applications that can simultaneously be served to millions of users without having to maintain an expensive datacenter.

While cloud computing has been around for a while, this week brought some changes. First, Amazon EC2, officially moved out of beta and into the real world. Second, another force in cloud computing, Google App Engine, released some information about where it will be heading in the next two quarters. Part of this was the news that it will now support a language other than Python.

Amazon EC2

While Amazon EC2 has already received a high level of success, it is now poised to extend its reach. First, users now don't have to worry about deploying their applications on a beta-level product. Amazon EC2 is now officially out of beta, and it now provides an SLA (Service Level Agreement). I believe that many companies that would not consider EC2 previously, will now move toward it since there is now a defined level of expected service. Second, EC2 now has added support for Windows Server 2003 as well as SQL Server. The Windows offerings are still in beta, but this brings a whole new group of applications and developers to EC2.

In addition to these announcements, Amazon also released a list of features that they are working on over the next year for EC2. These features include load balancing, monitoring, auto-scaling, and a management console.

AWS News: Amazon EC2 Exits Beta and Now Offers a Service Level Agreement

John Beynon: Windows on Amazon EC2 arrives for all

AWS News: New Features for Amazon EC2 Coming Soon

Google App Engine

While Google App Engine has seen a good deal of success, there have been several major factors prohibiting its growth. It seems that many of these issues have been addressed specifically through a few announcements that occurred this week. First, Google published a basic roadmap for where App Engine will be going over the next few quarters. One of the issues that is mentioned in the post is that developers will soon be able to pay for additional resources on their App Engine application. Currently, developers have specific resource limits that cannot be exceeded for their application. Second, Matt Woodward said on his blog that Google announced at a recent event (Google Developer Day in Bangalore) that App Engine will soon support Java. This fits with the roadmap published this week, which states that App Engine will add 'Support for a new runtime language' (although the publication did not mention Java specifically).

Matt Woodward: Good News for CFML Developers: Google App Engine will Support Java

App Engine Blog: Google App Engine Roadmap - Now Published

Flash SEO Improves

Recent experiments have confirmed that Google is changing the way that it indexes SWF content. All signs seem to point to the fact that Google is drastically improving it. While the initial results that came after Adobe's announcement of SWF indexing were less than stellar, the recent results give Flash and Flex developers a reason to hope. Dominic Gelineau's experiements here at InsideRIA illustrate this fact. In addition, Duane Nickull of Adobe has provided some tips for Flash SEO.

InsideRIA: Google Changes the Way it Indexes SWF Content

Ryan Stewart (Adobe): Making Some Progress in Flash Search Indexing?

Duane Nickull (Adobe): Flash Search Engine Optimization Tricks

SilverlightContrib - Open Source Silverlight Controls

Tim Heuer highlighted SilverlightContrib, a project started by Page Brooks, that provides open source Silverlight controls and API enhancements for Silverlight 2. The project currently contains five controls and several utility libraries.

Tim Heuer: SilverlightContrib releases Silverlight 2 Controls

SilverlightContrib

Efflex: A New Flex Effects Library

RJ Owen highlighted a new open source effects library for Flex from Stephen Downs, known to most in the Flash/Flex community as Tink. This library includes several new effects, including a few that utilize Papervision3D. One of the effects that RJ mentioned, the MovieClipEffect, is one of the more unique Flex effects that I have seen.

InsideRIA: Efflex: Designer effects for Flex

Efflex

Google Gears becomes Location Aware

The latest version of Google Gears, version 0.4.24.0, extends Geolocation support to Wifi. This means that applications that utilize the Geolocation API can now receive more accurate results for mobile users.

Google UK Developer Blog: Increased Accuracy for Location in the Browser

QuakeLight

Adam Kinney reported this week on QuakeLight, a port of Quake to Silverlight. This project by Julien Frelat was inspired by the port of Quake on the Flash Player at last year's Adobe Max conference. While no code is available, there is a demo video of an early version.

Adam Kinney: QuakeLight, the Silverlight port of Quake, is coming...

Read more from David Tucker.