Tom Marsh will present "Designing an API for a mobile platform with AppEngine".

Tom is a recent transplant from the UK where he was an architect on the Guardian Open Platform (http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform), a fascinating open API to newspaper stories at the Guardian.

Tom's built a mobile application on the API, and will explain all the pieces: the inception and the philosophy behind the API itself; the homegrown AppEngine client API that reduces the bandwidth requirements for the mobile platform; and a little bit about the browser application.

If you're interested in programmatic access to data, building AppEngine applications, or how to design for mobile platforms, please join us!

We'll likely also have time for either lightning topics or free-form hacking, so bring your ideas...

Remote Objects with Pyro -- Allen Downey

Pyro is a network communication module for Python -- it provides an
easy-to-use form of remote method invocation. In many cases you can
take existing objects and make them available for remote access with
a few lines of code. When you invoke a method on a remote object,
Pyro marshals the arguments, sends them to the remote object, then
marshals the return value (or exception) and sends it back to the caller.

In this presentation Allen will show a few simple examples that use Pyro,
we will write a server together, and then participants will write a
client that talks to it. If possible, please bring a laptop with
Python and Pyro installed. If you use Ubuntu, you can install the
package named pyro, and optionally pyro-doc, pyro-examples and
pyro-gui. Otherwise you can get it from http://pyro.sourceforge.net/

The talk will be accessible to intermediate Python programmers --
if you are familiar with inheritance, that should do it. If you can't bring a laptop,
don't worry -- if we have one laptop for every two people, that will be plenty.

If you have any questions about Pyro or anything you would like Allen to
cover, send him email: downey@allendowney.com

For June, we don't have a formal presentation, but someone suggested delving into the details of how Python software is packaged and distributed. I can show how I've done things, but there's stuff I don't know, so it'll be a collaborative exploration entitled:

** I'll Show You My Package If You'll Show Me Yours **

If you've been confused by setup.py, setuptools, distutils, easy_install, eggs, pip, pypi, and so on, come and see at least part of it de-mystified.

On the other hand, if you know what any of these things are, then come and help educate the rest of us!

We'll be at Betahouse in Central Square. Remember, cheap plentiful parking is just around the corner on at the municipal Green St. garage.

Topic: "A Whirlwind Excursion through Python C Extensions"

If you've never explored the Python C API, now's your chance to journey there safely. In 45 minutes, Ned Batchelder will cover the tools and techniques of writing C code to execute inside the Python interpreter. The terrain may be challenging, but we guarantee you will return unscathed.

This is a preview of a Pycon 2009 presentation.

Afterwards we will invite folks to give lightning talks (5 min or less presentations) on topics that are interested in sharing with the group.

We can go to a local watering hole after the meetup for further discussion and socializing.