In a sad turn of events, I managed to get a test app running using Java, added it to Git and uploaded to Heroku. It was only then that I realized I need to “Verify” my account before being able to run my application.

Fair enough. Google app engine sends a text message to your phone in order to verify an account. When I originally set it up, I was unable to get the text message to work, so I filled out a form and received access the next day. I liked this – no need to provide any payment information for a service I have no plans to pay for.

Heroku takes a different approach. Verifying your account must be done by handing over a credit card. If you don’t want to provide payment information to a company you don’t plan on paying, then you can consult the FAQ:

Can I verify my account without a credit card?

Currently, you need a credit card to verify. We continue to research other means of verification and will announce if other methods are made available.

Hmm, not with the amount of credit card breaches that have been happening in the last few year. Especially if you are providing a free service, I don’t see why you need to verify via credit card, which will be kept on file in order to provide an easy way to upgrade services in the future.

Of course, credit card verification for free accounts is their call, and it isn’t like I can complain as I would be using their resources and not paying for it anyway. They do look like they have a good setup: free limited account, a lot of languages to choose from and a slick, easy to use UI.

If I ever want to do some serious cloud hosting, they will be on the top of the list, but for free, I’ll stick with places that don’t need the credit information.

Image by Fylkesarkivet i Sogn og Fjordane

Now that we have a cloud platform to use, how do we get started? Well, signing up is easy, just enter your email and confirm, but what’s in the Terms of Service?

• Must be 13 years or older – really? Why 13?
• Your account gets shut down once it reaches the hard or soft limit. Good, they won’t be charging me for going over
• I get to own all my content, hooray

Otherwise, pretty standard stuff. Interestingly, it is an adapted version of the Google App Engine terms.

Anyway, setup time. Registering brings you to a link with quick start guide. Set up is a simple as download, install and run some command line utilities. After logging in with the command line tool, you have a plethora of tutorials for all sorts of languages.

Even better, Heroku’s GitHub page has a lot more examples, including a Grails example that I plan on looking into next.

Recently, I read through Code in the Cloud – Programming Google App Engine and decided to start a new project with cloud computing. Overall, it was quite good with an decent introduction to cloud computing as long as you already know Python and Java with a smattering of server side web development.

Now that I’ve had a taste of cloud computing, lets get started building something. First, we need to decide where to host the application, and to do that we need to set some requirements. This is just for fun, so price should be exactly free, and it needs to support Java (I’d like to stick Grails or some other Groovy framework, as that is what I am most comfortable with right now), but other options would be nice as well.

What are the popular platforms out there? A quick search gives the following:

• Windows Azure: Supports Java, Node.js, .NET and PHP, so there are plenty of options, but it is only free for 90 days.
• Google App Engine: Supports Java, Python and Go. I don’t care for Python, but Go is interesting. The fist thing I tried after getting the basics was trying to use Grails, but it looks like the App Engine plugin is currently broken and not being maintained. There is Gaelyk however, a Groovy framework specifically for the App Engine. App Engine also gives us free instance hours and backend data stores.
• Heroku: Looks great with support for Java, Ruby, Python, Clojure, Scala and Node.js, but the free account seems very limited with many restrictions.
• Amazon EC2: Very flexible with support for many languages and customization, but I’m not really interested in supporting the backend installs myself.
• … and plenty of others.

Since I’ve already used Google App Engine and seen some of its limitations, lets start this project with Heroku. Limited storage may not be too big of a setback as this is just for fun, and the list of supported languages really beats the competition in other free cloud offerings.