Show HN : Playing with GAE Channel API

The channel API really isn't that great. Unlike WebSockets, it's not a bidirectional socket and since it uses http requests to send data to the server, the latency great. It's much better than polling, but still not great. You can't reuse channel client IDs so broadcasting a message to all subscribers requires you to keep track of things on the datastore yourself, not terrible, but it could have been made better.

On the app-engine discussion forums, it's been mentioned that they do plan on making the channel API compatible with websockets once the technology has matured. The javascript client side code quite closely mimics websocket code too.

I seem to notice that if one person get possession of the ball for a few kicks, he tends to kick it in a triangular path?

think tats coz he tries to elude, imagining someone else wud take possesion of it..

Hm. There needs to be some sort of throttling on the channel- if you open a console and run

"while(true){ $.post('/shove/updatepos', { 'x':50000, 'y':50000 }); }" you can really ruin people's good time.

I'm going to have it spelling my name by the end of the night.

Add some "Trash Talk" buttons and you've got a winner.

I keep trying to steal the ball and hide it :)