Free service that allows storing game data online?

Question

I have created a small game in Java and I would like to add the ability for a player to publish his highscores online.

I'm willing to write the server software myself (it's easy these days with Ruby Mongrel, or even C++). I just need to have some sort hosting. One solution that immediately comes to mind is Amazon EC2. But that's kind of expensive for my needs. Since the requirements are very minimal (I don't even need a website, just a web service) I think there may be a cheaper solution out there.

Does anyone know of a free or cheap provider for this kind of thing?

Update

For those interested, this is solution I came up with:

• a SliceHost
• purchased a domain name
• C++ HTTP server
  • built upon the Poco HTTPServer
  • uses SQLite database via Poco Data
• Server implements a REST API supporting
  • High Score table
    • /hs content type deduced from accept header
    • /hs.xml forces xml
    • /hs.txt forces plain text
  • /hs/add html form, does a POST using XMLHttpRequest
  • /hof Hall of Fame, content type deduced from accept header
    • /hof.txt forces plain text
    • /hof.xml forces xml
• game: my own Tetris clone written in Clojure

Answer 1

Something like Slicehost or any other small-scale VPS provider could probably work. You might even be able to write it as a small app and publish it on Google App Engine, which is free up to a certain point.

Answer 2

google app engine comes to mind: http://code.google.com/appengine/