October 2012 Summaries

Google Developers Live (GDL) launched a focused series called "Women Techmakers," airing from November 5th-9th, 2012, which features conversations with prominent female tech leaders, activists, and creators. Each episode, airing daily at 2:30 PM PST, highlights women who are innovating and pushing the boundaries of technology. The series includes discussions with Leslie Bradshaw of JESS3, Mary Lou Jepsen of Pixel Qi, Stephanie Palmeri of SoftTech VC, Angela Benton of NewME Accelerator, and Diane Greene from Google, among others. Hosted by various Google executives and managers, these episodes explore topics such as growing a design business globally, overcoming engineering challenges in hardware, diversity in startups, and the intersection of data, policy, and technology. Viewers can engage with the series on Google Developers Live, the Google Developers YouTube channel, and Google+, using the hashtag #WTM to contribute to the conversation.

The GDG DevFest season is in full swing, showcasing the vibrant energy of the global Google Developer community through a series of events held around the world from October to November 2012. These events, organized by local Google Developer Groups (GDGs), feature a variety of sessions, hackathons, and networking opportunities, all aimed at fostering innovation and collaboration using Google technologies. Highlights include DevFest Berlin's video-recorded sessions, innovative apps developed during Berlin's hackathon, and the creative event announcement by GDG Chlef. DevFests in locations such as Amman, Dhaka, Zurich, and West have successfully engaged attendees with talks, workshops, and hackathons, while GDG Nebrodi elevated the participant experience by offering a dedicated app for their event. Upcoming DevFest events are planned in several countries, continuing to expand the reach and impact of the Google Developer community.

Google Developers Blog Editor Scott Knaster highlights a week filled with intriguing events, starting with Google's unveiling of a new website offering an inside look at their data centers, complete with photos, a Street View walkthrough, and a WIRED article by Steven Levy detailing their evolution. The blog also touches on a paleontological discovery explaining that extreme heat, with average temperatures of 50 to 60°C, inhibited species development for 5 million years during the Early Triassic period. Additionally, the post describes the unique spectacle of the Space Shuttle Endeavour's final journey through Los Angeles streets to its museum destination, providing a rare sight for city residents. This eclectic mix of topics underscores the blog's tradition of sharing nerdy and interesting content every Friday.

Native Client (NaCl) enables developers to write high-performance applications using C and C++ code that run directly in the browser, and recent enhancements have made the development process more efficient. The introduction of a Native Client add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio and a new debugger, nacl-gdb, simplifies setup, building, running, and debugging of applications as Pepper plug-ins and Native Client modules. This is particularly beneficial for those porting existing applications to Native Client, as it allows for gradual adaptation to Pepper APIs. The cross-platform nacl-gdb, based on the familiar gdb, supports Windows, Mac, and Linux, allowing developers to focus more on coding rather than troubleshooting with print statements. The Visual Studio add-in provides a user-friendly interface for debugging, although developers using other environments that support gdb can also interact with nacl-gdb. The enhancements aim to streamline the development experience, encouraging developers to explore Native Client for creating innovative apps while reducing the time spent on debugging.

Released on October 16, 2012, the first version of the Dart SDK marked a significant milestone in the development of this modern programming language designed for building complex web applications. Created by Lars Bak and his team, the Dart SDK included several enhancements and features, such as a faster Dart Virtual Machine that surpassed V8 in some Octane tests, a new Dart to JavaScript translator for efficient code generation, and libraries for HTML compatibility and JavaScript interoperability. The release also introduced an easy-to-use editor, a new package manager called Pub, Dartium—an adapted Chromium build with native Dart support, and a server-side I/O library. The comprehensive language specification provided insights into Dart's semantics, including new features. Lars Bak, renowned for his contributions to several virtual machines, emphasized the ongoing efforts to evolve the SDK, ensuring improved robustness and performance while maintaining backward compatibility, and encouraged feedback from the community to continue refining the platform.

The Google Developers Blog, edited by Scott Knaster, highlights several intriguing topics in its Fridaygram post, focusing on the digital expansion of historical archives, fascinating astronomical discoveries, and a reminder about dental hygiene. The Google Cultural Institute has made significant strides in digitizing important historical events, offering online exhibitions that include color photos and personal accounts of D-Day, the anti-Apartheid movement led by Steve Biko, and the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In the realm of astronomy, the planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits close to its star, boasts a surface partially composed of diamond, although its extreme temperatures of 2,100 degrees Celsius make it inhospitable for exploration. Additionally, the blog playfully reinforces the importance of oral care, suggesting that good habits like brushing and flossing are timeless advice, much like the whimsical notion that consuming chocolate could be linked to winning a Nobel Prize.

GDG DevFests are globally organized events by local Google Developer Groups to foster community engagement and professional networking among developers, featuring app demos, real-time updates, and sessions conducted by experts. The season began with DevFest Manila in August and has since included 30 events worldwide, with many more planned until November 11. Highlights include DevFest Santa Fe, where attendees praised the event's ability to foster professional relationships, and DevFest Mbale in Uganda, which introduced participants to Google App Engine through a memorable code lab. Upcoming events are scheduled in various cities such as Berlin, Chlef, and Zurich, emphasizing the ongoing global participation and enthusiasm in the developer community.

mod_pagespeed, an open-source Apache module developed by Google's PageSpeed Team, has transitioned out of beta after two years and eighteen releases, offering automatic optimization of web pages to enhance speed and performance. With over 120,000 sites already utilizing it, including services provided by hosting companies like DreamHost and Go Daddy, mod_pagespeed aims to further broaden its reach, promising smarter optimizations and support for more web servers. The initiative is part of Google's broader effort to make the web faster, as speed not only improves user engagement and retention but also influences search rankings and ad quality scores. Google provides additional tools for measuring and improving site performance, such as Site Speed Reports in Google Analytics and PageSpeed Insights, reinforcing their commitment to speed through technologies like the PageSpeed Optimization Libraries.

Streak, a CRM tool integrated into Gmail, leverages Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to efficiently build, scale, and analyze its product, as explained by co-founder Aleem Mawani in a guest post. The tool addresses the common issue of separating email from business processes by allowing users to manage various tasks within Gmail, such as sales and project management. Streak uses several GCP technologies, including App Engine for app serving, Datastore for data persistence, Memcache for fast operations, BigQuery for data analysis, and various APIs for additional functionalities like search and translation. The architecture involves mirroring data across different services to optimize functionality, such as providing full-text search and generating business metrics. The company developed an open-source library called Mache to facilitate data transfer into BigQuery via Cloud Storage, enhancing error monitoring and user insights. This strategic use of GCP has significantly supported Streak's rapid user growth and operational scalability, demonstrating the importance of utilizing the right tools for specific tasks in cloud-based applications.

In an effort to simplify the process of finding comprehensive web development resources, Google, along with the W3C and several leading tech companies, announced the alpha release of Web Platform Docs, a community-driven site aimed at becoming the definitive source for web developer documentation. Previously, developers faced challenges akin to a scavenger hunt when searching for information across different browsers and operating systems. With initial content contributions from founding members, the platform is designed to be open and expandable, encouraging community involvement to refine and direct its growth. Alex Komoroske, a Product Manager on Chrome's Open Web Platform team and former web developer, highlights the collaborative nature of the project and invites developers to participate in its evolution.

October 5, 2012, marked a celebratory Fridaygram post on the Google Developers Blog, highlighting three educational and interesting topics. In honor of World Teachers' Day, the post encouraged readers to reflect on influential educators and mentioned Google's commitment to supporting education through various initiatives like YouTube Edu and Google Apps for Education. It also commemorated the 55th anniversary of Sputnik's launch, noting its significance as the first human-made object in space, despite its brief three-month orbital period. Additionally, the post featured a playful educational tip on flipping food in a pan, accompanied by a video demonstrating the proper technique, crediting Boing Boing for sharing this content. The Fridaygram series, typically focused on developer topics, takes a lighter approach once a week to explore fun and engaging subjects outside the realm of development.

Google launched morethanamap.com, a site showcasing the capabilities of the Google Maps API, which is used by 800,000 active websites and apps to enhance user experiences. The website demonstrates how developers can integrate features like Street View, public transit directions, and advanced data visualization into their applications. Interactive demos and developer stories highlight the API's potential, including innovative uses for business growth, community improvement, and environmental conservation. The site aims to inspire both developers and general users by featuring applications like the animated London Heathrow flight map and global population heat map. Additionally, the Google Maps team plans to feature weekly developer stories on the Geo Developers Blog, offering insights into the diverse applications of the API worldwide.

Google Developers Live Presents, launched by Google Chrome Developer Relations, is a series of exclusive programming designed for designers, web developers, and creative enthusiasts, offering a journey from back-end to front-end to create compelling browser projects. The series features events like "Make Web Magic," which showcases Chrome Experiments using open web technologies, "All the Web’s a Stage," focusing on creating 3D browser spaces with Cirque du Soleil, and "Van Gogh Meets Alan Turing," exploring the intersection of art and technology with projects like "Music Room" and "Dissolving Realities." Another highlight is "Push the Limits," which delves into the innovative design and technical skills behind Chrome Web Lab's extraordinary browser experiences at the London Science Museum. Hosted by developers and featuring interviews with project creators, the sessions are also available as recordings on YouTube, with additional updates on Google+ and Twitter.

GDG DevFest Season in 2012 highlighted the vibrant and innovative spirit within the Google developer community, with 11 events organized by local Google Developer Groups across various locations, including Auckland, Jakarta, Kyoto, and Seattle. These events featured hackathons, workshops, and presentations that spurred the creation of new apps and projects, such as a 2D game developed at a code lab in Goa and several polished apps emerging from a hackathon in Surabaya. Participants engaged in sessions covering a range of topics from Android and HTML5 to Google Maps API, and there was notable enthusiasm for future events. DevFests provided a platform for developers to collaborate, share knowledge, and create impactful technology solutions, with upcoming events scheduled in locations like Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, and Kuala Lumpur, extending the season until November 11th.

Google BigQuery has expanded its capabilities to support JSON, a popular data format for web applications, enabling more effective handling of nested and repeated data structures, which enhances the platform's ability to manage complex datasets without the need for data flattening as required with CSV files. This update allows for more efficient data ingestion of up to 1TB per load job, with each file supporting up to 100GB of uncompressed JSON or CSV, and removes previous rate limits on imports, significantly speeding up large data processing tasks as demonstrated by a 20x improvement in a case study. The announcement also highlights new documentation available to assist developers in importing and querying JSON data, alongside details of a trusted tester program for users looking to integrate data from the App Engine Datastore to BigQuery, as well as Google’s presence at big data conferences to discuss these advancements.