July 2013 Summaries

Safari Books Online utilizes Google BigQuery for business intelligence to efficiently handle the vast amount of data generated by its subscription service, which offers access to a library of over 30,000 technology and business books and videos. The company faced challenges with their existing MySQL databases in quickly building dashboards and enabling interactive ad-hoc queries, prompting them to explore alternative technologies like Hadoop before ultimately choosing BigQuery. By processing data from their CDN and server logs through an ETL server into BigQuery, Safari Books Online can create dashboards that categorize books by popularity across different platforms and conduct rapid queries to explore usage patterns. This integration has proven valuable in improving their service and sales team effectiveness, with the company still uncovering potential uses for BigQuery to enhance their operations further.

In an effort to enhance Internet security, Google announced a transition from 1024-bit to 2048-bit certificates, along with changes to their certificate chain, which began in July 2013 and is expected to conclude in the following months. While this upgrade aims to bolster security for Google and its users, potential issues have been identified for users of outdated OpenSSL versions with obsolete CA databases and instances of embedded-client software with hard-coded certificate logic. Despite these concerns, most client software is anticipated to function without problems. Google encourages users to consult their FAQ page and test their clients against a designated sandbox to ensure compatibility.

Google has introduced Push notifications for the Google Calendar API, eliminating the need for applications to periodically poll for event changes to stay synchronized. This new feature allows apps to significantly reduce data usage and power consumption, especially on mobile devices, by enabling them to subscribe to a calendar and receive notifications whenever changes occur. Developers can easily implement this functionality using Google API client libraries, and upon receiving a notification, the app performs an API call to update its data. This advancement streamlines the process of keeping applications in sync with the Google Calendar server, ensuring timely updates and improved efficiency.

Google announced Chromecast, an affordable device that connects to any HDTV to stream online video and entertainment, and introduced the Google Cast SDK, which allows developers to create applications that cast content from mobile and web apps to the TV screen. This technology enables a seamless experience for users to enjoy their favorite media on a larger display without needing to download additional apps or learn new interactions. The Google Cast SDK, available in a developer preview, supports Android, iOS, and Chrome, encouraging developers to innovate and provide feedback for further refinement. The announcement reflects Google's commitment to enhancing multi-screen experiences and integrating mobile and web content with traditional TV viewing.

Google's Campus Tel Aviv hosted a unique nine-week course called Campus for Moms, designed to accommodate mothers with babies while they explore the startup world by covering topics like cloud computing, legal, and financial advice, with the course culminating in presentations to potential investors. Remarkably, during this period, four participants also gave birth. In another intriguing development, recent studies reveal that chimps and orangutans possess remarkable memory retention, recalling events years apart, suggesting advanced cognitive abilities among primates. Additionally, the long-running pitch drop experiment at Trinity College Dublin finally concluded, after 70 years, with video evidence showing tar pitch behaving as a liquid and forming drops, marking a significant moment in scientific observation.

Maker Camp is an online summer program for teens interested in creating gadgets and software, offering daily projects and expert-led Hangouts, along with virtual field trips to places like NASA Ames Research Center, fostering a spirit of both DIY (do it yourself) and DIT (do it together) over its six-week duration. Participants can join the Maker Camp community on Google+ for free. Meanwhile, MIT researchers have made strides in developing a perfect mirror by using photonic crystals to reflect a specific frequency of red light, potentially advancing laser technology. Additionally, the challenges of space hygiene are highlighted through a video of Astronaut Karen Nyberg demonstrating hair washing in zero gravity on the International Space Station, reflecting the unique yet mundane aspects of life in space.

Google Analytics has enhanced its Core Reporting API by adding 40 new data points, enabling more customized and detailed data retrieval. Key updates include the ability to query custom dimensions and metrics, which allows developers to integrate unique IDs from systems like content management platforms into their analytics. The API now offers expanded mobile dimensions and metrics, providing insights into app performance and user behavior, such as time spent on specific screens and app version usage. Additionally, new local currency metrics facilitate tracking transactions in multiple currencies, while time-based dimensions simplify time-related reporting. Two new traffic source dimensions, including a full referrer URL, have also been introduced to improve referral data analysis. These enhancements aim to offer more comprehensive analytics capabilities for developers and businesses using Google Analytics.

In a bid to enhance web performance, Google's Ads Latency Team introduced a new asynchronous script tag for AdSense ads that allows web pages to load more efficiently, even with slow network connections. This modern method, which uses the <script async> mechanism, prevents the script from becoming a bottleneck and ensures that the page can fully render independently of the ad script's loading speed. Unlike the traditional blocking script tag approach, this new tag allows ad slot configuration and placement within the DOM, thereby promoting better integration and efficiency, especially on mobile devices where network stability can be unreliable. The new system involves a single script that can be placed at the page's top, a DOM element for ad display, and a call to adsbygoogle.push() to manage ad slots. While the classic show_ads.js has been reliable, the new adsbygoogle.js, still in beta, offers a promising alternative for users seeking to prevent ads from hindering content display. Michael Kleber, the Tech Lead of the team, encourages users to adopt this new method to improve web experience, reflecting his extensive expertise in internet speed optimization and his diverse background in mathematics, computational biology, and machine learning.

Google has significantly enhanced its PubSubHubbub (PuSH) protocol hub to improve feed exposure, resilience, and throughput, allowing servers to subscribe to numerous feeds and receive real-time updates. This update supports efficient and secure feed access, encouraging feed providers and tool developers to integrate their systems with Google's PuSH hub. The PuSH protocol is optimized for large-scale reading and is intended to be accessed by bots, offering generous access limits and minimal restrictions. Google also supports feed publishers in submitting their feeds to public PuSH hubs, and hosts a vast number of feeds through its services like Blogger. The announcement of version 0.4 of the PuSH specification, developed with Superfeedr, aims to enhance infrastructure support for feed handling, establishing a robust ecosystem for feed distribution and consumption.