February 2014 Summaries

At the Game Developers Conference on March 18, 2014, Google hosted its largest-ever Developer Day in San Francisco, where various Google teams dedicated to gaming offered insights on topics such as game development, audience growth, player engagement, and monetization strategies. Highlights of the event included sessions on growth hacking with Play Games, monetization best practices on Google Play, revenue tracking with Google Analytics, and cloud scalability for games. Attendees could also explore the Google Developer Day schedule on the GDC website and purchase tickets, while those unable to attend in person could watch the livestreamed talks on YouTube. From March 19-21, visitors had the opportunity to interact with Google teams from AdMob, Analytics, and Cloud at the Moscone Center's South Hall, with a chance to win a Nexus 7. Greg Hartrell, the Lead Product Manager on Google Play game services, emphasized Google's commitment to assisting developers in creating exceptional games on Google Play, while also sharing his personal enthusiasm for gaming challenges.

The OpenID Connect specification, an open standard designed to improve user login experiences, was ratified by the OpenID Foundation and is intended to make authentication both secure and simple for users and developers. Built on top of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect allows the use of existing technology for authentication while providing strong user privacy protections by only sharing account information as authorized by users. Google has endorsed the new standard, integrating it into Google+ Sign-In to offer developers an easy integration path with additional features like cross-device sign-on and analytics. As part of this transition, Google will phase out support for older federated sign-in protocols, including OpenID 2.0, by specific deadlines. Developers are encouraged to migrate to OpenID Connect and Google+ Sign-In using available resources to ensure they can leverage these enhanced capabilities.

In a guest post by Massimiliano Pippi, a Senior Software Engineer at Evonove, the integration of Django with Google App Engine and Google Cloud SQL is discussed, highlighting the ease and efficiency it brings to deploying complex web applications. With the release of Google App Engine 1.6.2 in 2012, developers can leverage Django's ORM to build functional web apps, facilitated by tools like the Django Appengine Toolkit that simplify Google Cloud configuration. Despite limited adoption within the Django community, Pippi advocates for greater utilization of App Engine, citing new features such as the Cloud Console, gCloud tool, and Cloud SQL as significant enhancements that streamline development on Google's platform. He emphasizes the potential for nearly "one-click" deployments and expresses optimism for future improvements in client libraries and documentation, making the current setup a compelling option for developers.

GDL Weekly, hosted by Louis Gray, a Program Manager on Google's Developer Relations Team, provides a rundown of recent developments and resources available for developers, including engaging video content. The show highlights several topics such as the QUIC next-generation transport protocol, the Maps SDK for iOS 1.7, and the use of heatmaps in Maps Live, while also offering informative links to explore these subjects further. Also covered are updates on BigQuery and Python, as well as information on the Wallet Objects API and Cloud SQL. The program encourages viewers to subscribe to Google Developers on YouTube to stay informed about the latest events and resources provided by Google Developers Live.

In a collaborative effort between Code School and Google, a new online course called Discover Drive has been created to help developers learn to use the Google Drive API without the need for complex setup procedures. The course is designed to allow learners to focus more on writing code and less on configuring coding environments, thus making the initial stages of programming more accessible and enjoyable. It is available directly from a web browser, enabling participants to learn at their own pace. Greg Knoke, a Technical Writer with the Google Drive Developer Relations Team, highlights the convenience and benefits of this approach for aspiring developers.

John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst, discusses how to make infinite scroll pages more search-friendly by converting them into a paginated series using the HTML5 History API, as announced on the Webmaster Central Blog. This approach, which remains seamless to users, helps search engines access all individual items in a category or gallery, ensuring they appear in search results. Traditional infinite scroll poses challenges for crawlers that struggle to load additional content beyond the initial page. The conversion to pagination allows each component page to have similar titles with rel=next/prev values, ensuring complete coverage without overlapping items. Although the demo provided isn't production-ready, it highlights the key points necessary for creating search engine-friendly pages.

Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure at Google, invites individuals to attend Google Cloud Platform Live on March 25, 2014, in San Francisco, where Google will unveil new products, features, and updates to its cloud platform. With limited tickets available for the San Francisco event, attendees are encouraged to secure their spots early. For those unable to attend in person, Google is offering live viewing parties in New York City and Seattle, as well as a live stream on YouTube for a global audience. Hölzle, a Google Fellow, emphasizes the company's commitment to enhancing its public cloud offerings.

Google Cloud SQL, a fully managed MySQL service on the Google Cloud Platform, is now generally available with enhanced features including automatic encryption of customer data, a 99.95% uptime service level agreement (SLA), and support for larger databases up to 500GB. This advancement ensures that all customer data, including database tables and traffic on Google's internal networks, is encrypted, with additional security measures such as SSL for external connections and user access controls at various levels. The service offers automatic replication and backup of data across multiple locations, enhancing reliability and availability. Businesses like Costco, LiveHive, Ocado, and LiveStream have successfully utilized Cloud SQL for their core applications, noting its performance, reliability, scalability, and ease of development, which allows them to focus on innovation and functionality rather than operational concerns.

Google Developers Live (GDL) produced a variety of engaging videos this week, covering topics such as the Google Cast SDK, the use of data layers in programming, and interviews with notable figures like Addy Osmani and Nicolas Geoffray at dotJS. Highlights include a focus on subscribing to a YouTube channel using API version 3, episodes from Women Techmakers featuring Karen Sandeler and Marina Zhurakhinskaya, an introduction to Google Apps Script in Japanese, and a segment on Python for Spanish-speaking developers. Additionally, the deadline for Summer of Code organization applications is approaching, encouraging developers to stay updated by subscribing to Google Developers on YouTube. Louis Gray, a Program Manager on Google's Developer Relations Team, emphasizes the importance of engaging with live streams to keep up with the latest in technology and development.

In 2014, Google collaborated with the Barbican in London to host DevArt, an interactive gallery part of the Digital Revolution exhibition, celebrating the creative use of technology in art. This initiative invited developers to merge their coding skills with artistic expression, offering them the chance to have their work displayed alongside renowned interactive artists like Karsten Schmidt, Zach Lieberman, and the duo Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet. Participants were encouraged to use a variety of technologies, including OpenFrameworks, Processing, Arduino, or Raspberry Pi, as long as they incorporated at least one Google technology, such as Google APIs or platforms like Android and Chrome Apps. The projects were developed openly on GitHub, providing insights into the creative processes of modern tech artists. Developer Advocate Paul Kinlan, based in Liverpool, highlighted this opportunity for developers to innovate and showcase their creativity to a global audience.

The Google Cast SDK, which facilitates multi-screen experiences by enabling content casting from mobile devices to large-screen displays, is now available for developers to create and publish Google Cast-ready apps across Android, iOS, and Chrome. Developers can integrate the SDK into existing mobile and web apps without building new ones, and manage their app development through the Google Cast developer console. The SDK supports various streaming protocols and allows for simple media applications using a default media player or more complex custom receiver applications. With sample apps and a Cast Companion library for Android, integration is streamlined, and updated Chromecast devices are already compatible with the SDK, which is part of the Google Play services 4.2 update. The Google Cast SDK is designed to enhance user experience on TV screens and is available worldwide, with documentation accessible on the Google Cast Developers site.