December 2014 Summaries

Google announced the discontinuation of several deprecated APIs related to Drive, Calendar, and Google Apps for Work domains, effective April 20, 2015, urging developers to migrate to updated versions that offer improved features. The affected APIs include the Documents List API, Admin Audit, Google Apps Profiles, Provisioning, Reporting, and Email Migration API v1, with recommended replacements such as the Drive API, Admin SDK, and Email Migration API v2, except for Reporting Visualization, which lacks a replacement. Alongside these changes, Google recommends switching to OAuth2 for authorization as older protocols like ClientLogin, AuthSub, and OpenID 2.0 are also being phased out. Developers are encouraged to consult API documentation or seek assistance on StackOverflow for migration support.

Thorsten Schaeff outlines the process of building a scalable geofencing API on Google's App Engine, emphasizing the challenges of working with geospatial data in a cloud environment and the benefits of using Google's Cloud Platform. He details the architecture of this API, which involves storing complex polygons and metadata in Cloud Datastore, indexing them for fast querying using an STR-Tree stored in memcache, and serving results through HTTP requests using Google Cloud Endpoints. Additionally, the implementation utilizes the Java Topology Suite for geometric computations and the GSON library for JSON handling. Schaeff provides a step-by-step guide on setting up the project with Apache Maven, adding libraries, creating endpoints for adding, listing, and retrieving fence metadata, and building a spatial index for efficient geofencing queries. The API is designed for automatic scalability and cost-effectiveness, with options to enhance performance through dedicated memcache. The post also hints at future work on processing large spatial datasets using Google's Cloud Dataflow.

Google Cardboard is an innovative virtual reality (VR) viewer that combines a smartphone with a simple cardboard structure, transforming how users can experience VR by offering an accessible and low-cost entry point. Since its inception, Google has been enhancing Cardboard by expanding its app offerings on Google Play, providing a new collection of VR experiences ranging from games to concerts, and making it easier for users to obtain a viewer from various retailers or by building their own. For developers, Google has introduced SDKs for Android and Unity to streamline VR app development, allowing them to focus more on creativity rather than technical challenges. Additionally, Google has supported the maker community by releasing open-source specs and promising future tools to calibrate custom viewers, ensuring a tailored VR experience. As mobile technology advances and open platforms like Android continue to grow, Google remains committed to pushing the boundaries of VR and is actively hiring for future projects in this exciting field.

App deep links have become increasingly important for Android apps, with 15% of Google searches on Android now returning deep links through App Indexing, and a significant increase in clicks on these links recently. The article outlines four essential steps to enhance app performance and user engagement through deep linking. First, developers should collaborate with their website management team to access Webmaster Tools, enabling them to track app-related issues and monitor app performance. Second, understanding app engagement from search results is crucial, with new tracking features available in Webmaster Tools and plans for integration with Google Analytics. Third, ensuring key app resources are crawlable is vital to avoid content mismatch errors, and developers are encouraged to fix blocked resources. Lastly, developers should be vigilant about Android App errors, with Google providing alerts for new error types like APK not found, no first-click free, and back button violation, and addressing general app settings can resolve common issues.

The Google Apps Marketplace is a platform that connects third-party applications with Google Drive, enhancing Google Apps for Work's collaboration and productivity capabilities. To increase the visibility and adoption of a Google Drive app, developers are encouraged to list their apps in the marketplace by following a simple four-step process. This involves setting up the Google Apps Marketplace SDK within the Google Cloud console, configuring settings to match the app's Drive integration, and updating the Chrome Web Store manifest to make the app domain-installable. Once these steps are completed, apps become accessible to all Google Apps for Work customers for domain-wide installation. Developers are advised to consult the Google Apps Marketplace documentation and subscribe to the related Google+ community for ongoing updates.

In December 2014, Google announced a significant increase in the default quota for the Calendar API v3, raising it by a factor of ten to allow 1 million requests per day, thereby enabling applications to support more users without needing additional quota approvals. Developers can request even more free quota through the developer console if necessary. Google has streamlined the quota handling process to speed up allocation and provided several tips for efficient quota usage, such as using push notifications over polling, employing incremental synchronization with sync tokens, increasing page size with the maxResults parameter, updating events selectively, and applying exponential backoff for error retries to enhance performance and resource management.

In response to the challenge of limited Internet access in various regions, Google initiated a pilot project to offer offline access to its developer resources, enabling developers to download a select range of content, including SDKs, documentation, and videos, which are typically available online. This initiative aims to alleviate issues such as slow download speeds and buffering that hinder developers in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Bangladesh. By distributing over 2,000 kits through Google Developer Groups, developers can now efficiently access critical materials offline, such as the I/O Dev Bytes Series, full Google Udacity course videos, and various documentation from platforms like Android and Google Cloud. This project, spearheaded by Chukwuemeka Afigbo, Program Manager for Developer Ecosystems, encourages interested parties to connect with local Google Developer Groups or follow specific instructions to acquire these kits, particularly benefiting organizations such as schools, tech hubs, or incubators.

Google Code-in is an annual contest designed to engage 13-17-year-old students in open-source software development by providing them with opportunities to contribute to various projects. The initiative encourages creativity and collaboration, offering tasks in areas such as coding, documentation, outreach, research, training, user interface, and quality assurance. The contest assigns mentors to guide students through their tasks, making it accessible even to those without prior coding experience. Highlighting the success of past participants like Ignacio Rodriguez, who began his journey with open-source at a young age and later became a Google Code-in Grand Prize Winner, the contest aims to inspire students worldwide to explore and contribute to open-source projects. With participation from 12 organizations working on diverse projects, the contest not only supports the development of technical skills but also fosters a sense of community and collaboration among young tech enthusiasts.