September 2019 Summaries

Ricardo Costeira, a software engineer from Coimbra, Portugal, shares his transformative experience at DevFest, the largest developer community-led event hosted by Google Developer Groups. Initially seeking to connect with like-minded individuals, Ricardo discovered DevFest through social media and attended his first event in 2018, where he was captivated by the welcoming atmosphere and the sense of belonging it instilled in him. This experience sparked a personal transformation, leading him to become a GDG Lead and actively participate in organizing future events. Ricardo highlights the value of community at DevFest, emphasizing the connections made with industry leaders and companies, as well as the opportunities for professional growth. As he looks forward to DevFest 2019, he aims to inspire new attendees and foster the same sense of awe and community he experienced, encouraging them to engage with others and find their place within this inclusive environment.

Project Strobe aims to provide users with better control over their data while offering developers clear guidelines for data security, leading to an expansion of the app verification program for various apps and data access types. Developers need to determine whether their app requires OAuth verification, which is necessary if the app uses sensitive or restricted scopes and is intended for a wide launch. Proper configuration and preparation are crucial, as making updates during the verification process requires starting over. Developers must assess their app's OAuth scopes, ensure project structures are appropriately set up, and verify domain ownership to secure OAuth tokens. Verification involves checking branding, privacy policies, and ensuring that data access is limited to what's necessary for the app's functionality. Different verification processes exist depending on the sensitivity of the data scopes, ranging from brand verification to more extensive checks for restricted scopes, which may require a security assessment. By following the established guidelines and keeping project information up-to-date, developers can streamline the verification process and ensure their app's successful integration into the Google ecosystem.

ARCore, a developer platform for augmented reality (AR) experiences, has introduced updates to its Augmented Faces and Cloud Anchors APIs to enhance shared cross-platform experiences on Android and iOS. The Augmented Faces API, now available for iOS, offers a 468-point 3D mesh for creating face effects without a depth sensor, expanding accessibility to over a billion users. The Cloud Anchors API, which facilitates shared AR experiences by creating and hosting 3D feature maps in the cloud, has been improved for greater efficiency and robustness, allowing more angles and larger areas to be captured for a stronger 3D map. Additionally, multiple anchors can now be resolved simultaneously, speeding up shared AR experiences. Looking ahead, ARCore is exploring persistent Cloud Anchors to enable continuous interaction with AR content over time, effectively allowing users to "save" digital overlays for ongoing collaboration or discovery. This development is exemplified by the Mark AR app, which allows users to create and share AR art in real-world locations, and ARCore is seeking more developers to test these features at scale.

Flutter 1.9, announced at the Google Developer Days in China, marks a significant update to the Flutter framework with over 1,500 pull requests from more than 100 contributors. This release introduces extensive new features and improvements, including support for macOS Catalina, iOS 13, and enhanced tooling support. It also integrates Flutter's web support into the main repository, enabling developers to target web, mobile, and desktop with the same codebase. New Material widgets such as ToggleButtons and ColorFiltered have been added, along with support for 24 new languages. The Dart 2.5 release accompanies Flutter 1.9, featuring Foreign Function Interface support and machine learning-powered code completions. Toolchain improvements include defaulting to Swift and Kotlin for new iOS and Android projects, respectively. Tencent's use of Flutter for numerous mobile apps was highlighted, and an early adopter program for web support was announced, reflecting the framework's growing community and adoption.

Differential privacy is a crucial approach for organizations to analyze data while protecting individual privacy, and Google has released an open-source differential privacy library to aid developers in implementing these techniques. This library, designed to be user-friendly and extensible, supports common data science operations and includes features like statistical functions and rigorous testing tools to ensure accuracy. Its modular design allows for the addition of new functionalities, and it comes with a PostgreSQL extension and common recipes to facilitate deployment. The release is part of Google's ongoing commitment to advancing privacy technologies, following previous initiatives like RAPPOR and recent tools such as Tensorflow Privacy and Private Join and Compute. By making this library widely available, Google aims to enable developers across sectors, including medicine, government, and business, to derive valuable insights from data while maintaining privacy protection.