Tag Archives: io16

Blockly for iOS

Posted by Champika Fernando, Product Manager, Kids Coding

At Google I/O, we announced our ongoing investment in Blockly with the release of a native Android version. We also highlighted significant improvements to the performance of web Blockly, which enables better rendering performance on mobile devices. Now iOS developers will have access to an open-source developer preview of Blockly for iOS that supports building better experiences on mobile, including multi-touch and enhanced animations as new experimental features.

Today’s release supports our ongoing efforts to enable developers to create consistent, high-quality, beginner programming experiences - as block-based programming interfaces can make coding more accessible by removing syntax errors and supporting “tinkerability.” We believe that coding is more than just a set of technical skills; coding is a valuable tool for everyone, empowering users from around the globe to imagine, invent, and explore.

Blockly Turtle running on iOS

With Blockly for iOS, developers can add Blockly views and fragments directly into their iOS app. This will offer tighter integration and improved performance compared to using a WebView. In this developer preview, blocks are currently optimized for tablets, but ready to customize for any app.

In addition, if you already use Blockly we're releasing a major update to the tools for creating custom blocks and configuring Blockly for your app, check out the new Blockly Developer Tools. The new tools allow you to edit and maintain a library of custom blocks, quickly configure toolboxes, and export and import files to local storage.

Click here to learn more, and get started on Blockly for iOS today. And to share feedback and get news, we welcome you to join the Blockly mailing list. We look forward to seeing your future builds!

I/O session: Location and Proximity Superpowers: Eddystone + Google Beacon Platform

Originally posted on Geo Developers blog

Bluetooth beacons mark important places and objects in a way that your phone understands. Last year, we introduced the Google beacon platform including Eddystone, Nearby Messages and the Proximity Beacon API that helps developers build beacon-powered proximity and location features in their apps.
Since then, we’ve learned that when deployment of physical infrastructure is involved, it’s important to get the best possible value from your investment. That’s why the Google beacon platform works differently from the traditional approach.
We don’t think of beacons as only pointing to a single feature in an app, or a single web resource. Instead, the Google beacon platform enables extensible location infrastructure that you can manage through your Google Developer project and reuse many times. Each beacon can take part in several different interactions: through your app, through other developers’ apps, through Google services, and the web. All of this functionality works transparently across Eddystone-UID and Eddystone-EID -- because using our APIs means you never have to think about monitoring for the individual bytes that a beacon is broadcasting.
For example, we’re excited that the City of Amsterdam has adopted Eddystone and the newly released publicly visible namespace feature for the foundation of their open beacon network. Or, through Nearby Notifications, Eddystone and the Google beacon platform enable explorers of the BFG Dream Jar Trail to discover cloud-updateable content in Dream Jars across London.
To make getting started as easy as possible we’ve provided a set of tools to help developers, including links to beacon manufacturers that can help you with Eddystone, Beacon Tools (for Android and iOS), the Beacon Dashboard, a codelab and of course our documentation. And, if you were not able to attend Google I/O in person this year, you can watch my session, Location and Proximity Superpowers: Eddystone + Google Beacon Platform:
We can’t wait to see what you build!
author image

 About Peter: I am a Product Manager for the Google beacon platform, including the open beacon format Eddystone, and Google's cloud services that integrate beacon technology with first and third party apps. When I’m not working at Google I enjoy taking my dog, Oscar, for walks on Hampstead Heath.

Surface new proximity-based experiences to users with Nearby

Posted by Akshay Kannan, Product Manager

Today we're launching Nearby on Android, a new surface for users to discover and interact with the things around them. This extends the Nearby APIs we launched last year, which make it easy to discover and communicate with other nearby devices and beacons. Earlier this year, we also started experimenting with Physical Web beacons in Chrome for Android. With Nearby, we’re taking this a step further.

Imagine pulling up a barcode scanner when you’re at the store, or discovering an audio tour while you’re exploring a museum–these are the sorts of experiences that Nearby can enable. To make this possible, we're allowing developers to associate their mobile app or a website with a beacon.



A number of developers have already been building compelling proximity-based experiences, using beacons and Nearby:

Getting started is simple. First, get some Eddystone Beacons- you can order these from any one of our Eddystone-certified manufacturers. Android devices and and other BLE-equipped smart devices can also be configured to broadcast in the Eddystone Format.

Second, configure your beacon to point to your desired experience. This can be a mobile web page using the Physical Web, or you can link directly to an experience in your app. For users who don’t have your app, you can either provide a mobile web fallback or request a direct app install.

Nearby has started rolling out to users as part of the upcoming Google Play Services release and will work on Android devices running 4.4 (KitKat) and above. Check out our developer documentation to get started. To learn more about Nearby Notifications in Android, also check out our I/O 2016 session, starting at 17:10.

A study on scale: WhatsApp & Google Drive… the story of our integration

Posted by Mike Procopio, Engineering Manager, Google Drive and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

WhatsApp is one of the most popular mobile apps in the world. Over a billion users send and receive over 42 billion messages, photos, and videos every day. It's fast, easy to use, and reliable.

But what happens when people lose their phone or otherwise upgrade to a new one? All those messages and memories would be gone. So we worked with WhatsApp to give their users the ability to back up their data to Google Drive and restore it when they setup WhatsApp on a new phone. With messages and media safely stored in your Drive, there’s no more worry about losing any of those memories.

Scaling for a billion users

One of the biggest challenges for an integration of this scope is scaling. How do you back up data for a billion users? Many things were done to ensure the feature works as intended and is unnoticeable by users. Our approach? First, we relied on a proven infrastructure that can handle this kind of volume—Google Drive. Next, we optimized what to back up and when to do the backups—the key was to upload only incremental changes rather than transmit identical files.

On the server side (backend), we focused on optimizing byte storage as well as the number of network calls between WhatsApp and Google. As far as deployment goes, we rolled out slowly over several months to minimize the size and impact of deployment.

WhatsApp & Google Drive, a seamless integration

If you have ever used WhatsApp, you know how it gets out of your way, and lets you get started quickly: no account creation, no passwords to manage, and no user IDs to remember or exchange. This sets a high bar for any integration with WhatsApp: for it to feel like a natural part of WhatsApp, it has to be as seamless, fast, and reliable as WhatsApp itself.

By using the Google Drive API, we were able to achieve this: no need to type in any usernames or passwords, just a few taps in the app, and WhatsApp starts backing up. The best part is that all the tools used in the integration are available to all developers. With the Google Drive API, seamless and scalable integrations are as easy to use for the user as they are for developers.

Are you ready to integrate your web and mobile apps with Google Drive? Get started today by checking out our intro video as well as the video demoing the newest API, then dig in with the developer docs found at developers.google.com/drive. We're excited to see what you build next with the Drive API—and we're ready to scale with you!

Daydream Labs: exploring and sharing VR’s possibilities

Posted by Andrey Doronichev, Group Product Manager, Google VR

In Daydream Labs, the Google VR team explores virtual reality’s possibilities and shares what we learn with the world. While it’s still early days, the VR community has already come a long way in understanding what works well in VR across hardware, software, video, and much more. But, part of what makes developing for VR so exciting is that there’s still so much more to discover.

Apps are a big focus for Daydream Labs. In the past year, we’ve built more than 60 app experiments that test different use cases and interaction designs. To learn fast, we build two new app prototypes each week. Not all of our experiments are successful, but we learn something new with each one.

For example, in one week we built a virtual drum kit that used HTC Vive controllers as drumsticks. The following week, when we were debating how to make typing in VR more natural and playful, we thought — “what if we made a keyboard out of tiny drums?”

We were initially skeptical that drumsticks could be more efficient than direct hand interaction, but the result surprised us. Not only was typing with drumsticks faster than with a laser pointer, it was really fun! We even built a game that lets you track your words per minute (mine was 50 wpm!).

Daydream Labs is just getting started. This post is the first in an ongoing series sharing what we’ve learned through our experiments so stay tuned for more! You can also see more of what we’ve learned about VR interactions, immersion, and social design by watching our Google I/O talks on the live stream.

The Google Play Awards coming to Google I/O

Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Apps and Games Business Development, Google Play

Google Play has seen tremendous growth over the past year, reaching more than 1 billion Android users across 190 countries. As a way to recognize our incredible developer community and highlight some of the best apps and games, we’re kicking off our first-ever Google Play Awards.

The program will showcase five nominees across 10 award categories and feature them in a dedicated collection on Google Play. Nominees were selected by a panel of experts on the Google Play team based on criteria emphasizing app quality, innovation, and having a launch or major update in the last 12 months. The winners of each category will be announced at Google I/O in May.

The full list of categories and nominees are below:

Standout Startup

Apps from new developers that offer a unique experience while achieving strong install growth. And the nominees are...

Dubsmash
Hopper
Musical.ly
Robinhood
Vrse

Standout Indie

Games from indie developers that focus on artistic design, high quality and innovative gameplay. And the nominees are...

Alphabear
Alto’s Adventure
Fast like a Fox
Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector
Prune

Best Families App

Apps or games with family friendly design that encourage creativity and exploration. And the nominees are...

Card Wars - Adventure Time
LEGO Jurassic World™
My Very Hungry Caterpillar
Thinkrolls 2
Toca Nature

Best Use of Material Design

First-class implementation of material design concepts that deliver an immersive and innovative user experience. And the nominees are...

Bring!
Robinhood
The Fabulous
Todoist
Vevo

Best Use of Google Play Game Services

High quality games with several strong GPGS feature implementations. And the nominees are...

Sea Battle 2
Table Tennis Touch
Tapventures
TowerMadness 2
Zombie Highway 2

Early Adopter

Early adopter of a nascent technology or platform, providing a delightful user experience. And the nominees are...

Glide
Mechanic Escape
Minecraft: Story Mode
World Around Me
Zumper

Go Global

Apps or games with great localization and culturalization, or subject matter appeal, across multiple regions. And the nominees are...

Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle
Freeletics Bodyweight
Memrise
Musixmatch
Pokémon Shuffle Mobile

Most Innovative

Apps or games offering a highly engaging novelty experience or unique benefit. And the nominees are...

Fast like a Fox
NYT VR
SmartNews
The Fabulous
This War of Mine

Best App

A true representation of beautiful design, intuitive UX and high user appeal, quality and rating. And the nominees are...

BuzzFeed News
Colorfy
Houzz
TuneIn Radio
Yummly

Best Game

Games with strong mechanics, informative tutorial, broad appeal and tasteful design. And the nominees are...

Alphabear
Clash of Kings
Clash Royale
MARVEL Future Fight
 Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes

Join us live at the ceremony on May 19th at 7:00 pm PDT on stage 7 at Google I/O or via the live stream. You can also track the conversation on Twitter and G+ using the hashtags #io16.

Start planning your Google I/O 2016 schedule

Posted by Mike Pegg, Google Developers Team

What are the best ways to optimize battery and memory usage of your apps? How do you create a great app experience that is accessible to everyone, including users with disabilities? How do you build an offline-ready, service-working, app-manifesting, production-ready Progressive Web App using Firebase Hosting? And what are some of the best desserts that start with N? Tune in to Google I/O to get the answers to all of these questions (well, most of them...), along with a whole lot more. You can start planning your schedule now, as the first wave of 100 technical talks just went live at google.com/io!

Last year, you told us you wanted more: more technical content, more time, more space, more everything! We heard your feedback loud and clear and have added a full third day onto Google I/O to accommodate more comprehensive talks in larger spaces than in previous years. These talks will be spread over 14 suggested tracks, including Android, the Mobile Web, Play and more, to help you easily navigate your I/O experience. Of course, we’re also bringing back Codelabs, our self-paced workshops with Googlers nearby to give you a hand.

Attending Remotely?

There are already over 200 I/O Extended events happening around the world. Join one of these events to participate in I/O from your local neighborhood alongside local developers who share the same passion for Google technology. You can also follow the festival from home; we’ll have four different live stream channels to chose from, broadcasting many of the sessions in real time from Shoreline. All of the sessions will be available to watch on YouTube after I/O concludes, in case you miss one.

See you soon!

This is just the first wave of talks. We’ll be adding more talks and events as we get closer to I/O, including a number of talks directly after the keynote (shhhh!! We’ve got some new things to share). We look forward to seeing you in a few weeks -- whether it be in person at Shoreline, at an I/O Extended event, or on I/O Live!

Announcing the 2016 Android Experiments I/O Challenge!

Posted by Roman Nurik, Senior Interactive Designer, and Richard The, Google Creative Lab

Last summer we launched Android Experiments: a showcase of creative Android projects, and an open invitation for all developers to submit their own experiments to the gallery. So far we’ve seen some amazing work from the developer community - from live wallpaper, to watch faces, to interesting hacks of the IOIO board - and we want to see more.

Today we announce the Android Experiments I/O Challenge: a chance for your experiment (and you) to go to I/O 2016!

From now through April 13, you can enter by submitting your experiments to the gallery. The top three winners of the contest will receive a trip to this year’s Google I/O, and the five runner-ups will get the new Nexus 6P.

So what makes a good Android Experiment? It’s a project that utilizes the unique capabilities of the Android platform in an innovative way. Here are a few suggestions:

  • Creative uses of Android’s new or distinctive features
  • Projects that explore how we interact with our devices, in small and big ways
  • Unique visual aesthetics
  • Open source projects that inspire other developers
  • Surprise us - we want to see the amazing things you’re cooking up

All projects on Android Experiments are open source. If you’re not sure where to start take a look on the site gallery, dig in and get inspired.

We can’t wait to see how you’re combining code and creativity! Enter on androidexperiments.com/challenge today.