Monthly Archives: August 2020

Collaborate with people who are not using a Google account in Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites

What’s changing 

We’re making visitor sharing—secure, pincode-based collaboration with people who do not have a Google account—generally available. This means you can share items with non-Google accounts, enabling them to view, comment on, or edit content in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites using a secure pincode. 

Visitor sharing was previously available in beta, and will replace the current admin setting to allow users in your organization to send sharing invitations.  '

We’ll introduce the new feature according to this timeline: 
  • August 31, 2020: The setting to control sharing with people who are not using a Google account will begin to appear in the Admin console. This setting may be on or off by default depending on your current settings. See “Getting started” below to learn more. This setting will not start taking effect for users until September 8, 2020 (for Rapid release domains) or September 28, 2020 (for Scheduled release domains). 
  • September 8, 2020: Users in Rapid Release domains will be able to use the new feature, if enabled by their admin. 
  • September 28, 2020: Users in Scheduled Release domains will be able to use the new feature, if enabled by their admin. 

Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 


Why you’d use it 

G Suite customers often work with partners outside of their company. These external users, or “visitors,” don’t always have Google accounts, making it more difficult for G Suite and non-Google users to collaborate seamlessly and securely. 

This new feature will help ensure smooth and secure collaboration with visitors through: 
  • Rich collaboration—including comments, edits, and more⁠—with anyone you need to work with, regardless of whether they have a Google account. 
  • Audit logging for collaboration with visitors, so that all interactions are monitored and recorded. 
  • Ability to revoke access and remove collaborators as needed. 
  • Reduced need to download, email, or create separate files to work with external users who don’t have Google accounts. 
If the visitor chooses to create a G Suite account with their email address, their collaboration and activity history will be preserved after the account is created. 



Additional details 

Visitor sharing will not be supported for Cloud Identity users. With this launch, Cloud Identity users will only be able to share with non-Google recipients by sending invites that allow users to preview file contents in a read-only mode without signing in to Google accounts. 


Getting started 

Admins: 
  • Sharing outside of your organization to users with non-Google accounts will be ON by default if you currently allow users in your organization to send sharing invitations to people outside your organization who are not using a Google account.
  • Sharing outside of your organization to users with non-Google accounts will be OFF by default if you currently do not do not allow sharing outside your organization, or use domain whitelisting, Use our Help Center to learn more about sharing to non-Google accounts. 
  • Visitor sharing will be controlled by new settings at Admin console > Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs > Sharing Settings. See image below. The new settings can be controlled at the domain or OU level. 


End users: Visit our Help Center to learn more about visitor sharing. Visitors can use our Help Center to learn how to delete their visitor session. 



Rollout pace 

Admin console setting: 
End user feature availability: 

Availability 

  • Available to G Suite Business, G Suite Enterprise, G Suite for Education, G Suite Enterprise for Education, G Suite for Nonprofits, and G Suite Essentials customers 
  • Not available to G Suite Basic, Cloud Identity customers, or users with personal accounts 

Resources 

Roadmap 

Improving braille support in Google Docs

Quick launch summary 

We’re making several improvements to braille support in Google Docs to make it easier for users of assistive technologies, including refreshable braille displays, to work on documents. These changes will enhance the experience of reading documents with new keyboard shortcuts, improved navigation, and more reliable verbalizations. We encourage assistive technology users to enable braille support when working in Docs.

Improvements you may notice include: 
  • You can use the new Ctrl+Alt+H (CMD+Option+H on Mac) shortcut to toggle braille support in Docs, Sheets, and Slides. 
  • When you use shortcuts to navigate, we now announce where your cursor moves to, including comments, headings, misspellings, and suggestions. 
  • We improved the reliability of navigating through lengthy documents and lists. 
  • Images, misspellings, and grammar errors are now verbalized directly by assistive technology. 
  • We’ve improved navigation and selection verbalizations when moving through tables and when selecting content, including announcing the entire cell’s contents. 

Please make sure to update to the latest versions of your assistive technologies and browsers to fully benefit from these improvements. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default for users with braille support turned on. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to use a braille display with Docs editors, and make sure to update to the latest versions of your browser and screen reader to use all features. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all G Suite customers and users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

11 Weeks of Android: That’s a wrap

11

This is the final blog post for #11WeeksOfAndroid. Thank you for joining us over the past 11 weeks as we dove into key areas of Android development. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of everything we talked about during each week:

Week 1 - People and identity

Discover how to implement the conversation shortcut and bubbles with ‘conversation notifications’. Also, learn more about conversation additions and other System UI news, and discover the people and conversations developer documentation here. Finally, you can also listen to the Android Backstage podcast where the System UI team is interviewed on people and bubbles.

To tackle user and developer complexity that makes identity a challenge for developers, we've been working on One Tap and Block Store, part of our new Google Identity Services Library.

If you’re interested in learning more about Identity, we published the video “in Identity on Android: what’s new in sign-in,” where Vishal explains the new libraries in the Google Identity System.

Two teams that worked very early with us are the Facebook Messenger team and the direct messaging team from Twitter. Read the story from Twitter here and find out how we worked with Facebook on the implementation here.

Find out more with the People and Identity learning path, playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Week 2 - Machine learning

We kicked off the week by announcing the winners of the #AndroidDevChallenge! Check out all the winning apps and see how they used ML Kit and TensorFlow Lite, all focused on demonstrating how machine learning can come to life in a powerful way to help users get things done, like an app to help visually impaired navigate crowded spaces or another to help students learn sign language.

We recently made ML Kit a standalone SDK and it no longer requires a Firebase account. Just one line in your build.gradle file and you can start bringing ML functionality into your app.

Another much anticipated addition is the support for swapping Google models with your own for both Image Labeling as well as Object Detection and Tracking.

Find out about the importance of finding the unique intersection of user problems and ML strengths and how the People + AI Guidebook can help you make ML product decisions. Check out the interview with the Read Along team for more inspiration.

This week we also highlighted how adding a custom model to your Android app has never been easier.

Finally, try out our codelabs:

Find out more with the Machine Learning pathway, playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Week 3 - Privacy and security

As shared in the “Privacy and Security” blog post, we’re giving users even more control and transparency over user data access.

In Android 11, we introduced various privacy improvements such as one time permissions that let users give an app access to the device microphone, camera, or location, just that one time. Learn more about building privacy-friendly apps with these new changes. You can also learn about various Android security updates in this video.

Other notable updates include:

  • Permissions auto-reset: If users haven’t used an app that targets Android 11 for an extended period of time, the system will “auto-reset” all of the granted runtime permissions associated with the app and notify the user.
  • Data access auditing APIs: In Android 11, developers will have access to new APIs that will give them more transparency into their app’s usage of private and protected data. Learn more about new tools in Android 11 to make your apps more private and stable.
  • Scoped Storage: In Android 11, scoped storage will be mandatory for all apps that target API level 30. Learn more and check out the storage FAQ.
  • Google Play system updates: Google Play system updates were introduced with Android 10 as part of Project Mainline, making it easier to bring core OS component updates to users.
  • Jetpack Biometric library:The library has been updated to include new BiometricPrompt features in Android 11 in order to allow for backward compatibility.

Find out more with the ‘privacy, trust and security’ learning pathway, playlist, and documentation on privacy and security best practices.

Week 4 - Android 11 compatibility

We shipped the second Beta of Android 11 and added a new release milestone called Platform Stability to clearly signal to developers that all APIs and system behaviors are complete. Find out more about Beta 2 and platform stability, including what this milestone means for developers, and the Android 11 timeline. Note: since week #4, we shipped the third and final beta and are getting close to releasing Android 11 to AOSP and the ecosystem. Be sure to check that your apps are working!

To get your apps ready for Android 11, check out some of these helpful resources:

In our “Accelerating Android updates” blog post, we looked at how we’re continuing to get the latest OS to reach critical mass by expanding Android’s updatability architecture.

We also highlighted Excelliance Tech, who recently moved their LeBian SDK away from non-SDK interfaces, toward stable, official APIs so they can stay more compatible with the Android OS over time. Check out the Excelliance Tech story.

Find out more with the Android 11 Compatibility learning pathway, playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Week 5 - Languages

With the Android 11 beta, we further improved the developer experience for Kotlin on Android by officially recommending coroutines for asynchronous work. If you’re new to coroutines, check out:

Also, check out our new Kotlin case studies page for the latest case studies and data, including the new Google Home case study, and our state of Kotlin on Android video. For beginners, we announced the launch of our new Android basics in Kotlin course.

If you’re a Java language developer, watch support for newer Java APIs on how we’ve made newer OpenJDK libraries available across versions of Android. With Android 11, we also updated the Android runtime to make app startup even faster with I/O prefetching.

Android 11 included updates across the native toolchain, including better tools for profile-guided optimization (PGO) and improvements to native dependency management in Android Studio 4.0.

Finally, we continue to focus on improvements to the D8 and R8 compilers in Android Studio with better support for Kotlin in the R8 shrinker. Learn more.

Find out more with the languages learning pathway, playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Week 6 - Android Jetpack

Interested in what’s new in Jetpack? Check out the #Android11 Beta launch with a quick fly-by introducing many of the updates to our libraries, with tips on how to get started.

  • Dive deeper into major releases like Hilt, with cheat sheets to help you get started, and learn how we migrated our own samples to use Hilt for dependency injection. Less boilerplate = more fun.
  • Discover more about Paging 3.0, a complete rewrite of the library using Kotlin coroutines and adding features like improved error handling, better transformations, and much more.
  • Get to know CameraX Beta, and learn how it helps developers manage edge cases across different devices and OS versions, so that you don’t have to.

This year, we've made several major improvements with the release of Navigation 2.3, which allows you to navigate between different screens of your app with ease while also allowing you to follow Android UI principles.

In Android 11, we continued our work to give users even more control over sensitive permissions. Now there are type-safe contracts for common intents and more via new ActivityResult APIs. These changes simplify how you request permissions, and we’ll continue to work on making permissions easier in the future.

Also learn about our recent releases of the AppStartup library as well as what’s new in WorkManager.

Find out more with the Jetpack learning pathway, playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Week 7 - Android developer tools

We have brought together an overview of what is new in Android Developer tools.

Check out the latest updates in design tools, and go even deeper:

Also, find out about debugging your layouts, with updates to the layout inspector. Discover the latest developments for Jetpack Compose Design tools, and also how to use the new database inspector in Android Studio.

Discover the latest development tools we have in place for Jetpack Hilt in Android Studio.

Learn about the build system in Android developer tools:

To learn about the latest updates on virtual testing, read this blog on the Android Emulator. Lastly, to see the latest changes for performance tools, watch performance profilers content about System Trace. Additionally, check out more about C++ memory profiling with Android Studio 4.1.

Find out more with the Android developer tools learning pathway, playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Week 8 - App distribution and monetization

Check out our webinars about the new Google Play Console beta if you weren’t able to tune in live.

We shared recent improvements we’ve made to app bundles, as well as our intention to require new apps and games to publish with this format in the second half of 2021. The new in-app review API means developers can now ask for ratings and reviews from within your app!

Don’t forget about our policy around more transparent subscriptions to help increase user trust in Google Play Billing. We also expanded our feature set to help you better reach and retain buyers, and launched Play Billing Library 3, which will be required by mid-2021.

Google Play Pass launched in nine new markets last month. Developers using both Google Play Pass and direct billing on Google Play have earned an average of 2.5 times US revenue with Google Play Pass, without diminishing Google Play store earnings. Learn more and express interest in joining.

Find out more with the app distribution and monetization learning pathway, playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Week 9 - Android beyond phones

Check out some of the highlights from this week, including;

Find out more with the learning pathways for Android TV and Large Screens, Beyond phones playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Week 10 - Games and media

We shared several games updates and presented a special "11 Weeks" episode of The Android Game Developer Show.

You can also take advantage of Android 11's new media controls by making sure your app is using MediaStyle with a valid MediaSession token. Learn how to support media resumption by making your app discoverable with a MediaBrowserServiceCompat, using the EXTRA_RECENT hint to help with resuming content, and handling the onPlay and onGetRoot callbacks. Then check out how to leverage the MediaRouter jetpack library and check out the updated version of the UAMP sample.

Finally, we covered some of the primary ways apps can benefit from 5G. Android 11 adds new APIs and updates existing APIs to help ensure you have all the tools you need to leverage the capabilities of 5G, such as an enhanced bandwidth estimation API, 5G detection capabilities, and a new meteredness flag from cellular carriers. The Android emulator now enables you to develop and test these APIs without needing a 5G device or network connection. All of this and more is available from our dedicated 5G page.

Find out more with the ‘games and media’ learning pathway, playlist, and the wrap-up blog post, and visit d.android.com/games to stay up to date on all of our tools and resources for game developers.

Week 11 - UI

In our final week, we released 4 new codelabs, 9 new samples, new documentation and a podcast from the Compose team. If you prefer videos; we’ve got you covered:

New in Android 11 is the ability for apps to create seamless transitions between the on screen keyboard being opened and closed. To find out how to add this to your app, slide on over to the video, blog posts and sample app

We recommend following the Material Design guidelines to ensure that apps operate consistently, enabling patterns learned in one app to be used in another. Find out more about Material Theming (color, type and shape), dark theme and Material’s motion system using the Material Design Components (MDC) library. If you haven’t already migrated to MDC, then check out our migration guide.

It even becomes possible to ease your migration with libraries like the new MDC-Android Compose Theme Adapter which converts an MDC XML theme into a Compose `MaterialTheme`.

Find out more with the Compose learning pathway, the Modern UI learning pathway, playlist, and the week’s wrap-up blog post.

Resources

You can find the entire playlist of #11WeeksOfAndroid video content here. Follow us on Twitter and YouTube, and subscribe to our email list to receive all the latest news and resources. Thanks so much for letting us be a part of this experience with you!

Empowering Black voters in the COVID-19 era

This post is a part of our Pursuing Racial Justice and Equity series, which we kicked off last week. This series highlights the courageous and vital work happening across our Google Fiber and Google Fiber Webpass cities to fight systemic racism and create more just communities where everyone has the opportunity and the ability to thrive. Our first post comes to us from Joi Imobhio, Political Director for the Workers Center for Racial Justice in Chicago.



At the Workers Center for Racial Justice (WCRJ) in Chicago, our work begins with organizing our community: majority-Black neighborhoods where residents experience ongoing racialized poverty, over-policing and criminalization. Under normal circumstances, we spend much of our time talking with constituents face-to-face about the challenges they are experiencing, and encouraging them to take action on those issues as part of WCRJ. 

COVID-19 has forced us to quickly adapt and find new ways to connect with our community. As the 2020 census and elections coincide with unprecedented public demand for racial justice, we can’t afford to slow down. The pandemic has only heightened our sense of urgency, as we insist upon action from elected officials to address the racial disparities exposed by the pandemic.

We feel fortunate to live in a time when so many effective technologies are available to us, allowing us to keep organizing while maintaining social distance. Black civic engagement is a key part of our work, and involves a year-round schedule of in-person trainings, educational sessions, town hall meetings, and door-to-door outreach. Thanks to the digital tools that we’ve been able to access — and the creativity of our members — WCRJ has continued these programs remotely since moving our work online in March. 

One of the tools that is empowering us in the COVID era is Outvote, a mobile app that allows us to reach a broad network of voters through friend-to-friend texting. Users who download the app can follow our policy and voter engagement campaigns, and receive notifications when we have new actions for them to take. This year we transformed our Forum for Safety and Liberation — usually held in August at a large venue — into a full Week of Action with daily assignments for our Outvote users. In just that week alone, our virtual allies sent 8,963 emails to elected officials, with over 100 new contacts participating. The impact was so great that we will likely add this approach in future years, whether or not COVID is a factor.

The power of digital organizing came into sharp focus in the run-up to Illinois’ March 2020 primary elections, which took place just days before the official shelter-in-place order. As residents came to understand the threat of the virus, many polling stations were closed due to shortages of volunteers. Confused residents were unsure of how to cast their ballots. As the city made arrangements for residents to vote at alternative locations, WCRJ was able to quickly disseminate this information to our constituents via Outvote and social media. 

Given the possibility of another wave of COVID-19 cases in the fall, we know that voters will likely experience new and unforeseen barriers to democracy this November. We are contingency planning for a variety of scenarios, and in all cases, we emphasize digital outreach as an effective means for helping constituents access the polls. We are excited to be expanding our work into the neighboring state of Wisconsin for the first time this year; and, with the help of these technologies, we plan to reach tens of thousands of Black voters there, in addition to over 150,000 people in Illinois.

From now until November, much of our work will be devoted to ensuring that voters understand the various options available to them this year, and that each person has created a plan for voting. However, we know that not everything will go according to plan. When unexpected barriers arise, tools like Outvote and social media platforms will allow us to rapidly provide the most up-to-date, accurate information to our contacts, helping us prevent the pandemic from disenfranchising Black voters. 

Posted by Joi Imobhio, Political Director, Workers Center for Racial Justice




~~~~

category: community_impact

author: Joi Imobhio

title: Political Director, Workers Center for Racial Justice

Empowering Black voters in the COVID-19 era

This post is a part of our Pursuing Racial Justice and Equity series, which we kicked off last week. This series highlights the courageous and vital work happening across our Google Fiber and Google Fiber Webpass cities to fight systemic racism and create more just communities where everyone has the opportunity and the ability to thrive. Our first post comes to us from Joi Imobhio, Political Director for the Workers Center for Racial Justice in Chicago.



At the Workers Center for Racial Justice (WCRJ) in Chicago, our work begins with organizing our community: majority-Black neighborhoods where residents experience ongoing racialized poverty, over-policing and criminalization. Under normal circumstances, we spend much of our time talking with constituents face-to-face about the challenges they are experiencing, and encouraging them to take action on those issues as part of WCRJ. 

COVID-19 has forced us to quickly adapt and find new ways to connect with our community. As the 2020 census and elections coincide with unprecedented public demand for racial justice, we can’t afford to slow down. The pandemic has only heightened our sense of urgency, as we insist upon action from elected officials to address the racial disparities exposed by the pandemic.

We feel fortunate to live in a time when so many effective technologies are available to us, allowing us to keep organizing while maintaining social distance. Black civic engagement is a key part of our work, and involves a year-round schedule of in-person trainings, educational sessions, town hall meetings, and door-to-door outreach. Thanks to the digital tools that we’ve been able to access — and the creativity of our members — WCRJ has continued these programs remotely since moving our work online in March. 

One of the tools that is empowering us in the COVID era is Outvote, a mobile app that allows us to reach a broad network of voters through friend-to-friend texting. Users who download the app can follow our policy and voter engagement campaigns, and receive notifications when we have new actions for them to take. This year we transformed our Forum for Safety and Liberation — usually held in August at a large venue — into a full Week of Action with daily assignments for our Outvote users. In just that week alone, our virtual allies sent 8,963 emails to elected officials, with over 100 new contacts participating. The impact was so great that we will likely add this approach in future years, whether or not COVID is a factor.

The power of digital organizing came into sharp focus in the run-up to Illinois’ March 2020 primary elections, which took place just days before the official shelter-in-place order. As residents came to understand the threat of the virus, many polling stations were closed due to shortages of volunteers. Confused residents were unsure of how to cast their ballots. As the city made arrangements for residents to vote at alternative locations, WCRJ was able to quickly disseminate this information to our constituents via Outvote and social media. 

Given the possibility of another wave of COVID-19 cases in the fall, we know that voters will likely experience new and unforeseen barriers to democracy this November. We are contingency planning for a variety of scenarios, and in all cases, we emphasize digital outreach as an effective means for helping constituents access the polls. We are excited to be expanding our work into the neighboring state of Wisconsin for the first time this year; and, with the help of these technologies, we plan to reach tens of thousands of Black voters there, in addition to over 150,000 people in Illinois.

From now until November, much of our work will be devoted to ensuring that voters understand the various options available to them this year, and that each person has created a plan for voting. However, we know that not everything will go according to plan. When unexpected barriers arise, tools like Outvote and social media platforms will allow us to rapidly provide the most up-to-date, accurate information to our contacts, helping us prevent the pandemic from disenfranchising Black voters. 

Posted by Joi Imobhio, Political Director, Workers Center for Racial Justice




~~~~

category: community_impact

author: Joi Imobhio

title: Political Director, Workers Center for Racial Justice

Dark theme now available for Google Voice on iOS

Quick launch summary

Google Voice will now support dark theme on iOS. Dark theme is already available for Voice on Android. 

Dark theme for Google Voice


Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.

End users: The latest Google Voice update for iOS (version 20.36) will adopt the dark or light theme as set in iOS Settings. Learn more.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all G Suite customers with Google Voice licenses and Voice users with personal accounts.

 

Stadia Savepoint: August updates

It’s the end of August, and that means it's time for another update in our Stadia Savepoint series, detailing the additions we’ve made to the Stadia platform this month.

In August, players experienced the best of professional golf in PGA Tour 2K21, battled demons on Mars in DOOM and explored a beautiful hand-drawn adventure in Spiritfarer, in addition to many other new games now available for purchase on the Stadia store. Stadia Pro subscribers gained instant access to 23 games this month, the most free games we’ve offered yet--plus access to the first Free Play Days event for Borderlands 3. Our partners revealed new games coming soon to Stadia, including Larian Studios who announced that Baldur’s Gate 3 will be arriving in Early Access on Sept. 30.

Stadia Games Available Now and Coming Soon

The games we’ve already announced, with many more to come later this year.

We also introduced new deals for players featuring Stadia Pro and products:

  • Get $10 off when you purchase the Claw and the Stadia Controller together on the Google store to play Stadia on your mobile device. Offer ends Aug. 31, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
  • If you’re not yet a Pro member, get three free months of Stadia Pro as a perk with any eligible Chromebook released after June 2017.

Game volume slider on Chromecast and web

We’ve added a separate game volume slider to all audio settings on the Stadia platform. You can adjust the sliders for max volume, game audio and voice chat independently on Chromecast and in a Chrome browser.

Stadia Pro updates

Recent content launches on Stadia

That’s all for August—we’ll be back soon to share more updates. As always, stay tuned to the Stadia Community Blog, Facebook and Twitter for the latest news.

The 2020 Doodle for Google national finalists are here

When we opened the Doodle for Google contest in January of this year, we couldn’t wait to see all of the fantastic doodles that students across the country would submit for our 2020 theme “I Show Kindness By...”. We received tens of thousands of submissions from students in all 50 states, as well as Washington D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Today, it's so important to show kindness and compassion, and this year's contestants shared the multitude of ways they demonstrate empathy in their communities. 

After carefully reviewing all of the submissions, we announced our 54 state winnersand opened up public voting on our website. And today we are happy to share that the votes are in and the judges have deliberated. We’re ready to announce our five national finalists for the 2020 Doodle for Google contest! 

Our finalists were chosen based on a combination of our judging criteria (which includes artistic merit, creativity and how well participants communicated the theme in their artwork and written statement), as well as the results of public voting. Each of these artists truly committed to spreading a unique and powerful message of kindness,  so let’s meet our finalists:

K-3 National Finalist: MacKenna Hughes
Honolulu, Hawaii

Hawaii_edited (1).jpg

Title: I show kindness by picking up trash & microplastics on the beach
Artist Statement: “In my artwork, I repurposed trash that I collected from my favorite beach. Animals eat these microplastics and they can kill them or make them very sick.”

4-5 National Finalist: Sharon Sara
Frisco, Texas

Texas_edited (1).jpg

Title: Together As One
Artist Statement: “I show kindness by sticking together with my friends in tough times. I drew people coming together and not thinking about the outside but being together because of their personality.”

6-7 National Finalist: Yewon Lee
Fort Lee, New Jersey

New Jersey_edited (1).jpg

Title: We're All Neighbors
Artist Statement: “I show kindness by treating all different kinds of people as my neighbor.”

8-9 National Finalist: Gwenith Madhan
Tulsa, Oklahoma

oklahoma_edited (1).jpg

Title: Kindness & Captions
Artist Statement: “I show kindness by...not engaging in negativity on social media, and instead focusing on using positive, kind words to lift people up and add a smile to their face everyday.”

10-12 National Finalist: Morrah Burton-Edwards 
New Orleans, Louisiana

Louisiana_edited (1).jpg

Title: Love Made Visible
Artist Statement:  “Kindness is love made visible, so I show kindness by showing my family I love them. But also, when I show strangers and others that I care about them even when they are unkind to themselves is me being kind. A simple act of kindness like a hug can light up someone's day. But most importantly, I show kindness by loving those even when they are unkind to me. That is the most important time to be kind and the most difficult, but those people need kindness the most.”

Congratulations again to MacKenna, Sharon, Yewon, Gwenith and Morrah! As National Finalists, our student winners will receive a $5,000 college scholarship, Google hardware for the school year and some fun Googley swag. Check out their artwork, along with all 54 of the state winners on our website gallery. 

In the next and final stage of the contest, our judging panel will determine which of our five national finalists will be chosen as the national contest winner. The winner’s artwork will be featured on Google’s homepage for 24 hours, they’ll receive a $30,000 scholarship and a $50,000 technology package for their school. 

Good luck to our national finalists, and stay tuned to find out who our 2020 contest winner is!

Instant Motion Tracking with MediaPipe

Posted by Vikram Sharma, Software Engineering Intern; Jianing Wei, Staff Software Engineer; Tyler Mullen, Senior Software Engineer

Augmented Reality (AR) technology creates fun, engaging, and immersive user experiences. The ability to perform AR tracking across devices and platforms, without initialization, remains important for powering AR applications at scale.

Today, we are excited to release the Instant Motion Tracking solution in MediaPipe. It is built upon the MediaPipe Box Tracking solution we released previously. With Instant Motion Tracking, you can easily place fun virtual 2D and 3D content on static or moving surfaces, allowing them to seamlessly interact with the real world. This technology also powered MotionStills AR. Along with the library, we are releasing an open source Android application to showcase its capabilities. In this application, a user simply taps the camera viewfinder in order to place virtual 3D objects and GIF animations, augmenting the real-world environment.

gif of instant motion tracking in MediaPipe gif of instant motion tracking in MediaPipe

Instant Motion Tracking in MediaPipe

Instant Motion Tracking

The Instant Motion Tracking solution provides the capability to seamlessly place virtual content on static or motion surfaces in the real world. To achieve that, we provide the six degrees of freedom tracking with relative scale in the form of rotation and translation matrices. This tracking information is then used in the rendering system to overlay virtual content on camera streams to create immersive AR experiences.

The core concept behind Instant Motion Tracking is to decouple the camera’s translation and rotation estimation, treating them instead as independent optimization problems. This approach enables AR tracking across devices and platforms without initialization or calibration. We do this by first finding the 3D camera translation using only the visual signals from the camera. This involves estimating the target region's apparent 2D translation and relative scale across frames. The process can be illustrated with a simple pinhole camera model, relating translation and scale of an object in the image plane to the final 3D translation.

image

By finding the change in relative size of our tracked region from view position V1 to V2, we can estimate the relative change in distance from the camera.

Next, we obtain the device’s 3D rotation from its built-in IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) sensor. By combining this translation and rotation data, we can track a target region with six degrees of freedom at relative scale. This information allows for the placement of virtual content on any system with a camera and IMU functionality, and is calibration free. For more details on Instant Motion Tracking, please refer to our paper.

A MediaPipe Pipeline for Instant Motion Tracking

A diagram of Instant Motion Tracking pipeline is shown below, consisting of four major components: a Sticker Manager module, a Region Tracking module, a Matrices Manager module, and lastly a Rendering System. Each of the components consists of MediaPipe calculators or subgraphs.

Diagram

Diagram of Instant Motion Tracking Pipeline

The Sticker Manager accepts sticker data from the application and produces initial anchors (tracked region information) based on user taps, and user gesture controls for every sticker object. Initial anchors are then sent to our Region Tracking module to generate tracked anchors. The Matrices Manager combines this data with our device’s rotation matrix to produce six degrees-of-freedom poses as model matrices. After integrating any user-specified transforms like asset scaling, our final poses are forwarded to the Rendering System to render all virtual objects overlaid on the camera frame to produce the output AR frame.

Using the Instant Motion Tracking Solution

The Instant Motion Tracking solution is easy to use by leveraging the MediaPipe cross-platform framework. With camera frames, device rotation matrix, and anchor positions (screen coordinates) as input, the MediaPipe graph produces AR renderings for each frame, providing engaging experiences. If you wish to integrate this Instant Motion Tracking library with your system or application, please visit our documentation to build your own AR experiences on any device with IMU functionality and a camera sensor.

Augmenting The World with 3D Stickers and GIFs

Instant Motion Tracking solution allows bringing both 3D stickers and GIF animations into Augmented Reality experiences. GIFs are rendered on flat 3D billboards placed in the world, introducing fun and immersive experiences with animated content blended into the real environment.Try it for yourself!

Demonstration of GIF placement in 3D Demonstration of GIF placement in 3D

Demonstration of GIF placement in 3D

MediaPipe Instant Motion Tracking is already helping PixelShift.AI, a startup applying cutting-edge vision technologies to facilitate video content creation, to track virtual characters seamlessly in the view-finder for a realistic experience. Building upon Instant Motion Tracking’s high-quality pose estimation, PixelShift.AI enables VTubers to create mixed reality experiences with web technologies. The product is going to be released to the broader VTuber community later this year.

Instant

Instant Motion Tracking helps PixelShift.AI create mixed reality experiences

Follow MediaPipe

We look forward to publishing more blog posts related to new MediaPipe pipeline examples and features. Please follow the MediaPipe label on Google Developers Blog and Google Developers twitter account (@googledevs).

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Vikram Sharma, Jianing Wei, Tyler Mullen, Chuo-Ling Chang, Ming Guang Yong, Jiuqiang Tang, Siarhei Kazakou, Genzhi Ye, Camillo Lugaresi, Buck Bourdon, and Matthias Grundman for their contributions to this release.

Make the licensing information for your images visible on Google Images

For the last few years, we’ve collaborated with the image licensing industry to raise awareness of licensing requirements for content found through Google Images. In 2018, we began supporting IPTC Image Rights metadata; in February 2020 we announced a new metadata framework through Schema.org and IPTC for licensable images. Since then, we’ve seen widespread adoption of this new standard by websites, image platforms and agencies of all sizes. Today, we’re launching new features on Google Images which will highlight licensing information for images, and make it easier for users to understand how to use images responsibly.

What is it?

Images that include licensing information will be labeled with a “Licensable” badge on the results page. When a user opens the image viewer (the window that appears when they select an image), we will show a link to the license details and/or terms page provided by the content owner or licensor. If available, we’ll also show an additional link that directs users to a page from the content owner or licensor where the user can acquire the image.


Left: Images result page with the Licensable badge
Right: Images Viewer showing licensable image, with the new fields Get the image on and License details

We’re also making it easier to find images with licensing metadata. We’ve enhanced the usage rights drop-down menu in Google Images to support filtering for Creative Commons licenses, as well as those that have commercial or other licenses.


Updated Usage Rights filter

What are the benefits to image licensors?

  • As noted earlier, if licensing metadata is provided from the image licensor, then the licensable badge, license details page and image acquisition page will be surfaced in the images viewer, making it easier for users to purchase or license the image from the licensor
  • If an image resides on a page that isn’t set up to let a user acquire it (e.g. a portfolio, article, or gallery page), image licensors can link to a new URL from Google Images which takes the user directly to the page where they can purchase or license the image
  • For image licensors, the metadata can also be applied by publishers who have purchased your images, enabling your licensing details to be visible with your images when they’re used by your customers. (This requires your customers to not remove or alter the IPTC metadata that you provide them.)

We believe this is a step towards helping people better understand the nature of the content they’re looking at on Google Images and how they can use it responsibly.

How do I participate?

To learn more about these features, how you can implement them and troubleshoot issues, visit the Google developer help page and our common FAQs page.

To provide feedback on these features, please use the feedback tools available on the developer page for the licensable images features, the Google Webmaster Forum, and stay tuned for upcoming virtual office hours where we will review common questions.

What do image licensors say about these features?

“A collaboration between Google and CEPIC, which started some four years ago, has ensured that authors and rights holders are identified on Google Images. Now, the last link of the chain, determining which images are licensable, has been implemented thanks to our fruitful collaboration with Google. We are thrilled at the window of opportunities that are opening up for photography agencies and the wider image industry due to this collaboration. Thanks, Google.”
- Alfonso Gutierrez, President of CEPIC

“As a result of a multi-year collaboration between IPTC and Google, when an image containing embedded IPTC Photo Metadata is re-used on a popular website, Google Images will now direct an interested user back to the supplier of the image,” said Michael Steidl, Lead of the IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group. “This is a huge benefit for image suppliers and an incentive to add IPTC metadata to image files.”
- Michael Steidl, Lead of the IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group

“Google's licensable image features are a great step forward in making it easier for users to quickly identify and license visual content. Google has worked closely with DMLA and its members during the features' development, sharing tools and details while simultaneously gathering feedback and addressing our members' questions or concerns. We look forward to continuing this collaboration as the features deploy globally.”
- Leslie Hughes, President of the Digital Media Licensing Association

“We live in a dynamic and changing media landscape where imagery is an integral component of online storytelling and communication for more and more people. This means that it is crucial that people understand the importance of licensing their images from proper sources for their own protection, and to ensure the investment required to create these images continues. We are hopeful Google’s approach will bring more visibility to the intrinsic value of licensed images and the rights required to use them.”
- Ken Mainardis, SVP, Content, Getty Images & iStock by Getty Images

“With Google’s licensable images features, users can now find high-quality images on Google Images and more easily navigate to purchase or license images in accordance with the image copyright. This is a significant milestone for the professional photography industry, in that it's now easier for users to identify images that they can acquire safely and responsibly. EyeEm was founded on the idea that technology will revolutionise the way companies find and buy images. Hence, we were thrilled to participate in Google’s licensable images project from the very beginning, and are now more than excited to see these features being released."
- Ramzi Rizk, Co-founder, EyeEm

"As the world's largest network of professional providers and users of digital images, we at picturemaxx welcome Google's licensable images features. For our customers as creators and rights managers, not only is the visibility in a search engine very important, but also the display of copyright and licensing information. To take advantage of this feature, picturemaxx will be making it possible for customers to provide their images for Google Images in the near future. The developments are already under way."
- Marcin Czyzewski, CTO, picturemaxx

“Google has consulted and collaborated closely with Alamy and other key figures in the photo industry on this project. Licensable tags will reduce confusion for consumers and help inform the wider public of the value of high quality creative and editorial images.”
- James Hall, Product Director, Alamy

“Google Images’ new features help both image creators and image consumers by bringing visibility to how creators' content can be licensed properly. We are pleased to have worked closely with Google on this feature, by advocating for protections that result in fair compensation for our global community of over 1 million contributors. In developing this feature, Google has clearly demonstrated its commitment to supporting the content creation ecosystem.
- Paul Brennan, VP of Content Operations, Shutterstock

"Google Images’ new licensable images features will provide expanded options for creative teams to discover unique content. By establishing Google Images as a reliable way to identify licensable content, Google will drive discovery opportunities for all agencies and independent photographers, creating an efficient process to quickly find and acquire the most relevant, licensable content."
- Andrew Fingerman, CEO of PhotoShelter

Posted by Francois Spies, Product Manager, Google Images