Author Archives: Gary Lewis

Introducing the second class of Launchpad Accelerator

Roy Glasberg, Global Lead, Launchpad Program & Accelerator

This week Launchpad Accelerator announces its second class, which includes 24 promising startups from around the world. While the number of accelerators is at an all-time high, we take a different approach with Launchpad Accelerator, a program that exclusively works with late-stage tech startups in emerging markets -- Brazil, Indonesia, India and Mexico.

See what it’s like to participate in the Accelerator.


“We provide comprehensive mentorship that delivers results,” says Jacob Greenshpan, one of Launchpad’s lead mentors. “We start by running a ‘patient diagnostic’ to determine each startup’s critical challenges, and then deploy precise mentorship, actionable solutions, and Google resources that enables the app to scale.”

Class 2 kicks off June 13. The startups will descend on Google HQ for an intensive 2 week bootcamp. Under the tutelage of Google product teams and mentors from the global Launchpad network, they will receive intensive, targeted mentoring, equity-free funding, and more benefits during the 6-month program.

Here’s the full list of startups (by country):

Brazil

BankFacil Emprego Ligado AppProva GetNinjas Edools Love Mondays

Indonesia

HijUp Talenta Jarvis Store Ruangguru IDNtimes Codapay

India

Taskbob Programming Hub ShareChat RedCarpet PlaySimple Games MagicPin

Mexico

Aliada SaferTaxi Conekta Konfio Kichink Miroculus

Google’s “Scalerator” Drives Results for Alumni

What advice do Class 1 alumni give to the new intake? “Come to the accelerator with an open mind. You will be shocked to find how many things are going wrong in your app. Thankfully the mentors will help you implement better solutions,” says Vinicius Heimbeck, Founder of Brazilian mobile game developer UpBeat Games.

UpBeat Games had more than 1,000% increase in daily app installations in Asia during the period of a feature, as well as a 200% overall increase in active users after following a long list of improvements Accelerator mentors suggested. “We made optimizations that led us to be featured in Google Play, which changed everything for us.”

See Upbeat Games at the Accelerator in this video.

“Believe you can build a world class product. The mentors will push you to bet on yourself,” says Amarendra Sahu, Nestaway Co-founder and Class 1 alumni. NestAway just closed a $30M Series C, one of the largest investment rounds in India this year.

“Your biggest enemy is not failure; it is the temptation to be ordinary. But the mentors will push you to build an extraordinary product and scale an extraordinary startup," says eFishery Co-founder and CEO Gibran Chuzaefah Amsi El Farizy, who was announced as one of the top 27 leaders in Indonesia’s startup ecosystem, after participating in the Accelerator program.

Googlers on the road: OSCON 2016 in Austin

Originally posted on Google open source Blog

By Josh Simmons, Open Source Programs Office

Developers and open source enthusiasts converge on Austin, Texas in just under two weeks for O’Reilly Media’s annual open source conference, OSCON, and the Community Leadership Summit (CLS) that precedes it. CLS runs May 14-15 at the Austin Convention Center followed by OSCON from May 16-19.


OSCON 2014 program chairs including Googler Sarah Novotny.
Photo licensed by O'Reilly Media under CC-BY-NC 2.0.

This year we have 10 Googlers hosting sessions covering topics including web development, machine learning, devops, astronomy and open source. A list of all of the talks hosted by Googlers alongside related events can be found below.

If you’re a student, educator, mentor, past or present participant in Google Summer of Code or Google Code-in, or just interested in learning more about the two programs, make sure to join us Monday evening for our Birds of a Feather session.

Have questions about Kubernetes, Google Summer of Code, open source at Google or just want to meet some Googlers? Stop by booth #307 in the Expo Hall.


Thursday, May 12th - GDG Austin
7:00pm   Google Developers Group Austin Meetup


Sunday, May 15th - Community Leadership Summit

Monday, May 16th
7:00pm   Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in Birds of a Feather


Tuesday, May 17th

Wednesday, May 18th

Thursday, May 19th
11:00am  Kubernetes hackathon at OSCON Contribute hosted by Brian Dorsey, Nikhil Jindal, Janet Kuo, Jeff Mendoza, John Mulhausen, Sarah Novotny, Terrence Ryan and Chao Xu
5:10pm    PANOPTES: Open source planet discovery by Jennifer Tong and Wilfred Gee

Haven’t registered for OSCON yet? You can knock 25% off the cost of registration by using discount code Google25, or attend parts of the event including our Birds of a Feather session for free by using discount code OSCON16XPO.

See you at OSCON!

[New eBook] Download The No-Nonsense Guide to In-App Ads

Originally Posted on Inside AdMob Blog
Posted by Joe Salisbury, Product Specialist, AdMob
A clear trend is emerging in the world of smartphones – people want free apps. According to a study by Juniper Research, barely 1% of apps are now paid for at the point of download.1

While demand for free apps continues to increase, app developers are answering a very important question, “what’s the best way to publish my app for free while sustainably funding my business?”

In-app ads are a reliable solution that is set to grow 3.2X between 2014-18. 2

Many of the world’s most popular apps rely heavily on in-app advertising to earn income. Apps like PicsArts and Trivia Crack each have hundreds of millions of downloads and use advertising as a revenue source. In-app ads are evolving and there are many options for developers to utilize which provide great experiences for users.

So, how do you get started with ads?

To answer this, we’re launching a new ebook called “The No-nonsense Guide to In-App Ads”, the latest in our No-nonsense series. This guide is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of in-app advertising for those new to the opportunity. We’ll walk you through how digital ads can be included into your app strategy and what’s the best way for you to get started.

In the eBook, you’ll learn:

  • Foundational advertising concepts like eCPM, Fill Rate, Demand, and Inventory.
  • A simple overview of how businesses make money from advertising. 
  • How Pay Per Click advertising works.
  • A basic explanation of ad networks and how they can help you monetize your app.
  • How to choose the right ad network for your app.

Download a free copy here.


For more tips on app monetization, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

Posted by Joe Salisbury, Product Specialist, AdMob

1 - Juniper, April 2015 and Juniper website, The App Landscape Today, Feb 2015

Saying goodbye to OAuth 1.0 (2LO)

Originally posted on Google Apps Developers Blog

Posted by Vartika Agarwal, Technical Program Manager, Identity & Authentication, and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google

As we indicated several years ago, we are moving away from the OAuth 1.0 protocol in order to focus our support on the current OAuth standard, OAuth 2.0, which increases security and reduces complexity for developers. OAuth 1.0 (3LO)1 was shut down on April 20, 2015. During this final phase, we will be shutting down OAuth 1.0 (2LO) on October 20, 2016. The easiest way to migrate to the new standard is to use OAuth 2.0 service accounts with domain-wide delegation.

If the migration for applications using these deprecated protocols is not completed before the deadline, those applications will experience an outage in their ability to connect with Google, possibly including the ability to sign-in, until the migration to a supported protocol occurs. To avoid any interruptions in service for your end-users, it is critical that you work to migrate your application(s) prior to the shutdown date.

With this step, we continue to move away from legacy authentication/authorization protocols, focusing our support on modern open standards that enhance the security of Google accounts and that are generally easier for developers to integrate with. If you have any technical questions about migrating your application, please post them to Stack Overflow under the tag google-oauth.

1 3LO stands for 3-legged OAuth: there's an end-user that provides consent. In contrast, 2-legged (2LO) doesn’t involve an end-user and corresponds to enterprise authorization scenarios such as enforcing organization-wide policy control access.

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!

Experience virtual reality art in your browser

Posted by Jeff Nusz, Data Arts Team, Pixel Painter

Two weeks ago, we introduced Tilt Brush, a new app that enables artists to use virtual reality to paint the 3D space around them. Part virtual reality, part physical reality, it can be difficult to describe how it feels without trying it firsthand. Today, we bring you a little closer to the experience of painting with Tilt Brush using the powers of the web in a new Chrome Experiment titled Virtual Art Sessions.

Virtual Art Sessions lets you observe six world-renowned artists as they develop blank canvases into beautiful works of art using Tilt Brush. Each session can be explored from start to finish from any angle, including the artist’s perspective – all viewable right from the browser.

Participating artists include illustrator Christoph Niemann, fashion illustrator Katie Rodgers, sculptor Andrea Blasich, installation artist Seung Yul Oh, automotive concept designer Harald Belker, and street artist duo Sheryo & Yok. The artists’ unique approaches to this new medium become apparent when seeing them work inside their Tilt Brush creations. Watch this behind-the-scenes video to hear what the artists had to say about their experience:


Virtual Art Sessions makes use of Google Chrome’s V8 Javascript engine for high-performance processing power to render large volumes of data in real time. This includes point cloud data of the artist’s physical form, 3D geometry data of the artwork, and position data of the VR controllers. It also relies on Chrome’s support of WebM video and WebGL to produce the 360° representations of the artists and artwork – the artist portrayals alone require the browser to draw over 200,000 points at 30 times a second. For a deeper look, read the technical case study or browse the project code that is available open source from the site’s tech page.

We hope this experiment provides a window into the world of painting in virtual reality using Tilt Brush. We are excited by this new medium and hope the experience leaves you feeling the same. Visit g.co/VirtualArtSessions to start exploring.

Learn about Android Development Patterns over Coffee with Joanna Smith

Posted by Laurence Moroney, developer advocate

One of the great benefits of Android development is in the flexibility provided by the sheer number of APIs available in the framework, support libraries, Google Play services and elsewhere. While variety is the spice of life, it can lead to some tough decisions when developing -- and good guidance about repeatable patterns for development tasks is always welcome!

With that in mind, Joanna Smith and Ian Lake started Android Development Patterns to help developers not just know how to use an API but also which APIs to choose to begin with.

You can learn more about Android Development Patterns by watching the videos on YouTube, reading this blog post, or checking out the Google Developers page on Medium.

Travel through space with the Project Tango app, Solar Simulator

Posted by Jason Guo, Developer Programs Engineer, Project Tango

Since most of us haven’t been to space, it’s often hard to grasp concepts like the vastness of the Solar System or the size of the planets. To make these concepts more tangible, three graduate students at San Francisco State University (SFSU)--Jason Burmark, Moses Lee and Omar Shaikh--have created Solar Simulator, a new app for Project Tango. The app lets people take a virtual walk through space to understand the size and scale of our solar system.

Created with the Unity SDK, the application lays out our solar system’s planets in their relative distances from each other and draws 3D models of them in their relative sizes. The app leverages Project Tango’s motion-tracking API to track your movements as you walk, so you can better understand the planets and their distance in space.

If you like what you see, you can create your own solar system at home. Just follow the six steps below:

  1. Download the Tango Unity SDK.
  2. Create a new Unity project and import the Tango SDK package into the project. If you don’t already have the Tango SDK, you can download it here.
  3. Assuming that you are building a solar simulation, place a sphere at (0, 0, 2) to simulate a planet floating in space. The screen will look like this:
  4. Next, replace the Main Camera with the Tango AR Camera and connect the Tango Manager through the prefabs. To do this, first remove the Main Camera gameobject from the scene. Then drag in the Tango AR Camera and Tango Manager from the TangoPrefabs folder under Project. The scene hierarchy will look like this:
  5. On Tango Manage gameobject, there are several Tango startup configurations such as knobs to configure how Tango will run in the application session, i.e, turning on/off depth, or motion tracking. In this case, check the boxes to turn Auto-connect to service, Enable motion tracking (with Auto Reset), and Enable video overlay (with TextureID method).
  6. To get your code ready for AR on a Tango-enabled device, build and run the project. To do this, follow the “Change the Build Settings” and “Build and run” sections in this tutorial.

Here is what the final scene should look like from the device:

If you want a guided tour of the planets with Solar Simulator, developers Jason, Moses, and Omar will be demoing their app at San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences’ NightLife tonight at 6:30PM PT. You can also download Solar Simulator on your Project Tango Development Kit.

Growing Eddystone with Ephemeral Identifiers: A Privacy Aware & Secure Open Beacon Format

Posted by Nirdhar Khazanie, Product Manager and Yossi Matias, VP Engineering


Last July, we launched Eddystone, an open and extensible Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon format from Google, supported by Android, iOS, and Chrome. Beacons mark important places and objects in a way that your phone can understand. To do this, they typically broadcast public one-way signals ‒ such as an Eddystone-UID or -URL.

Today, we're introducing Ephemeral IDs (EID), a beacon frame in the Eddystone format that gives developers more power to control who can make use of the beacon signal. Eddystone-EID enables a new set of use cases where it is important for users to be able to exchange information securely and privately. Since the beacon frame changes periodically, the signal is only useful to clients with access to a resolution service that maps the beacon’s current identifier to stable data. In other words, the signal is only recognizable to a controlled set of users. In this post we’ll provide a bit more detail about this feature, as well as Google’s implementation of Eddystone-EID with Google Cloud Platform’s Proximity Beacon API and the Nearby API for Android and CocoaPod for iOS.

Technical Specifications

To an observer of an Eddystone-EID beacon, the AES-encrypted eight byte beacon identifier changes pseudo-randomly with an average period that is set by the developer ‒ over a range from 1 second to just over 9 hours. The identifier is generated using a key and timer running on the beacon. When the beacon is provisioned, or set up, the key is generated and exchanged with a resolution service such as Proximity Beacon API using an Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol, and the timer is synchronized with the service. This way, only the beacon and the service that it is registered with have access to the key. You can read more about the technical details of Eddystone-EID from the specification ‒ including the provisioning process ‒ on GitHub, or from our recent preprint.

An Eddystone-EID contains measures designed to prevent a variety of nuanced attacks. For example, the rotation period for a single beacon varies slightly from identifier to identifier, meaning that an attacker cannot use a consistent period to identify a particular beacon. Eddystone-EID also enables safety features such as proximity awareness, device authentication, and data encryption on packet transmission. The Eddystone-TLM frame has also been extended with a new version that broadcasts battery level also encrypted with the shared key, meaning that an attacker cannot use the battery level as an identifying feature either.

When correctly implemented and combined with a service that supports a range of access control checks, such as Proximity Beacon API, this pattern has several advantages:
  • The beacon’s location cannot be spoofed, except by a real-time relay of the beacon signal. This makes it ideal for use cases where a developer wishes to enable premium features for a user at a location.
  • Beacons provide a high-quality and precise location signal that is valuable to the deployer. Eddystone-EID enables deployers to decide which developers/businesses can make use of that signal.
  • Eddystone-EID beacons can be integrated into devices that users carry with them without leaving users vulnerable to tracking.
Integrating Seamlessly with the Google Beacon Platform

Launching today on Android and iOS, is a new addition to the wider Google beacon platform: Beacon Tools. Beacon Tools allows you to provision and register an Eddystone-EID beacon, as well as associate content with your beacon through the Google Cloud Platform.

In addition to Eddystone-EID and the new encrypted version of the previously available Eddystone-TLM, we’re also adding a common configuration protocol to the Eddystone family. The Eddystone GATT service allows any Eddystone beacon to be provisioned by any tool that supports the protocol. This encourages the development of an open ecosystem of beacon products, both in hardware and software, removing restrictions for developers.

Eddystone-EID Support in the Beacon Industry

We’re excited to have worked with a variety of industry players as Eddystone-EID develops. Over the past year, Eddystone manufacturers in the beacon space have grown from 5 to over 25. The following 15 manufacturers will be supporting Eddystone-EID, with more to follow:




In addition to beacon manufacturers, we’ve been working with a range of innovative companies to demonstrate Eddystone-EID in a variety of different scenarios.
  • Samsonite and Accent Systems have developed a suitcase with Eddystone-EID where users can securely keep track of their personal luggage.
  • K11 is a Hong Kong museum and retail experience using Sensoro Eddystone-EID beacons for visitor tours and customer promotions.
  • Monumental Sports in Washington, DC, uses Radius Networks Eddystone-EID beacons for delivering customer rewards during Washington Wizards and Capitals sporting events.
  • Sparta Digital has produced an app called Buzzin that uses Eddystone-EID beacons deployed in Manchester, UK to enable a more seamless transit experience.
You can get started with Eddystone-EID by creating a Google Cloud Platform project and purchasing compatible hardware through one of our manufacturers. Best of all, Eddystone-EID works transparently to beacon subscriptions created through the Google Play Services Nearby Messages API, allowing you to run combined networks of Eddystone-EID and Eddystone-UID transparently in your client code!

Android N and Coffee with Googler Ian Lake

Posted by Laurence Moroney, Developer Advocate

In this episode of Coffee with a Googler, Laurence Moroney meets with Ian Lake to talk about some of the new features in Android N, including updates to Doze, giving greater power savings, and expanding on what was available in Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

They also discuss how the multi-window support works in Android N, and what’s needed to prepare for it to ensure the best integration. Check out the video to see the entire conversation, including discussion on the new notifications in Android N. Learn more at developer.android.com/preview.