Author Archives: Gary Lewis

Google announces a new Accelerator for mobile startups

Posted by Roy Glasberg Global Lead, Launchpad Program & Accelerator

Available to startups around the world, Google Launchpad offers resources, technology and expertise to help developers design, develop and distribute their apps. The Launchpad program includes a number of activities: Launchpad Week supports early-stage companies and focuses on high-impact mentorship, while Launchpad Day and Launchpad Summits similarly serves later-stage developers. So far, these events have been hosted in more than 30 countries and impacted more than 8,000 startups.

To complement all these efforts and provide a more intimate experience for developers, we're expanding Launchpad to now also include the Launchpad Accelerator - a program that offers six months of hands-on support and training to help high-potential startups in India, Brazil and Indonesia build high quality apps and successful businesses. As part of the program, developers will be connected with Google professionals, world-class mentors and equity-free funding (up to $50,000 per startup) to help them quickly scale and reach their true potential.

The first wave kicks off on January 18th in Mountain View, CA, where over twenty pre-selected startups will coincide for two-weeks of intensive programming. Afterward, each company will return to their home country where mentorship will be ongoing, both locally and remotely, for the remaining time of the program. The startups will also receive credit for a range of Google services, as well as free co-working space. In the coming month, we’ll expand Launchpad Accelerator to more countries.

We’re now accepting new applications for the next round of the program, which begins in mid-2016. If you’re interested in participating to accelerate your app to the next level, apply here!

Introducing the new Calendar Resource API

Originally Posted on Google Apps Developers blog

Posted by Muzammil Esmail, Product Manager, Google for Work and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

Over the years, we’ve been updating our APIs with new versions across Drive and Calendar, as well as those used for managing Google Apps for Work domains. These new services offer developers improvements over previous functionality and introduces new features that help Apps administrators better manage their domains.

To deliver even more granular control, today we are announcing the new Calendar Resource API as part of the Admin SDK’s Directory API that enables Google for Work customers to manage their physical resources, like conference rooms, printers, nap pods, tennis courts, walkstations, etc. These physical resources can be added to meetings by end users as needed. The API released today replaces the GDATA Calendar Resource API, so we encourage developers to begin moving their applications and tools to the new API. Please note that we will begin deprecation in January 2016 and sunset the existing API in January 2017. Stay tuned for a formal deprecation announcement with details.

A leaner and faster Google Drive API

Originally posted on Google Apps Developer Blog

Posted by Dan McGrath, Product Manager, Google Drive

Today, version 3 (v3) of the Google Drive API is available, providing developers with a leaner, faster by default, and more consistent interface to Google Drive. This latest update is designed to be easier for developers who are integrating with Drive for the first time.

In the time since we launched the original version of the Drive SDK, we’ve learned a lot about how developers are using our API and the pitfalls they’ve encountered. This version simplifies the API in several ways, including:

  • Reducing the number of collections developers need to understand
  • Removing some duplication
  • Cleaning up method and property names to be more consistent
  • Setting defaults that are faster and more efficient

For example, our files.list call now only includes the most commonly used fields that we serve efficiently by default, with additional fields able to be added via the fields parameter. This makes the default call nearly 6X faster in v3 than in v2:

While future versions of the API will be more feature-focused, this release provides improved performance and ease of use over the previous version of the API (v2). We will continue to support both versions so that existing apps using v2 can run without changes (developers don’t have to upgrade). For developers with a v2 app who want to take advantage of the new improvements, we’ve got a handy cheat sheet to help with migration.

To get started using the new version of the API, check out the developer docs; and for any questions, find us with the google-drive-sdk tag on StackOverflow. We look forward to seeing what you’ll build with the new API!

Raising Sweet C++ Cane for Well-Dressed Animals

Posted by Stewart Miles, Fun Propulsion Labs*

To celebrate the holiday season at Fun Propulsion Labs, we're trading our sushi mats and baking pans for candy canes and snowballs. Please join us for a special holiday-themed version of Pie Noon and Zooshi! Zooshi and Pie Noon are open source, cross-platform games built from a suite of libraries that eager C++ developers can use to build their own projects.

You can download and run Zooshi's Santa mode on Google Play and find the latest open source release on our GitHub page. The holiday version of Pie Noon is available on Google Play as Snowdown in Santa Tracker and on our GitHub page. Happy Holidays!

* Fun Propulsion Labs is a team within Google that's dedicated to advancing gaming on Android and other platforms.

Google Code-in: may the source be with you

Posted by Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Editors Note: We're celebrating Computer Science Education Week through December 13, and hope to inspire students to explore CS all year long. Code-in is a great opportunity for students to start on their 'second hour of code' and beyond.
For the sixth year running, starting today, teens from around the world will have the chance to learn and develop new CS skills by competing in Google Code-in (GCI). By working on real software projects—with help from mentors along the way—students just starting out with Computer Science can begin to investigate and discover the countless opportunities at their fingertips through code.

During the seven weeks of Google Code-in, pre-university students (ages 13-17) can browse hundreds of tasks created by 14 open source organizations. Students then get to choose the tasks they find most intriguing. A wide variety of skills and interests are required to make any software project work, so the tasks in Google Code-in are designed to reflect that diversity. Students can choose to work on projects across documentation, coding, training, research, quality assurance, user interface and outreach tasks.

The 14 organizations students can work with during the contest encompass many fields: health care for developing countries, learning activities for elementary students, desktop and portable computing, the encouragement of young women in computer science, game development, to operating systems used in satellites and robots.

Each task has at least one mentor assigned to it - not only to review the student’s work, but to help answer questions along the way. Each organization also offers beginner tasks that give students who are newer to open source development an easy and clear place to get started. Another goal of the contest is to encourage students to find a coding community that they enjoy working with and hopefully become an active contributor for years to come.


Over the last 5 years, over 2,200 students from 87 countries have successfully completed tasks by participating in Google Code-in. To celebrate CS Ed Week this year, please help us introduce even more young minds to open source software development through Google Code-in. To learn more about Google Code-in— including rules and FAQs—please visit the site and the Getting Started Guide.

Google Cast Remote Display Plugin for Unity

Posted by Leon Nicholls, Developer Programs Engineer

Today we launched the Google Cast Remote Display plugin for Unity to make it easy to take your Unity games to TVs. The Google Cast Remote Display APIs use the powerful GPUs, CPUs and sensors of your Android or iOS mobile device to render a local display on your mobile device and a remote display on your TV.

Unity is a very popular cross-platform game development platform that supports mobile devices. By combining the Google Cast Remote Display technology with the amazing rendering engine of Unity, you can now develop high-end gaming experiences that users can play on an inexpensive Chromecast and other Google Cast devices.


Games Using the Plugin

We have exciting gaming apps from our partners that already use the Remote Display plugin for Unity, with many more coming shortly.

Monopoly Here & Now is the latest twist on the classic Monopoly game. Travel the world visiting some of the world’s most iconic cities and landmarks and race to be the first player to fill your passport with stamps to win! It's a fun new way to play for the whole family.

Risk brings the original game of strategic conquest to the big screen. Challenge your friends, build your army, and conquer the world! The game includes the classic world map as well as two additional themed maps.

These games show that you can create games that look beautiful, using the power of a phone or tablet and send that amazing world to the TV.

Add the Remote Display Plugin to Your Game

You can download the Remote Display plugin for Unity from either GitHub or the Unity Asset Store. If you have an existing Unity game, simply import the Remote Display package and add the CastRemoteDisplayManager prefab to your scene. Next, set up cameras for the local and remote displays and configure them with the CastRemoteDisplayManager.

To display a Cast button in the UI so the user can select a Google Cast device, add the CastDefaultUI prefab to your scene.

Now you are ready to build and run the app. Once you connect to a Cast device you will see the remote camera view on the TV.

You have to consider how you will adapt your game interactions to support a multi-screen user experience. You can use the mobile device sensors to create abstract controls which interact with actions on the screen via motion or touch. Or you can create virtual controls where the player touches something on the device to control something else on the screen.

For visual design it is important not to fatigue the player by making them constantly look up and down. The Google Cast UX team has developed the Google Cast Games UX Guidelines to explain how to make the user experience of cast-enabled games consistent and predictable.

Developer Resources

Learn more about Google's official Unity plugins here. To see a more detailed description on how to use the Remote Display plugin for Unity, read our developer documentation and try our codelab. We have also published a sample Unity game on the Unity Asset Store and GitHub that is UX compliant. Join our G+ community to share your Google Cast developer experience.

With over 20 million Chromecast devices sold, the opportunity for developers is huge, and it’s simple to add Remote Display to an existing Unity game. Now you can take your game to the biggest screen in millions of user’s homes.

Charge your game monetization with a winning combination of in-app purchases and ads

Originally posted on Inside AdMob

Posted by Sean Meng AdMob Product Marketing

Predictions estimate that by 2017, 94.5% of app downloads will be free [1]. As a developer, you are probably juggling creating great content for your game and finding ways to monetize it. It’s important to develop a robust monetization model that takes into consideration the spending preferences of all users. That’s why today we are unveiling a new white paper with insights and ideas on building effective monetization models: A Winning Combination - How using in-app purchases and ads together can maximize mobile game revenue.

Today, in-app ads and freemium (free download with IAPs*) fuel the growth of mobile app revenue, growing at 71% and 72% respectively from 2013 to 2014 [2]. Through an analysis of over 10,000 top Android apps, we found that for games, using IAP and ads together can potentially generate 117% more revenue than just IAPs alone.

However, a hybrid approach is more than simply bundling ads and IAPs together; it’s about targeting the right users at the right time with the right monetization opportunity. The goal of our white paper is to help you accomplish that easily and effectively.

In this white paper, you will learn the following:

  • What an effective hybrid monetization model looks like and the benefits it can deliver;
  • The principles and frameworks for building an effective hybrid monetization strategy;
  • Best practices from developers around the world.

You can download the white paper here. Find out what AdMob’s IAP solution can do to help you build a strong hybrid monetization model.


We’d love to hear what you think of the white paper. Please share with us on Twitter and Google+ what other tips you have in building a strong hybrid monetization strategy.
* In-app purchases
[2] - IDC/App Annie: Mobile App Advertising and Monetization Trends 2013-2018


    Chrome Dev Summit 2015: That’s a wrap!

    Originally posted on Chromium Blog

    Posted by Darin Fisher, VP Engineering, Chrome

    The last sessions of the Chrome Dev Summit 2015 are coming to a close, so it’s the perfect time to reflect on the event. We started our annual summit back in 2012, where we first introduced Chrome on Android. Today, there are more than 800 million monthly active users on Chrome for Android.

    The greatest power of the Web is in its reach—not just across devices and operating systems, but in reaching users. Top mobile web properties are seeing 2.5 times the number of monthly unique visitors compared to the top mobile apps, and mobile web reach is growing at more than twice the rate of mobile app reach. This reach offers a unique opportunity to engage with more users.  

    We believe this is a pivotal moment for the web platform, as early adopters of a set of key enabling technologies and tools are seeing success. During the keynote, we covered the evolution of the mobile platform and the shift towards “progressive web apps,” which are fast, robust, app-like experiences built using modern web capabilities. The web has come a long way, and building immersive apps with web technology on mobile no longer requires giving up properties of the web you’ve come to love. Flipkart’s new mobile web experience is a great example of a progressive web app that uses the new capabilities to provide a next-generation user experience.



    In practice, progressive web apps have three main aspects that separate them from traditional websites: reliability, performance, and engagement.

    Reliability
    Every web app should load quickly, regardless of whether a user is connected to fast Wi-Fi, a 2G cell network, or no connection at all. We envision service workers as the ideal way for developers to build web apps that are resilient despite changing and unreliable networks. We've released two libraries to help take the work out of writing your own service worker: sw-precache and sw-toolbox for your App Shell and dynamic content, respectively. Once your implementation is up and running, you can easily test it on different network connections using Chrome DevTools and WebPageTest. Service workers are already seeing great adoption by developers: there are currently 2.2 billion page loads a day using service workers, not counting its use in the New Tab page in Chrome.

    Performance
    The RAIL performance model helps you figure out what a user expects from each interaction with your site or app, breaking down performance into four key goals: 
    • Responses (tap to response) should be less than 100ms 
    • Animations (scrolling, gestures, and transitions) should run at 60 frames per second
    • Idle time should be used to opportunistically schedule non-essential work in 50ms chunks
    • Loading should be finished in under 1 second

    In practice, we've found improving even just one area of RAIL performance can make a dramatic difference on the user experience. For example, a one second difference in loading time can have as much as an 11% impact on overall page views and a 16% impact on customer satisfaction.

    Engagement
    Traditionally, users have had a hard time re-engaging with sites on the web. Push notifications enable you to build experiences that users can engage with "outside of the tab"--they don’t need to have the browser open, or even be actively using your web app, in order to engage with your experience. Best of all, these notifications appear just like other app notifications. Currently we’re seeing over 350 million push notifications sent every day in Chrome, and it’s growing quickly. Beyond the Rack has found that users arriving to their site by push notifications browse 72% longer than average users and spend 26% more.

    Tools for Success
    Finally, Google is committed to making web developers successful. As our generalized library for building components on the web, Polymer is also deeply focused on helping developers achieve RAIL. Since its 1.0 release at Google I/O earlier this year, it has grown to be used on over 1 million web pages, including more than 300 projects within Google. Polymer 1.0 was 3 to 4 times faster than the previous 0.5 version, and the latest 1.2 release is even 20% faster than that. To get started with this modern way of thinking about web development, take a quick tour of Polymer, watch the Polymer Summit talks, check out the Polymer codelabs, or try the Polymer Starter Kit.

    We already have great resources like Web Fundamentals that we continue to expand and improve.  We’re also committed to documenting each new feature we ship on the Mozilla Developer Network. In the past year alone, we’ve made 2,800 individual edits to MDN and created 212 new pages. To further our commitment to educating web developers, we’ve partnered with Udacity to offer a senior web nanodegree, an education credential focused on modern web technologies and techniques like service workers, Promises, HTTP/2 and more.

    For all the details on Chrome Dev Summit 2015, you can watch full session videos, which we will continue to upload as they’re ready. Thanks for coming, thanks for watching, and most of all, thank you for developing for the web!

    Hungering for Game Utilities?

    Posted by Alex Ames, Fun Propulsion Labs*

    At Fun Propulsion Labs we spend some of our time building sample games to help demonstrate how to make easy-to-build, performant, cross-platform games. With the growth of Google Cardboard, we got to work and over many long evenings, feeding our animal hunger on sushi, we came up with Zooshi. Zooshi is an open source, cross-platform game written in C++ which supports:

    • Android, Android TV, Windows, OSX, and Linux
    • Google Cardboard
    • Google Play Games Services sign-in and leaderboards on Android
    • Level customization

    Zooshi serves as a demonstration of how to build Android games using a suite of newly released and updated open source game technologies from Google:

    • Motive drives our Animation system, giving life and movement to the characters and environment.
    • CORGI, the Component Oriented Reusable Game Interface, is an Entity-Component system designed to allow users to define complicated game objects as collections of modular, custom-defined behaviors.
    • FlatUI is a straightforward immediate mode GUI system with a light footprint that makes building up user interfaces a breeze.
    • Scene Lab allows designers to design levels and edit entities from right in the game without needing to use an external editor.
    • Breadboard provides an easy to use node based scripting system for editing entity behaviors that's accessible to designers without deep knowledge of programming.
    • FPLBase is a cross-platform API layer, for abstracting low-level tasks like reading input and creation of graphical contexts.

    As in our previous release, Pie Noon, we also made extensive use of Flatbuffers, Mathfu, fplutil, and WebP.

    You can download the game in the Play Store and the latest open source release from our GitHub page. We invite you to learn from the code to see how you can apply these libraries and utilities in your own Android games. Take advantage of our discussion list if you have any questions, and don’t forget to toss some sushi around while you’re at it!

    * Fun Propulsion Labs is a team within Google that's dedicated to advancing gaming on Android and other platforms.

    Chrome Dev Summit Livestream 2015 – Day 2

    Posted by Paul Kinlan, Chrome Developer Relations

    Welcome to day two of the Chrome Dev Summit livestream 2015! Today, we’ll have a full day of sessions covering every aspect of performance on the web. Flipkart will also be joining us on stage later today to talk about their experience building a Progressive web app. Tune in to the livestream below. We look forward to engaging in the conversation with you at #ChromeDevSummit.