Tag Archives: developers

Machine Learning Communities: Q3 ‘21 highlights and achievements

Posted by HyeJung Lee, DevRel Community Manager and Soonson Kwon, DevRel Program Manager

Let’s explore highlights and achievements of vast Google Machine Learning communities by region for the last quarter. Activities of experts (GDE, professional individuals), communities (TFUG, TensorFlow user groups), students (GDSC, student clubs), and developers groups (GDG) are presented here.

Key highlights

Image shows a banner for 30 days of ML with Kaggle

30 days of ML with Kaggle is designed to help beginners study ML using Kaggle Learn courses as well as a competition specifically for the participants of this program. Collaborated with the Kaggle team so that +30 the ML GDEs and TFUG organizers participated as volunteers as online mentors as well as speakers for this initiative.

Total 16 of the GDE/GDSC/TFUGs run community organized programs by referring to the shared community organize guide. Houston TensorFlow & Applied AI/ML placed 6th out of 7573 teams — the only Americans in the Top 10 in the competition. And TFUG Santiago (Chile) organizers participated as well and they are number 17 on the public leaderboard.

Asia Pacific

Image shows Google Cloud and Coca-Cola logos

GDE Minori MATSUDA (Japan)’s project on Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan was published on Google Cloud Japan Blog covering creating an ML pipeline to deploy into real business within 2 months by using Vertex AI. This is also published on GCP blog in English.

GDE Chansung Park (Korea) and Sayak Paul (India) published many articles on GCP Blog. First, “Image search with natural language queries” explained how to build a simple image parser from natural language inputs using OpenAI's CLIP model. From this second “Model training as a CI/CD system: (Part I, Part II)” post, you can learn more about why having a resilient CI/CD system for your ML application is crucial for success. Last, “Dual deployments on Vertex AI” talks about end-to-end workflow using Vertex AI, TFX and Kubeflow.

In China, GDE Junpeng Ye used TensorFlow 2.x to significantly reduce the codebase (15k → 2k) on WeChat Finder which is a TikTok alternative in WeChat. GDE Dan lee wrote an article on Understanding TensorFlow Series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3-1, Part 3-2, Part 4

GDE Ngoc Ba from Vietnam has contributed AI Papers Reading and Coding series implementing ML/DL papers in TensorFlow and creates slides/videos every two weeks. (videos: Vit Transformer, MLP-Mixer and Transformer)

A beginner friendly codelabs (Get started with audio classification ,Go further with audio classification) by GDSC Sookmyung (Korea) learning to customize pre-trained audio classification models to your needs and deploy them to your apps, using TFlite Model Maker.

Cover image for Mat Kelcey's talk on JAX at the PyConAU event

GDE Matthew Kelcey from Australia gave a talk on JAX at PyConAU event. Mat gave an overview to fundamentals of JAX and an intro to some of the libraries being developed on top.

Image shows overview for the released PerceiverIO code

In Singapore, TFUG Singapore dived back into some of the latest papers, techniques, and fields of research that are delivering state-of-the-art results in a number of fields. GDE Martin Andrews included a brief code walkthrough for the released PerceiverIO code at perceiver- highlighting what JAX looks like, how Haiku relates to Sonnet, but also the data loading stuff which is done via tf.data.

Machine Learning Experimentation with TensorBoard book cover

GDE Imran us Salam Mian from Pakistan published a book "Machine Learning Experimentation with TensorBoard".

India

GDE Aakash Nain has published the TF-JAX tutorial series from Part 4 to Part 8. Part 4 gives a brief introduction about JAX (What/Why), and DeviceArray. Part 5 covers why pure functions are good and why JAX prefers them. Part 6 focuses on Pseudo Random Number Generation (PRNG) in Numpy and JAX. Part 7 focuses on Just In Time Compilation (JIT) in JAX. And Part 8 covers vmap and pmap.

Image of Bhavesh's Google Cloud certificate

GDE Bhavesh Bhatt published a video about his experience on the Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer certification exam.

Image shows phase 1 and 2 of the Climate Change project using Vertex AI

Climate Change project using Vertex AI by ML GDE Sayak Paul and Siddha Ganju (NVIDIA). They published a paper (Flood Segmentation on Sentinel-1 SAR Imagery with Semi-Supervised Learning) and open-sourced the project with regard to NASA Impact's ETCI competition. This project made four NeurIPS workshops AI for Science: Mind the Gaps, Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning, Women in ML, and Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences. And they finished as the first runners-up (see Test Phase 2).

Image shows example of handwriting recognition tutorial

Tutorial on handwriting recognition was contributed to Keras example by GDE Sayak Paul and Aakash Kumar Nain.

Graph regularization for image classification using synthesized graphs by GDE Sayak Pau was added to the official examples in the Neural Structured Learning in TensorFlow.

GDE Sayak Paul and Soumik Rakshit shared a new NLP dataset for multi-label text classification. The dataset consists of paper titles, abstracts, and term categories scraped from arXiv.

North America

Banner image shows students participating in Google Summer of Code

During the GSoC (Google Summer of Code), some GDEs mentored or co-mentored students. GDE Margaret Maynard-Reid (USA) mentored TF-GAN, Model Garden, TF Hub and TFLite products. You can get some of her experience and tips from the GDE Blog. And you can find GDE Sayak Paul (India) and Googler Morgan Roff’s GSoC experience in (co-)mentoring TensorFlow and TF Hub as well.

A beginner friendly workshop on TensorFlow with ML GDE Henry Ruiz (USA) was hosted by GDSC Texas A&M University (USA) for the students.

Screenshot from Youtube video on how transformers work

Youtube video Self-Attention Explained: How do Transformers work? by GDE Tanmay Bakshi from Canada explained how you can build a Transformer encoder-based neural network to classify code into 8 different programming languages using TPU, Colab with Keras.

Europe

GDG / GDSC Turkey hosted AI Summer Camp in cooperation with Global AI Hub. 7100 participants learned about ML, TensorFlow, CV and NLP.

Screenshot from slide presentation titled Why Jax?

TechTalk Speech Processing with Deep Learning and JAX/Trax by GDE Sergii Khomenko (Germany) and M. Yusuf Sarıgöz (Turkey). They reviewed technologies such as Jax, TensorFlow, Trax, and others that can help boost our research in speech processing.

South/Central America

Image shows Custom object detection in the browser using TensorFlow.js

On the other side of the world, in Brazil, GDE Hugo Zanini Gomes wrote an article about “Custom object detection in the browser using TensorFlow.js” using the TensorFlow 2 Object Detection API and Colab was posted on the TensorFlow blog.

Screenshot from a talk about Real-time semantic segmentation in the browser - Made with TensorFlow.js

And Hugo gave a talk about Real-time semantic segmentation in the browser - Made with TensorFlow.js covered using SavedModels in an efficient way in JavaScript directly enabling you to get the reach and scale of the web for your new research.

Data Pipelines for ML was talked about by GDE Nathaly Alarcon Torrico from Bolivia explained all the phases involved in the creation of ML and Data Science products, starting with the data collection, transformation, storage and Product creation of ML models.

Screensho from TechTalk “Machine Learning Competitivo: Top 1% en Kaggle (Video)

TechTalk “Machine Learning Competitivo: Top 1% en Kaggle (Video)“ was hosted by TFUG Santiago (Chile). In this talk the speaker gave a tour of the steps to follow to generate a model capable of being in the top 1% of the Kaggle Leaderboard. The focus was on showing the libraries and“ tricks ”that are used to be able to test many ideas quickly both in implementation and in execution and how to use them in productive environments.

MENA

Screenshot from workshop about Recurrent Neural Networks

GDE Ruqiya Bin Safi (Saudi Arabia) had a workshop about Recurrent Neural Networks : part 1 (Github / Slide) at the GDG Mena. And Ruqiya gave a talk about Recurrent Neural Networks: part 2 at the GDG Cloud Saudi (Saudi Arabia).

AI Training with Kaggle by GDSC Islamic University of Gaza from Palestine. It is a two month training covering Data Processing, Image Processing and NLP with Kaggle.

Sub-Saharan Africa

TFUG Ibadan had two TensorFlow events : Basic Sentiment analysis with Tensorflow and Introduction to Recommenders Systems with TensorFlow”.

Image of Yannick Serge Obam Akou's TensorFlow Certificate

Article covered some tips to study, prepare and pass the TensorFlow developer exam in French by ML GDE Yannick Serge Obam Akou (Cameroon).

10 sites and apps to help you get ready for the holidays

Here on the Google Registry team, we’re always keeping an eye out for helpful websites and apps on the top-level domains we’ve launched (.app, .new, and .dev, to name a few). This time of year, we’re especially interested in ways to prepare for the holidays. So before the holiday season kicks off, we’re sharing our favorite websites and apps to help you plan your travel, create DIY gifts, stay grounded, and everything else in between.

  1. Give.new: Give back this holiday season by supporting a nonprofit that aligns with a cause you care about.
  2. Flight.new: With 26 member airlines, you’ll have no trouble getting to your holiday or business destinations through Star Alliance.
  3. Knit.new: Take a DIY approach to gift giving this season! Knit your own scarves, sweaters and mittens with Kniterate.
  4. Mercari.new: Out with the old, in with the new. Use Mercari to sell the things you don’t need, and find the things you do.
  5. Form.new: Planning to snail mail out holiday cards? Send a quick form to family and friends to update your address book with everyone’s latest info.
  6. Mindshine.app: Stay present and mindful this holiday season with the help of Mindshine, an all-in-one app for personal development and wellbeing.
  7. Loóna.app: Get proper rest with the help of Loóna, an immersive sleepscape and storytelling app that will lull you into a deep sleep.
  8. Fluz.app: Getting started on holiday shopping? Earn cash back with Fluz while you shop for gifts.
  9. Strong.app: Find creative workouts and exercises to squeeze into even the busiest of seasons with the help of the Strong app.
  10. Tayl.app: Give your eyes a rest by turning articles, blogs, reports, and more into a podcast, and listening to them while you’re on the go.

Whether you need gift ideas or just a reminder to take a breather in the busy days ahead, we hope these sites can help you stay focused and present through the end of the year and into 2022. For a behind-the-scenes look at two of the apps we’ve highlighted, check out the videos below. Wishing you a healthy holiday season!

Video of Charlie Inman, Creative Director at Mindshine, sharing how their .app domain helped the company gain international appeal and discussing the importance of being authentic to your audience.
10:25
Video of Natalie Portier, COO Loóna, sharing the story behind their app name and how the team uses storytelling when communicating with their users.
10:25

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Migrating App Engine push queues to Cloud Tasks

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Cloud

Banner image that shows the Cloud Task logo

Introduction

The previous Module 7 episode of Serverless Migration Station gave developers an idea of how App Engine push tasks work and how to implement their use in an existing App Engine ndb Flask app. In this Module 8 episode, we migrate this app from the App Engine Datastore (ndb) and Task Queue (taskqueue) APIs to Cloud NDB and Cloud Tasks. This makes your app more portable and provides a smoother transition from Python 2 to 3. The same principle applies to upgrading other legacy App Engine apps from Java 8 to 11, PHP 5 to 7, and up to Go 1.12 or newer.

Over the years, many of the original App Engine services such as Datastore, Memcache, and Blobstore, have matured to become their own standalone products, for example, Cloud Datastore, Cloud Memorystore, and Cloud Storage, respectively. The same is true for App Engine Task Queues, whose functionality has been split out to Cloud Tasks (push queues) and Cloud Pub/Sub (pull queues), now accessible to developers and applications outside of App Engine.

Migrating App Engine push queues to Cloud Tasks video

Migrating to Cloud NDB and Cloud Tasks

The key updates being made to the application:

  1. Add support for Google Cloud client libraries in the app's configuration
  2. Switch from App Engine APIs to their standalone Cloud equivalents
  3. Make required library adjustments, e.g., add use of Cloud NDB context manager
  4. Complete additional setup for Cloud Tasks
  5. Make minor updates to the task handler itself

The bulk of the updates are in #3 and #4 above, and those are reflected in the following "diff"s for the main application file:

Screenshot shows primary differences in code when switching to Cloud NDB & Cloud Tasks

Primary differences switching to Cloud NDB & Cloud Tasks

With these changes implemented, the web app works identically to that of the Module 7 sample, but both the database and task queue functionality have been completely swapped to using the standalone/unbundled Cloud NDB and Cloud Tasks libraries… congratulations!

Next steps

To do this exercise yourself, check out our corresponding codelab which leads you step-by-step through the process. You can use this in addition to the video, which can provide guidance. You can also review the push tasks migration guide for more information. Arriving at a fully-functioning Module 8 app featuring Cloud Tasks sets the stage for a larger migration ahead in Module 9. We've accomplished the most important step here, that is, getting off of the original App Engine legacy bundled services/APIs. The Module 9 migration from Python 2 to 3 and Cloud NDB to Cloud Firestore, plus the upgrade to the latest version of the Cloud Tasks client library are all fairly optional, but they represent a good opportunity to perform a medium-sized migration.

All migration modules, their videos (when available), codelab tutorials, and source code, can be found in the migration repo. While the content focuses initially on Python users, we will cover other legacy runtimes soon so stay tuned.

How to use App Engine push queues in Flask apps

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Cloud

Banner image that shows the Cloud Task logo

Introduction

Since its original launch in 2008, many of the core Google App Engine services such as Datastore, Memcache, and Blobstore, have matured to become their own standalone products: for example, Cloud Datastore, Cloud Memorystore, and Cloud Storage, respectively. The same is true for App Engine Task Queues with Cloud Tasks. Today's Module 7 episode of Serverless Migration Station reviews how App Engine push tasks work, by adding this feature to an existing App Engine ndb Flask app.

App Engine push queues in Flask apps video

That app is where we left off at the end of Module 1, migrating its web framework from App Engine webapp2 to Flask. The app registers web page visits, creating a Datastore Entity for each. After a new record is created, the ten most recent visits are displayed to the end-user. If the app only shows the latest visits, there is no reason to keep older visits, so the Module 7 exercise adds a push task that deletes all visits older than the oldest one shown. Tasks execute asynchronously outside the normal application flow.

Key updates

The following are the changes being made to the application:

  1. Add use of App Engine Task Queues (taskqueue) API
  2. Determine oldest visit displayed, logging and saving that timestamp
  3. Create task to delete old visits
  4. Update web page template to display timestamp threshold
  5. Log how many and which visits (by Entity ID) are deleted

Except for #4 which occurs in the HTML template file, these updates are reflected in the "diff"s for the main application file:

Screenshot of App Engine push tasks application source code differences

Adding App Engine push tasks application source code differences

With these changes implemented, the web app now shows the end-user which visits will be deleted by the new push task:

Screenshot of VisitMe example showing last ten site visits. A red circle around older visits being deleted

Sample application output

Next steps

To do this exercise yourself, check out our corresponding codelab which leads you step-by-step through the process. You can use this in addition to the video, which can provide guidance. You can also review the push queue documentation for more information. Arriving at a fully-functioning Module 7 app featuring App Engine push tasks sets the stage for migrating it to Cloud Tasks (and Cloud NDB) ahead in Module 8.

All migration modules, their videos (when available), codelab tutorials, and source code, can be found in the migration repo. While the content focuses initially on Python users, we will cover other legacy runtimes soon so stay tuned.

Exploring serverless with a nebulous app: Deploy the same app to App Engine, Cloud Functions, or Cloud Run

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Cloud

Banner image that shows the App Engine, Cloud Functions, and Cloud Run logos

Introduction

Google Cloud offers three distinct ways of running your code or application in a serverless way, each serving different use cases. Google App Engine, our first Cloud product, was created to give users the ability to deploy source-based web applications or mobile backends directly to the cloud without the need of thinking about servers or scaling. Cloud Functions came later for scenarios where you may not have an entire app, great for one-off utility functions or event-driven microservices. Cloud Run is our latest fully-managed serverless product that gives developers the flexibility of containers along with the convenience of serverless.

As all are serverless compute platforms, users recognize they share some similarities along with clear differences, and often, they ask:

  1. How different is deploying code to App Engine, Cloud Functions, or Cloud Run?
  2. Is it challenging to move from one to another if I feel the other may better fit my needs?

We're going to answer these questions today by sharing a unique application with you, one that can be deployed to all three platforms without changing any application code. All of the necessary changes are done in configuration.

More motivation

Another challenge for developers can be trying to learn how to use another Cloud product, such as this request, paraphrased from a user:

  1. I have a Google App Engine app
  2. I want to call the Cloud Translation API from that app

Sounds simple enough. This user went straight to the App Engine and Translation API documentation where they were able to get started with the App Engine Quickstart to get their app up and going, then found the Translation API setup page and started looking into permissions needed to access the API. However, they got stuck at the Identity and Access Management (IAM) page on roles, being overwhelmed at all the options but no clear path forward. In light of this, let's add a third question to preceding pair outlined earlier:

  1. How do you access Cloud APIs from a Cloud serverless platform?
Without knowing what that user was going to build, let's just implement a barebones translator, an "MVP" (minimally viable product) version of a simple "My Google Translate" Python Flask app using the Translation API, one of Google Cloud's AI/ML "building block" APIs. These APIs are backed by pre-trained machine learning models, giving developers with little or no background in AI/ML the ability to leverage the benefits of machine learning with only API calls.

The application

The app consists of a simple web page prompting the user for a phrase to translate from English to Spanish. The translated results along with the original phrase are presented along with an empty form for a follow-up translation if desired. While the majority of this app's deployments are in Python 3, there are still many users working on upgrading from Python 2, so some of those deployments are available to help with migration planning. Taking this into account, this app can be deployed (at least) eight different ways:
  1. Local (or hosted) Flask server (Python 2)
  2. Local (or hosted) Flask server (Python 3)
  3. Google App Engine (Python 2)
  4. Google App Engine (Python 3)
  5. Google Cloud Functions (Python 3)
  6. Google Cloud Run (Python 2 via Docker)
  7. Google Cloud Run (Python 3 via Docker)
  8. Google Cloud Run (Python 3 via Cloud Buildpacks)
The following is a brief glance at the files and which configurations they're for: Screenshot of Nebulous serverless sample app files

Nebulous serverless sample app files

Diving straight into the application, let's look at its primary function, translate(): 
@app.route('/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def translate(gcf_request=None):
    local_request = gcf_request if gcf_request else request
    text = translated = None
    if local_request.method == 'POST':
        text = local_request.form['text'].strip()
        if text:
            data = {
                'contents': [text],
                'parent': PARENT,
                'target_language_code': TARGET[0],
            }
            rsp = TRANSLATE.translate_text(request=data)
            translated = rsp.translations[0].translated_text
    context = {
        'orig':  {'text': text, 'lc': SOURCE},
        'trans': {'text': translated, 'lc': TARGET},
    }
    return render_template('index.html', **context)

Core component (translate()) of sample application


Some key app components:
  • Upon an initial request (GET), an HTML template is rendered featuring a simple form with an empty text field for the text to translate.
  • The form POSTs back to the app, and in this case, grabs the text to translate, sends the request to the Translation API, receives and displays the results to the user along with an empty form for another translation.
  • There is a special "ifdef" for Cloud Functions near the top to receive a request object because a web framework isn't used like you'd have with App Engine or Cloud Run, so Cloud Functions provides one for this reason.
The app runs identically whether running locally or deployed to App Engine, Cloud Functions, or Cloud Run. The magic is all in the configuration. The requirements.txt file* is used in all configurations, whether to install third-party packages locally, or to direct the Cloud Build system to automatically install those libraries during deployment. Beyond requirements.txt, things start to differ:
  1. App Engine has an app.yaml file and possibly an appengine_config.py file.
  2. Cloud Run has either a Dockerfile (Docker) or Procfile (Cloud Buildpacks), and possibly a service.yaml file.
  3. Cloud Functions, the "simplest" of the three, has no configuration outside of a package requirements file (requirements.txt, package.json, etc.).
The following is what you should expect to see after completing one translation request: Screenshot of My Google Translate (1990s Edition) in Incognito Window

"My Google Translate" MVP app (Cloud Run edition)

Next steps

The sample app can be run locally or on your own hosting server, but now you also know how to deploy it to each of Cloud's serverless platforms and what those subtle differences are. You also have a sense of the differences between each platform as well as what it takes to switch from one to another. For example, if your organization is moving to implement containerization into your software development workflow, you can migrate your existing App Engine apps to Cloud Run using Docker or using Cloud Buildpacks if you don't want to think about containers or Dockerfiles. Lastly, you now know how to access Cloud APIs from these platforms. Lastly, you now know how to access Cloud APIs from these platforms.

The user described earlier was overwhelmed at all the IAM roles and options available because this type of detail is required to provide the most security options for accessing Cloud services, but when prototyping, the fastest on-ramp is to use the default service account that comes with Cloud serverless platforms. These help you get that prototype working while allowing you to learn more about IAM roles and required permissions. Once you've progressed far enough to consider deploying to production, you can then follow the best practice of "least privileges" and create your own (user-managed) service accounts with the minimal permissions required so your application functions properly.

To dive in, the code and codelabs (free, self-paced, hands-on tutorials) for each deployment are available in its open source repository. An active Google Cloud billing account is required to deploy this application to each of our serverless platforms even though you can do all of them without incurring charges. More information can be found in the "Cost" section of the repo's README. We hope this sample app teaches you more about the similarities and differences between our plaforms, shows you how you can "shift" applications comfortably between them, and provides a light introduction to another Cloud API. Also check out my colleague's post featuring similar content for Node.js.

Check out the highlights from the Indie Games Festival

Every year Google Play, hosts the Indie Games Festival, a competition that rewards high quality indie games with promotional opportunities and supports small mobile games developers. We also host the Indie Games Accelerator, an educational and mentorship program to help high potential studios grow their business. 

Last weekend, some of the best indie game creators from Europe, South Korea and Japan, as well as players from around the world, got together at the Festival’s finals. At this interactive virtual event, players had the chance to discover these creative games, meet the people who made them and had a lot of fun exploring, collecting swag and cheering on their favorites. 

We also revealed the Top 10 finalists and Festival winners in each region, as well as the studios  selected to join the Indie Games Accelerator class of 2021.

Without further ado, here are the winners!

Indie Games Festival Winners 

Europe

Indie Games Festival - Winners | Europe. The 3 winning games have a graphic from their game featured on this banner. Blobby is seen with a party popper that is shooting out paper streamers in celebration of the winners.

Bird Alone by George Batchelor, United Kingdom
Cats in Time by Pine Studio, Croatia
Gumslinger by Itatake, Sweden


Korea

Indie Games Festival - Winners | South Korea. The 3 winning games have a graphic from their game featured on this banner. Blobby is seen with a party popper that is shooting out paper streamers in celebration of the winners.

CATS & SOUP by HIDEA
Rush Hour Rally by Soen Games
The Way Home by CONCODE

Users’ Choice aware: Animal Doll Shop by Funnyeve


Japan

Indie Games Festival - Winners | Japan. The 3 winning games have a graphic from their game featured on this banner. Blobby is seen with a party popper that is shooting out paper streamers in celebration of the winners.

Mousebusters by Odencat
Quantum Transport by ruccho
Survivor's guilt by aso
Student Category Award: Japanese Train Drive Simulator 2 "OneMan2" by HAKOT

Also check out the top 10 finalists in Europe, South Korea and Japan.


Indie Games Accelerator Class of 2021

Americas 

  • Aoca Game Lab, Brazil

  • Berimbau Game Studio, Brazil

  • Boomware Studio, Peru

  • Concrete Software, USA

  • Delotech Games, Brazil

  • DreamCraft Entertainment, Inc., USA

  • Ingames, Argentina

  • Ludare Games Group Inc., Canada

  • Whitethorn Games, USA

Europe, Middle East & Africa

  • Cleverside Ltd, Belarus

  • Dali Games, Poland

  • Firegecko Ltd, United Kingdom

  • Hot Siberians, Russia

  • Infinity Games, Portugal

  • Itatake, Sweden

  • Jimjum Studios, Israel

  • LIVA Interactive, Tunisia 

  • Pale Blue Interactive, South Africa

  • Pine Studio, Croatia

  • Platonic Games, Spain

  • SMOKOKO LTD, Bulgaria

  • Spooky House Studios, Germany

Asia Pacific

  • Banjiha Games, South Korea

  • CATS BY STUDIO, South Korea

  • dc1ab pte. Ltd., Singapore

  • Dreams & Co., Thailand

  • Gamestacy Entertainment, India

  • izzle Inc., South  Korea

  • Limin Development and Investment Joint Stock Company, Vietnam 

  • Mugshot Games Pty Ltd,  Australia

  • Odencat Inc., Japan

  • Playbae, India

  • Xigma Games, India

  • XOGAMES Inc., South Korea

  • YOMI Studio, Vietnam


Thank you to everyone who participated and congratulations to the selected games and studios. Stay tuned for more updates on @GooglePlayDev.

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Cloud NDB to Cloud Datastore migration

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Cloud

An optional migration

Serverless Migration Station is a mini-series from Serverless Expeditions focused on helping users on one of Google Cloud's serverless compute platforms modernize their applications. The video today demonstrates how to migrate a sample app from Cloud NDB (or App Engine ndb) to Cloud Datastore. While Cloud NDB suffices as a current solution for today's App Engine developers, this optional migration is for those who want to consolidate their app code to using a single client library to talk to Datastore.

Cloud Datastore started as Google App Engine's original database but matured to becoming its own standalone product in 2013. At that time, native client libraries were created for the new product so non-App Engine apps as well as App Engine second generation apps could access the service. Long-time developers have been using the original App Engine service APIs to access Datastore; for Python, this would be App Engine ndb. While the legacy ndb service is still available, its limitations and lack of availability in Python 3 are why we recommend users switch to standalone libraries like Cloud NDB in the preceding video in this series.

While Cloud NDB lets users break free from proprietary App Engine services and upgrade their applications to Python 3, it also gives non-App Engine apps access to Datastore. However, Cloud NDB's primary role is a transition tool for Python 2 App Engine developers. Non-App Engine developers and new Python 3 App Engine developers are directed to the Cloud Datastore native client library, not Cloud NDB.

As a result, those with a collection of Python 2 or Python 3 App Engine apps as well as non-App Engine apps may be using completely different libraries (ndb, Cloud NDB, Cloud Datastore) to connect to the same Datastore product. Following the best practices of code reuse, developers should consider consolidating to a single client library to access Datastore. Shared libraries provide stability and robustness with code that's constantly tested, debugged, and battle-proven. Module 2 showed users how to migrate from App Engine ndb to Cloud NDB, and today's Module 3 content focuses on migrating from Cloud NDB to Cloud Datastore. Users can also go straight from ndb directly to Cloud Datastore, skipping Cloud NDB entirely.

Migration sample and next steps

Cloud NDB follows an object model identical to App Engine ndb and is deliberately meant to be familiar to long-time Python App Engine developers while use of the Cloud Datastore client library is more like accessing a JSON document store. Their querying styles are also similar. You can compare and contrast them in the "diffs" screenshot below and in the video.

The diffs between the Cloud NDB and Cloud Datastore versions of the sample app

The "diffs" between the Cloud NDB and Cloud Datastore versions of the sample app

All that said, this migration is optional and only useful if you wish to consolidate to using a single client library. If your Python App Engine apps are stable with ndb or Cloud NDB, and you don't have any code using Cloud Datastore, there's no real reason to move unless Cloud Datastore has a compelling feature inaccessible from your current client library. If you are considering this migration and want to try it on a sample app before considering for yours, see the corresponding codelab and use the video for guidance.

It begins with the Module 2 code completed in the previous codelab/video; use your solution or ours as the "START". Both Python 2 (Module 2a folder) and Python 3 (Module 2b folder) versions are available. The goal is to arrive at the "FINISH" with an identical, working app but using a completely different Datastore client library. Our Python 2 FINISH can be found in the Module 3a folder while Python 3's FINISH is in the Module 3b folder. If something goes wrong during your migration, you can always rollback to START, or compare your solution with our FINISH. We will continue our Datastore discussion ahead in Module 6 as Cloud Firestore represents the next generation of the Datastore service.

All of these learning modules, corresponding videos (when published), codelab tutorials, START and FINISH code, etc., can be found in the migration repo. We hope to also one day cover other legacy runtimes like Java 8 and others, so stay tuned. Up next in Module 4, we'll take a different turn and showcase a product crossover, showing App Engine developers how to containerize their apps and migrate them to Cloud Run, our scalable container-hosting service in the cloud. If you can't wait for either Modules 4 or 6, try out their respective codelabs or access the code samples in the table at the repo above. Migrations aren't always easy, and we hope content like this helps you modernize your apps.

Cheer on the finalists of our Indie Games Festival

On September 4, we’re celebrating some of the best indie talent on Google Play during the Indie Games Festival finals for Europe, Japan and South Korea. This year the three festivals are virtual, so you can join us to discover the games, meet the developers who created them, cheer them on and be the first to hear who the winners are. 


In June we kicked off the Indie Games Festival – a competition to celebrate the innovation and creativity that indie developers bring to Google Play. We received thousands of submissions, showing our judges how unique and diverse our games developer community is. 


The panel of judges have now selected 20 games in each region – listed below – to go forward to the finals on September 4. Each finalist receives exclusive promotions and prizes that give their games the recognition they deserve. 


So, don’t miss out. Expect plenty of fun and some very special surprises. Sign up now to virtually attend the festivals for Europe, Japan and South Korea. The events are free to attend and will all take place in the same space, so sign up to one and you will be able to teleport to all events!  

Related Article

Grow your indie game with help from Google Play

Grow your indie game with the help from Google Play. Apply by July 1st for the Indie Games Accelerator and the Indie Games Festival.

Read Article
Blobby, the Indie Games Festival mascot, is standing up on a stage with a microphone to announce the finalists of the Europe competition. All finalist icons are on the banner.

Europe


Beat Workers by NaturalPad Games, France

Bird Alone by George Batchelor, United Kingdom

Cats in Time by Pine Studio, Croatia

Figment by Bedtime Digital Games, Denmark

Froglike: The Frog Roguelike by Jimjum Studios, Israel

Garson by Anastasiya Shabunia, Belarus

Gumslinger by Itatake, Sweden

Lyxo by Emoak, Austria

Psychofunk by Tommy Søreide Kjær, Norway

Railways by Infinity Games, Portugal

Sticky Terms by kamibox, Germany

Sweet Sins Superstars by Platonic Games, Spain

Tiny Robots Recharged by Big Loop Studios, Bulgaria

Tofu Drifter by Roach Games, Russia

Towers by JOX Development, Ukraine

Unholy Adventure by Dali Games, Poland

Warplane Inc by Nuclear Games, Russia

Watch Me Stream My Mental Breakdown by Ultaan Games, Poland

Woof: The Good Boy Story by CHPV.GAMES, Russia

Zen Symmetry by 8tbl, Russia


Sign up to attend the European finals.
Blobby, the Indie Games Festival mascot, is standing up on a stage with a microphone to announce the finalists of the Japan competition. All finalist icons are on the banner.

Japan


3D Chess: NOCCA NOCCA by Curiouspark, Inc.

5colors in Nate by NekodoraSoft

Amabie san by HARAPECORPORATION Inc.

Archer Battle Online by Takuya Fujieda

Cthulhu DreamStairs by Tenyu

ElectriarCode by ELECTRIAR LABO / Blue

Escape from the Closed Circle by Hanachiru

Heart  of Sengoku by ZEN APP

Leaving Two Tiles Dojo by ScreenPocket

Living in the Ending World by illuCalab.

MAKOTO WAKAIDO’s Case Files “Executioner’s Wedge” by HafHaf-Oden (Sukashiuma-LAB）

Mini Mini Farm by CoffeeBreak

MonohakobiPro by CGO

Mousebusters by Odencat

Numpurr Card Wars by Nukenin

Parasite Days by Zxima

Quantum Transport by ruccho

Super Glitter Rush by tiny cactus studio

Survivor's guilt by aso

Wolf Chess by baton inc.


Sign up to attend the Japanese finals.
Blobby, the Indie Games Festival mascot, is standing up on a stage with a microphone to announce the finalists of the South Korea competition. All finalist logos are on the banner.

South Korea


Angel Saga by Alchemist Games Inc.

Animal Card Royale by Banjihagames

Animal Doll Shop by Funnyeve

BattleLive: Zombie&Human by PLOTRICK

Box It Up! Inc. by team TAPE

CATS & SOUP by HIDEA

Cats are Cute: Pop Time by kkiruk studio

Detective Mio by 1N1

Dicast: Rules of Chaos by BSS COMPANY

Forest Island by Nanali Studios

Frontier of Fortune by Dotomchi Games Inc.

FUNKYGUNNER by FUNKY5

Group Project Simulator! by Studio806

Gun Tactics by Gimle Games

Hybrid Warrior: Dungeon of the Overlord by Cat Lab

Metro Blossom by The Sane Studio

Portal Dungeon by Oblique Line

Rush Hour Rally by Soen Games

The Way Home by CONCODE

Titan Slayer by Touchholic


Sign up to attend the South Korean finals. 


PS: Curious to hear who was selected for the Indie Games Accelerator? Attend the European Festival to find out!

Cheer on the finalists of our Indie Games Festival

On September 4, we’re celebrating some of the best indie talent on Google Play during the Indie Games Festival finals for Europe, Japan and South Korea. This year the three festivals are virtual, so you can join us to discover the games, meet the developers who created them, cheer them on and be the first to hear who the winners are. 


In June we kicked off the Indie Games Festival – a competition to celebrate the innovation and creativity that indie developers bring to Google Play. We received thousands of submissions, showing our judges how unique and diverse our games developer community is. 


The panel of judges have now selected 20 games in each region – listed below – to go forward to the finals on September 4. Each finalist receives exclusive promotions and prizes that give their games the recognition they deserve. 


So, don’t miss out. Expect plenty of fun and some very special surprises. Sign up now to virtually attend the festivals for Europe, Japan and South Korea. The events are free to attend and will all take place in the same space, so sign up to one and you will be able to teleport to all events!  

Related Article

Grow your indie game with help from Google Play

Grow your indie game with the help from Google Play. Apply by July 1st for the Indie Games Accelerator and the Indie Games Festival.

Read Article
Blobby, the Indie Games Festival mascot, is standing up on a stage with a microphone to announce the finalists of the Europe competition. All finalist icons are on the banner.

Europe


Beat Workers by NaturalPad Games, France

Bird Alone by George Batchelor, United Kingdom

Cats in Time by Pine Studio, Croatia

Figment by Bedtime Digital Games, Denmark

Froglike: The Frog Roguelike by Jimjum Studios, Israel

Garson by Anastasiya Shabunia, Belarus

Gumslinger by Itatake, Sweden

Lyxo by Emoak, Austria

Psychofunk by Tommy Søreide Kjær, Norway

Railways by Infinity Games, Portugal

Sticky Terms by kamibox, Germany

Sweet Sins Superstars by Platonic Games, Spain

Tiny Robots Recharged by Big Loop Studios, Bulgaria

Tofu Drifter by Roach Games, Russia

Towers by JOX Development, Ukraine

Unholy Adventure by Dali Games, Poland

Warplane Inc by Nuclear Games, Russia

Watch Me Stream My Mental Breakdown by Ultaan Games, Poland

Woof: The Good Boy Story by CHPV.GAMES, Russia

Zen Symmetry by 8tbl, Russia


Sign up to attend the European finals.
Blobby, the Indie Games Festival mascot, is standing up on a stage with a microphone to announce the finalists of the Japan competition. All finalist icons are on the banner.

Japan


3D Chess: NOCCA NOCCA by Curiouspark, Inc.

5colors in Nate by NekodoraSoft

Amabie san by HARAPECORPORATION Inc.

Archer Battle Online by Takuya Fujieda

Cthulhu DreamStairs by Tenyu

ElectriarCode by ELECTRIAR LABO / Blue

Escape from the Closed Circle by Hanachiru

Heart  of Sengoku by ZEN APP

Leaving Two Tiles Dojo by ScreenPocket

Living in the Ending World by illuCalab.

MAKOTO WAKAIDO’s Case Files “Executioner’s Wedge” by HafHaf-Oden (Sukashiuma-LAB）

Mini Mini Farm by CoffeeBreak

MonohakobiPro by CGO

Mousebusters by Odencat

Numpurr Card Wars by Nukenin

Parasite Days by Zxima

Quantum Transport by ruccho

Super Glitter Rush by tiny cactus studio

Survivor's guilt by aso

Wolf Chess by baton inc.


Sign up to attend the Japanese finals.
Blobby, the Indie Games Festival mascot, is standing up on a stage with a microphone to announce the finalists of the South Korea competition. All finalist logos are on the banner.

South Korea


Angel Saga by Alchemist Games Inc.

Animal Card Royale by Banjihagames

Animal Doll Shop by Funnyeve

BattleLive: Zombie&Human by PLOTRICK

Box It Up! Inc. by team TAPE

CATS & SOUP by HIDEA

Cats are Cute: Pop Time by kkiruk studio

Detective Mio by 1N1

Dicast: Rules of Chaos by BSS COMPANY

Forest Island by Nanali Studios

Frontier of Fortune by Dotomchi Games Inc.

FUNKYGUNNER by FUNKY5

Group Project Simulator! by Studio806

Gun Tactics by Gimle Games

Hybrid Warrior: Dungeon of the Overlord by Cat Lab

Metro Blossom by The Sane Studio

Portal Dungeon by Oblique Line

Rush Hour Rally by Soen Games

The Way Home by CONCODE

Titan Slayer by Touchholic


Sign up to attend the South Korean finals. 


PS: Curious to hear who was selected for the Indie Games Accelerator? Attend the European Festival to find out!

Ask a Techspert: What is open source?

When I started working at Google, a colleague mentioned that the group projects I worked on in college sounded a lot like some of the open source projects we do here at Google. I thought there had to be some misunderstanding since my projects all happened in-person with my classmates in the corner of some building in the engineering quad. 

To find out how a real life study group could be like a type of computer software, I went straight to Rebecca Stambler, one of Google’s many open source experts.


Explain your job to me like I’m a first-grader.

Well, to start, computer programs have to be written in a language that computers understand — not in English or any other spoken language. At Google we have our own language called Go. When we write in a language to tell a computer what to do, that’s called source code. Just like you can write an essay or a letter in a Google Doc, you have to write your code in an “editor.” I work on making these editors work well for people who write code in Google’s programming language, Go. 


What does it mean for software to be open source?

A piece of software is considered open source if its source code is made publicly available to anyone, meaning they can freely copy, modify and redistribute the code. Usually, companies want to keep the source code of their products secret, so people can’t copy and reproduce their products. But sometimes a company shares their code publicly so anyone can contribute. This makes software more accessible and builds a community around a project. Anyone can work on an open source project no matter who they are or where they are. 


Anyone can contribute? How do they do it?

Before you actually write open source code, a good first step would be thinking about what you’re interested in, whether that’s web development, systems or front end development. Then you can dive into that community by doing things like attending talks or joining online networks where you can often learn more about what open source projects are out there. Then, think about what topics you’re interested in — maybe it’s the environment, retail, banking or a specific type of web development. Some people write code just because they enjoy it; plenty of these people have contributed to code within Google open source projects. So if you’re looking to contribute,  make sure it’s something  you’re really interested in.

Abstract illustration of three people putting together code.

Many open source projects are hosted on a site called Github, so once you narrow down your area of interest, that’s a great place to start! Once you’ve found something you want to work on, the easiest way to get involved is to fix errors in the code raised by other members of the project who don’t have the time to fix. Even if you don’t know how to code there’s a lot of non-technical work in open source projects like prioritizing issues that need fixing, community organization or writing user guides. You just have to be passionate about the work and ready to jump in. 


What’s the benefit of using open source code to create something?

We need lots of diverse perspectives to build good software, and open source helps with that. If you’re building something with a small team of three people, you might not consider all of the different ways someone might use your product. Or maybe your team doesn’t have the best equipment. Open source enables people from all over the world with different use cases, computers and experiences to chime in and say “hey, this doesn’t actually work for me” or “running this software drains my battery.” Without having open source projects, I don’t think we could make products that work for everyone. 

Projects like Android, which is Google operating system for mobile devices, are open source. And just last year Google Kubernetes Engine celebrated its five-year anniversary. This was really exciting because it showed how Google engineers contribute to the broader open source community outside of Google. Open source projects build a real sense of community between the contributors. When we have people that work on a lot of our projects we send them thank you notes and mention them when we release new software versions. We’ve created a whole community of contributors who’ve made our products more successful and exciting.