Posted by Ankita Tripathi, Community Manager (Dev Library)
Witnessing a plethora of open-source enthusiasts in the developer ecosystem in recent years gave birth to the idea of Google’s Dev Library. The inception of the platform happened in June 2021 with the only objective of giving visibility to developers who have been creating and building projects relentlessly using Google technologies. But why the Dev Library?
Why Dev Library?
Open-source communities are currently at a boom. The past 3 years have seen a surge of folks constantly building in public, talking about open-source contributions, digging into opportunities, and carving out a valuable portfolio for themselves. The idea behind the Dev Library as a whole was also to capture these open-source projects and leverage them for the benefit of other developers.
This platform acted as a gold mine for projects created using Google technologies (Android, Angular, Flutter, Firebase, Machine Learning, Google Assistant, Google Cloud).
With the platform, we also catered to the burning issue – creating a central place for the huge number of projects and articles scattered across various platforms. Therefore, the Dev Library became a one-source platform for all the open source projects and articles for Google technologies.
How can you use the Dev Library?
“It is a library full of quality projects and articles.”
External developers cannot construe Dev Library as the first platform for blog posts or projects, but the vision is bigger than being a mere platform for the display of content. It envisages the growth of developers along with tech content creation. The uniqueness of the platform lies in the curation of its submissions. Unlike other platforms, you don’t get your submitted work on the site by just clicking ‘Submit’. Behind the scenes, Dev Library has internal Google engineers for each product area who:
- thoroughly assess each submission,
- check for relevancy, freshness, and quality,
- approve the ones that pass the check, and reject the others with a note.
It is a painstaking process, and Dev Library requires a 4-6 week turnaround time to complete the entire curation procedure and get your work on the site.
What we aim to do with the platform:
- Provide visibility: Developers create open-source projects and write articles on platforms to bring visibility to their work and attract more contributions. Dev Library’s intention is to continue to provide this amplification for the efforts and time spent by external contributors.
- Kickstart a beginner’s open-source contribution journey: The biggest challenge for a beginner to start applying their learnings to build Android or Flutter applications is ‘Where do I start my contributions from’? While we see an open-source placard unfurled everywhere, beginners still struggle to find their right place. With the Dev Library, you get a stack of quality projects hand-picked for you keeping the freshness of the tech and content quality intact. For example, Tomas Trajan, a Dev Library contributor created an Angular material starter project where they have ‘good first issues’ to start your contributions with.
- Recognition: Your selection of the content on the Dev Library acts as recognition to the tiring hours you’ve put in to build a running open-source project and explain it well. Dev Library also delivers hero content in their monthly newsletter, features top contributors, and is in the process to gamify the developer efforts. As an example, one of our contributors created a Weather application using Android and added a badge ‘Part of Dev Library’.
With your contributions at one place under the Author page, you can use it as a portfolio for your work while simultaneously increasing your chances to become the next Google Developer Expert (GDE).
Features on the platform
Keeping developers in mind, we’ve updated features on the platform as follows:
- Added a new product category; Google Assistant – All Google Assistant and Smart home projects now have a designated category on the Dev Library.
- Integrated a new way to make submissions across product areas via the Advocu form.
- Introduced a special section to submit Cloud Champion articles on Google Cloud.
- Included displays on each Author page indicating the expertise of individual contributors
- Upcoming: An expertise filter to help you segment out content based on Beginner, Intermediate, or Expert levels.
To submit your idea or suggestion, refer to this form, and put down your suggestions.
Contributor Love
Dev Library as a platform is more about the contributors who lie on the cusp of creation and consumption of the available content. Here are some contributors who have utilized the platform their way. Here's how the Dev Library has helped along their journey:
Roaa Khaddam: Roaa is a Senior Flutter Mobile Developer and Co-Founder at MultiCaret Inc.How has the Dev Library helped you?
“It gave me the opportunity to share what I created with an incredible community and look at the projects my fellow Flutter mates have created. It acts as a great learning resource.”
How has the Dev Library helped you?
“I used to discover new open source libraries and helpful articles for Android development in many places and it took me longer than necessary. But the Dev Library allows me to explore these useful resources in one place.”
How has the Dev Library helped you?
“Dev Library is a great tool to find excellent Angular articles or open source projects. Dev Library offers a great filtering function and therefore makes it much easier to find the right open source library for your use case.”
What started as a platform to highlight and showcase some open-source projects has grown into a product where developers can share their learnings, inspire others, and contribute to the ecosystem at large.
Do you have an Open Source learning or project in the form of a blog or GitHub repo you'd like to share? Please submit it to the Dev Library platform. We'd love to add you to our ever growing list of developer contributors!
Source: Google Developers Blog
A program for European startups building with Cloud
After years of working for a successful beverage company, I knew e-commerce was becoming ever more popular. I’d also witnessed the power of Google Assistant in day-to-day life, and wondered: Could an AI voice assistant help e-commerce retailers better connect customers with products? So I founded my company Yosh.AI to help retail companies connect shoppers with their ideal products through Cloud technology and artificial intelligence (AI) assisted voice search.
However, with a background in corporate marketing rather than entrepreneurship, I had to learn everything from scratch: about AI, building a startup and growing the business. I found the knowledge, inspiration and mentorship I sought through the Google for Startups Accelerator, a three-month, equity-free program of intensive workshops and expert mentorship for growth-stage tech companies.
Our main goal during Google for Startups Accelerator was technical mentorship and growth. We hoped to develop close working relationships with Google Cloud throughout Europe. Google for Startups mentors introduced us to the right person at Google Cloud Germany, which led to meeting key teams at Google UK, Google France and Google in the Middle East and North Africa to expand across the region. Accelerator mentorship also led to Yosh.AI becoming a Google Cloud partner, helping retailers grow their e-commerce offerings by showing them how to implement Google Cloud technology. In just one year, we have progressed so much thanks to the key connections and product support forged during the program.
Now, I’m proud to help announce Google for Startups Accelerator: Cloud, designed to help startups building with Google Cloud learn technical, product and leadership best practices. Open for seed to Series A-stage startups based in Europe and Israel, Google for Startups Accelerator: Cloud offers 10 weeks of mentoring and technical support from Google engineers and external experts through a mix of 1-to-1 and 1-to-many learning sessions. Participants will also be paired with a dedicated Startup Success Manager for further personalized support.
The program culminates in a virtual Demo Day, during which the group can showcase their work in front of Google teams, mentors, investors, partners and others from the European startup world. After the program wraps up, startups will continue to receive Google support via the Google for Startups Accelerator alumni program and network — a community I am still active in myself.
A huge part of where I am today is because of Google for Startups support. As a female founder from a post-communist country, I had dreams but was not sure how to make them happen. Google for Startups connected me to other entrepreneurs and mentors who not only believed in me, but also helped me believe in myself. I encourage all interested founders to similarly set themselves up for success and apply to Google for Startups Accelerator: Cloud before the deadline on April 19.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Increasing Google’s investment in Poland
It has been over 15 years since we opened our first office in Poland. Back in those days, it had one room and could fit no more than three people. Since then, we have invested dynamically, mirroring the growing potential of the Polish economy. Now, we employ more than 1000 Googlers in the country. Only last year, we added over 350 people, opened our new office in Warsaw and launched a Google Cloud region — the first such investment not only in Poland, but in Central and Eastern Europe.
We are now making another step forward in reaffirming our commitment to Poland. We will invest nearly $700 million in the purchase and further development of The Warsaw HUB, a modern office complex right in the heart of Poland’s capital city. Google had moved into The Warsaw Hub as a tenant last year, opening a new office there — a home to teams working primarily on our most advanced solutions powering Google Cloud and its many global customers. It is already our largest site working on cloud technologies in Europe. With this new investment, across our sites in Warsaw we will have capacity for 2500 employees, with potential for future growth. We hope it also signals our long-term confidence in the potential that Poland and the region have as an attractive location for top talent and place to develop cutting-edge technologies.
Our work in Poland goes beyond supporting its digital economy, and right now we are extremely focused on helping those who need it most at this time. Last week we announced that Google will provide $10 million to local organizations helping refugees from the war in Ukraine who arrive into Poland. The funding will support both immediate humanitarian efforts and assistance for refugees in the first weeks of their stay in Poland, as well as their longer-terms needs. We will also be using Google’s spaces and resources to support those affected, including by using the Google for Startups Campus in Warsaw as a space where local NGOs can provide legal and psychological support to refugees. As the needs of those affected by the war change, we will be looking at other ways in which we can help.
View of the Warsaw skyline from Google's office at The Warsaw HUB
Contributing to Poland’s digital growth
Over the years, we've seen first hand in Poland how technology can help people get through difficult times, but also to grow their careers and businesses for the future. As we continue to invest not only in infrastructure, but also in talent and knowledge, we are confident that Google can continue helping Poland’s economy use its advantages and the power of technology to support its future economic growth. Much like the last 15 years, we will continue partnering with business, academia, public sector and the non-governmental organizations in Poland to ensure that our continued investments in the country enable society to benefit from what technology has to offer.
Investing in the future flexible workplace
We also believe that the future of work in this new, digital economy is flexibility. Whilst the majority of our Poland-based employees want to be on-site some of the time, they also want the flexibility of working from home a couple of days a week. Some of our people will want to be fully remote. Our future office spaces in Poland will have room for all of those possibilities.
Over the next few years, we will be investing in the construction of the next workspaces in our new office in The Warsaw HUB to ensure that it is best equipped to meet the needs of our new ways of working. We'll be introducing new types of collaboration spaces for in-person teamwork and inclusive meeting rooms for hybrid working as well as de-densifying the offices to improve wellbeing and providing many amenities (like outdoor terraces) to make sure that we offer the best possible work environment for the many talented people that will be joining us in Warsaw in the near future.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Google Cloud is just the ticket for JustPark
JustPark are the nice guys of the parking world. For the uninitiated, the company exists to make parking more affordable, more convenient, and more sustainable. It started with one simple idea: to create societal change by tapping into the potential of unused spaces. And since 2006, the marketplace has allowed homeowners to get value from their empty garages and spaces while connecting drivers to otherwise underutilised parking spots all around the UK and US.
Today, JustPark connects a thriving community of some 45,000 space owners to over 5.5 million UK drivers, and 8 million worldwide, and manages parking spaces for some of the UK’s biggest Local Authorities and car parking companies. In the last year alone, they have partnered with London’s largest private transport provider, equipping it with access to off-street parking points and mobile payments technologies. In other words, it’s growing and growing fast.
But growth means increased demand. To meet this demand, JustPark needed a technology partner that would enable it to scale up sustainably and improve its existing services while taking over management of its software infrastructure to save on time and admin costs — and all without compromising on reliability or quality of service. It found the right partner in Google Cloud.
From a tight spot to the right one
With a small and agile software team of 40, JustPark needed a managed offering to take care of its software infrastructure. The company started off using Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), a managed, production-ready environment for running containerised applications, in a way that was scalable and extensible.
More recently, it’s adopted Google BigQuery and Looker to provide scalable analysis of its data, helping to uncover the insights it needs to hone its business model and improve its services. “This was the first time we started gaining real business insight,” explains Jack Wall, Head of Engineering at JustPark. “Using these tools, we were able to use our own data to guide us to the most commercially viable decisions, especially regarding supply and demand.”
“Our adoption of GKE meant that the transition to other Google products was a no-brainer. Since we started using GKE, everything became so much easier — we could build on our services, improve the customer experience and crucially, we realised that we could leave our IT and cloud infrastructure in the hands of the experts at Google. That meant we could concentrate on continuing to perfect our business model.”
Demand on the platform is growing fast, and JustPark needs a trustworthy partner to help it move quickly. “We’ve doubled our customer base in the last two years alone and anticipate this demand growing by a further 33% by summer 2022. Uptime is crucially important — we deal with immediate demands that require immediate connections. Any lags can be extremely annoying for customers, so it is vital that we have an architecture that is resilient and supportive. Moving forward, we’re keen to work with Google Cloud to improve the observability, reliability and resilience of our technical offering to deliver the best customer experience possible.”
A sustainable road to the future
With electric vehicle fleet offerings in growing demand, the company plans to use Looker to enable data-driven decisions that will help the UK continue to electrify its fleet. The ongoing partnership with Google, and full integration with Google Maps and G-Suite enables customers to enjoy all of the benefits of accurate traffic and location information, as well as effective business administration.
“Google Cloud’s networking model is a breath of fresh air compared to the platform we used before,” concludes Jack. “And with the architecture we have in place now, we’re confident that we’re ready to handle the volume of customers we’re anticipating in the next year.”
Source: The Official Google Blog
Ask a Techspert: What’s a subsea cable?
Whenever I try to picture the internet at work, I see little pixels of information moving through the air and above our heads in space, getting where they need to go thanks to 5G towers and satellites in the sky. But it’s a lot deeper than that — literally. Google Cloud’s Vijay Vusirikala recently talked with me about why the coolest part of the internet is really underwater. So today, we’re diving into one of the best-kept secrets in submarine life: There wouldn’t be an internet without the ocean.
First question: How does the internet get underwater?
We use something called a subsea cable that runs along the ocean floor and transmits bits of information.
What’s a subsea cable made of?
These cables are about the same diameter as the average garden hose, but on the inside they contain thin optical fibers. Those fibers are surrounded by several layers of protection, including two layers of ultra-high strength steel wires, water-blocking structures and a copper sheath. Why so much protection? Imagine the pressure they are under. These cables are laid directly on the sea bed and have tons of ocean water on top of them! They need to be super durable.
A true inside look at subsea cables: On the left, a piece of the Curie subsea cable showing the additional steel armoring for protection close to the beach landing. On the right, a cross-sectional view of a typical deep water subsea cable showing the optical fibers, copper sheath, and steel wires for protection.
Why are subsea cables important?
Subsea cables are faster, can carry higher traffic loads and are more cost effective than satellite networks. Subsea cables are like a highway that has the right amount of lanes to handle rush-hour traffic without getting bogged down in standstill jams. Subsea cables combine high bandwidths (upwards of 300 to 400 terabytes of data per second) with low lag time. To put that into context, 300 to 400 terabytes per second is roughly the same as 17.5 million people streaming high quality videos — at the same time!
So when you send a customer an email, share a YouTube video with a family member or talk with a friend or coworker on Google Meet, these underwater cables are like the "tubes" that deliver those things to the recipient.
Plus, they help increase internet access in places that have had limited connectivity in the past, like countries in South America and Africa. This leads to job creation and economic growth in the places where they’re constructed.
How many subsea cables are there?
There are around 400 subsea cables criss-crossing the planet in total. Currently, Google invests in 19 of them — a mix of cables we build ourselves and projects we’re a part of, where we work together with telecommunications providers and other companies.
Wow, 400! Does the world need more of them?
Yes! Telecommunications providers alongside technology companies are still building them around the world. At Google, we invest in subsea cables for a few reasons: One, our Google applications and Cloud services keep growing. This means more network demand from people and businesses in every country around the world. And more demand means building more cables and upgrading existing ones, which have less capacity than their modern counterparts.
Two, you cannot have a single point of failure when you're on a mission to connect the world’s information and make it universally accessible. Repairing a subsea cable that goes down can take weeks, so to guard against this we place multiple cables in each cross section. This gives us sufficient extra cable capacity so that services aren’t affected for people around the world.
What’s your favorite fact about subsea cables?
Three facts, if I may!
First, I love that we name many of our cables after pioneering women, like Curie for Marie Curie, which connects California to Chile, and Grace Hopper, which links the U.S., Spain and the U.K. Firmina, which links the U.S., Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, is named after Brazil’s first novelist, Maria Firmina dos Reis.
Second, I’m proud that the cables are kind to their undersea homes. They’re environmentally friendly and are made of chemically inactive materials that don't harm the flora and fauna of the ocean, and they generally don’t move around much! We’re very careful about where we place them; we study each beach’s marine life conditions and we adjust our attachment timeline so we don’t disrupt a natural lifecycle process, like sea turtle nesting season. For the most part they’re stationary and don't disrupt the ocean floor or marine life. Our goal is to integrate into the underwater landscape, not bother it.
And lastly, my favorite fact is actually a myth: Most people think sharks regularly attack our subsea cables, but I’m aware of exactly one shark attack on a subsea cable that took place more than 15 years ago. Truly, the most common problems for our cables are caused by people doing things like fishing, trawling (which is when a fishing net is pulled through the water behind a boat) and anchor drags (when a ship drifts without holding power even though it has been anchored).
Source: The Official Google Blog
Year in review: the Google Workspace Platform 2021
Posted by Charles Maxson, Developer Advocate
In 2021, we saw many changes and improvements to the Google Workspace Platform geared at helping developers build new solutions to keep up with the challenges of how we worked, like hybrid and fully remote office work. More than ever, we needed tools for virtual collaboration and digital processes to keep our work going. As paper processes in the office were less viable and we continued to go see digital transformations become necessary, many new custom solutions like desk reservation systems and automated test logging have evolved.
2021 was also a year for Platform milestones, Google Workspace grew to more than 3 billion users globally, we reached more than 5,300 public apps in the Google Workspace Marketplace, and we crossed over 4.8 billion apps installed (up from 1 billion in 2020)! We were also busy bringing Platform innovations and improving our developer experience to help building for Google Workspace easier and faster. Here’s a look at some of the key enhancements the Google Workspace Platform brought to the developer community.
Google Cloud Champion Innovators program
Community building is one of the most effective ways to support developers, which is why we created Google Cloud Innovators.This new community program was designed for developers and technical practitioners using Google Cloud and we welcome everyone.
And when we say everyone, it’s not just professional developers, data scientists, or student developers and hobbyists, we also mean non-technical end users. The growing Google community has something for everyone.
GWAO Alternate Runtimes goes GA
Google Workspace Add-ons are customized applications that tightly integrate with Google Workspace applications, and can be found in the Google Workspace Marketplace, or built specifically for your own domain. The development of these applications were limited to using Apps Script, our native scripting language for the Google Workspace Platform. With the launch of Alternate Runtimes you can now develop add-ons with your preferred hosting infrastructure, development tool chain, source control system, coding language, and code libraries; it was a highly requested update from the developer community, opening up the Platform to many new developer scenarios.
Card Builder UI Application
The GWAO Card Builder tool allows you to visually design the user interfaces for your Google Workspace Add-ons and Google Chat apps projects. It is a must-have for Google Workspace developers using either Apps Script or Alternate Runtimes, enabling you to prototype and design Card UIs super fast without hassle and errors of hand coding JSON or Apps Script on your own.
Card Builder tool for building Google Workspace Add-ons and Chat Apps
Recommended for Google Workspace
This program showcases a selection of market-leading applications built by software vendors across a wide range of categories, including project management, customer support, and finance in our Google Workspace Marketplace. These apps undergo rigorous usability and security testing to make sure they meet our requirements for high quality integrations. They must also have an exemplary track record of user satisfaction, reliability, and privacy.
Recommended for Google Workspace program showcases high quality applications
Chat Slash Commands and Dialogs
Slash commands simplify the way users interact with your Chat bot, offering them a visual leading way to discover and execute your bot’s primary features. As a developer, slash commands are straightforward to implement, and essential in offering a better bot experience. In addition to Slash Commands, Dialogs were a new capability introduced to the Chat App framework that allows developers to build user interfaces to capture inputs and parameters in a structured, reliable way. This was a tremendous step forward for bot usability because it simplified and streamlined the process of users interacting with bot commands. Now with dialogs, users can be led visually to supply inputs via prompts, versus having to rely on wrapping bot commands with natural language inputs.
Forms API beta
Google Forms enables easy creation and distribution of forms, surveys, and quizzes. Forms is used for a wide variety of use cases across business operations, customer management, event planning and logistics, education, and more. With the Google Forms API Beta announcement, developers were able to provide programmatic access for managing forms and acting on responses, empowering developers to build powerful integrations on top of Forms.
Google Workspace Marketplace updates
We made many updates to the Google Workspace Marketplace to improve both the user and developer experience. We added updates to the application detail page that included pricing and when the listing was last updated. The homepage also saw improvements with various curated categories by the Google team under Editor’s Choice. Finally, we launched the marketplace badges for developers to promote their published applications on websites and marketing channels. Oh, and we also had a logo update if you hadn’t noticed.
Google Workspace Marketplace Badges for application promotion
Farewell 2021 and here’s to welcoming in 2022
2021 brought us many innovations to the Google Workspace Platform to help developers address the needs of their users and it also brought more empowerment to knowledge workers to build the solutions they needed with our no-code and low-code platforms. These are just the highlights for the Google Workspace Platform and we look forward to more innovation in 2022. To keep up with all the news about the Platform, please subscribe to our newsletter.
Source: Google Developers Blog
How to get started in cloud computing
Posted by Google Cloud training & certifications team
Validated cloud skills are in demand. With Google Cloud certifications, employers know that certified individuals have proven knowledge of various professional roles within the cloud industry. Google Cloud certifications have also been recognized as some of the highest-paying IT certifications for the past several years. This year, the Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer topped the list with an average salary of $171,749, while the Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect came in second place, with an average salary of $169,029.
You may be wondering what sort of background you need to take advantage of these opportunities: What sort of classes should you take? How exactly do you get started in the cloud without experience? Here are some tips to start learning about Google Cloud and build your cloud computing skills.
Get hands-on experience with cloud computing
Google Cloud training offers a wide range of learning paths featuring comprehensive courses and hands-on labs, so you get to practice with the real Google Cloud console. For instance, If you wanted to take classes to prepare for the Professional Data Engineer certification mentioned above, there is a complete learning path featuring four courses and 31 hands-on labs to help familiarize you with relevant topics like BigQuery, machine learning, IoT, TensorFlow, and more.There are nine learning paths providing you with a launch pad to all major pillars of cloud computing, from networking, cloud security, database management, and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Each broader learning path contains specific learning paths to help you specifically train for job roles like Machine Learning Engineer. Visit the Google Cloud training page to find the right path for you.
Learn live from cloud experts
Google Cloud regularly hosts a half-day live training event called Cloud OnBoard which features hands-on learning led by experts. All sessions are also available to watch on-demand after the event.
If you’re a developer new to cloud computing, we recommend you start with Google Cloud Fundamentals, an entry-level course to learn about the basics of Google Cloud. Experts guide you through hands-on labs where you can practice using the Google Console, Google Cloud Shell, and more.
You’ll be introduced to core components of Google Cloud and given an overview of how its tools impact the entire cloud computing landscape. The curriculum covers Compute Engine and how to create VM instances from scratch and from existing templates, how to connect them together, and end with projects that can talk to each other safely and securely. You will also learn about the different storage and database options available on Google Cloud.
Other Cloud OnBoard event topics include cloud architecture, Kubernetes, data analytics, and cloud application development.
Explore Google Cloud infrastructure
Cloud infrastructure is the backbone of the internet. Understanding cloud infrastructure is a good starting point to start digging deeper into cloud concepts because it will give you a taste of the various aspects of cloud computing to figure out what you like best, whether it’s networking, security, or application development.
Build your foundational Google Cloud knowledge with our on-demand infrastructure training in the cloud infrastructure learning path. This learning path will provide you with practical experience through expert-guided labs which dive into Cloud Storage and other key application services like Google Cloud’s operations suite and Cloud Functions.
Show off your skills
Once you have a strong grasp on Google Cloud basics, you can start earning skill badges to demonstrate your experience.
Skill badges are digital credentials that recognize your ability to solve real-world problems with your cloud knowledge. You can share them on your resume or social profile so your professional network sees your technical skills. This can be useful for recruiters or employers as you transition to cloud computing work.Skill badges also enable you to get in-depth, hands-on experience with different Google Cloud offerings on the way to earning the credential.
You can also use them to start preparing for Google Cloud certifications which are more intensive and show employers that you are a cloud expert. Most Google Cloud certifications recommend having at least 6 months or up to several years of industry experience depending on the material.
Ready to get started in the cloud? Visit the Google Cloud training page to see all your options from in-person classes, online courses, special events, and more.
Source: Google Developers Blog
Helping fashion brands make more sustainable decisions
The fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to the global climate and ecological crisis — accounting for up to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Much of this impact occurs at the raw materials stage of the supply chain, like when cotton is farmed or trees are cut down to create viscose. But when brands source these materials, they often have little to no visibility on the environmental impact of them.
In 2019, we set out to create a tool that would give companies the data they need to make more responsible sourcing decisions. Today we’re announcing the first version of the Global Fibre Impact Explorer (GFIE), and we’re inviting other brands to get involved. The tool, which is built on Google Earth Engine and uses Google Cloud computing, assesses the environmental risk of different fibers across regions as it relates to environmental factors such as air pollution, biodiversity, climate and greenhouse gasses, forestry and water use.
With this tool, brands will easily be able to identify environmental risks across more than 20 fiber types — including natural, cellulosic and synthetics materials.The tool will also provide brands with recommendations for targeted and regionally specific risk reduction activities including opportunities to work with farmers, producers and communities, such as investing in regenerative agriculture practices
The GFIE dashboard where brands can upload their fiber portfolio data and get recommendations to reduce risk across key environmental categories.
Spooling it all together: Working with fashion brands and conservation experts
We worked with Stella McCartney, a luxury fashion brand and leader in sustainability, to understand the industry's needs and to test the platform. Using the tool alongside their existing sustainability efforts, Stella McCartney’s team was able to identify cotton sources in Turkey that were facing increased water and climate risks. This affirms the need for investing in local farming communities that focus on regenerative practices, such as water management and soil regeneration. Other brands and retailers — including Adidas, Allbirds, H&M Group and VF Corporation — have helped test and refine the tool to make sure it can be useful to everyone in the industry. And an external council of global experts have reviewed the GFIE methodology and data.
The GFIE was born out of a partnership between Google and the WWF, and is built to complement existing tools focused on industry impact and risk analysis. With the initial development phase complete, Google and WWF are now transitioning GFIE to Textile Exchange, a global non-profit focused on positively impacting climate through accelerating the use of preferred fibers across the global textile industry. As the official host of the GFIE, Textile Exchange will continue the development of the tool, onboard new brands and work towards an industry launch in 2022.
If you’re a part of a fashion brand or industry group and want access to this tool, please register your interest at globalfibreimpact.com.
Source: The Official Google Blog
Upload massive lists of products to Merchant Center using Centimani
Posted by Hector Parra, Jaime Martínez, Miguel Fernandes, Julia Hernández
Merchant Center lets merchants manage how their in-store and online product inventory appears on Google. It allows them to reach hundreds of millions of people looking to buy products like yours each day.
To upload their products, merchants can make use of feeds, that is, files with a list of products in a specific format. These can be shared with Merchant Center in different ways: using Google Sheets, SFTP or FTP shares, Google Cloud Storage or manually through the user interface. These methods work great for the majority of cases. But, if a merchant's product list grows over time, they might reach the usage limits of the feeds. Depending on the case, quota extensions could be granted, but if the list continues to grow, it might reach a point where feeds no longer support that scale, and the Content API for Shopping would become the recommended way to go forward.
The main issue is, if a merchant is recommended to stop using feeds and start using the Content API due to scale problems, it means that the number of products is massive, and trying to use the Content API directly will give them usage and quota errors, as the QPS and products per call limits will be exceeded.
For this specific use case, Centimani becomes critical in helping merchants handle the upload process through the Content API in a controlled manner, avoiding any overload of the API.
Centimani is a configurable massive file processor able to split text files in chunks, process them following a strategic pattern and store the results in BigQuery for reporting. It provides configurable options for chunk size and number of retries, and takes care of exponential backoff to ensure all requests have enough retries to overcome potential temporary issues or errors. Centimani comes with two operators: Google Ads Offline Conversions Uploader, and Merchant Center Products Uploader, but it can be extended to other uses easily.
Centimani uses Google Cloud as its platform, and makes use of Cloud Storage for storing the data, Cloud Functions to do the data processing and the API calls, Cloud Tasks to coordinate the execution of each call, and BigQuery to store the audit information for reporting. 
Centimani Architecture
To start using Centimani, a couple of configuration files need to be prepared with information about the Google Cloud Project to be used (including the element names), the credentials to access the Merchant Center accounts and how the load will be distributed (e.g., parallel executions, number of products per call). Then, the deployment is done automatically using a deployment script provided by the tool.
After the tool is deployed, a cloud function will be monitoring the input bucket in Cloud Storage, and every time a file is uploaded there, it will be processed. The tool uses the name of the file to select the operator that is going to be used (“MC” indicates Merchant Center Products Uploader), and the particular configuration to use (multiple configurations can be used to connect to Merchant Center accounts with different access credentials).
Whenever a file is uploaded, it will be sliced in parts if it is greater than the number of products allowed per call, they will be stored in the output bucket in Cloud Storage, and Cloud Tasks will start launching the API calls until all files are processed. Any file with errors will be stored in a folder called “slices_failed” to help troubleshoot any issues found in the process. Also, all the information about the executions will be stored temporarily in Datastore and then moved to BigQuery, where it can be used for monitoring the whole process from a centralized place.
Centimani Status Dashboard Architecture
Centimani provides an easy way for merchants to start using the Content API for Shopping to manage their products, without having to deal with the complexity of keeping the system under the limits.
For more information you can visit the Centimani repository on Github.
Source: Google Developers Blog
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
GDE Bhavesh Bhatt published a video about his experience on the Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer certification exam.
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).
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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”.
Article covered some tips to study, prepare and pass the TensorFlow developer exam in French by ML GDE Yannick Serge Obam Akou (Cameroon).