Tag Archives: offline

Announcing Nearby Connections 2.0: fully offline, high bandwidth peer to peer device communication

Posted by Ritesh Nayak M, Product Manager

Imagine walking into a hotel room and having the temperature set just right, your favorite sub-genre of progressive-math-rock playing in the background, and the TV urging you to continue binging on your saved guilty-pleasures watchlist. What if your phone's contact book could expand to merge with your spouse's when you're together, so you're never again put in the excruciatingly compromising position of having to ask for your mother-in-law's phone number (which you ought to have had on speed dial, in your favorites, and listed as an emergency contact)? Now imagine a world where you can drive up to an empty driveway or private parking space in a city like New York or San Francisco, and negotiate with that space to rent it out until its owner returns.

The common thread among all these scenarios is being able to detect proximity to -- and being able to communicate with -- people, places, and things "near" you.

At I/O this year, we spoke about a refresh to the Nearby Connections API that can provide high bandwidth, low latency, encrypted data transfers between nearby devices in a fully-offline P2P manner. Today we're announcing the availability of this API across all Android devices running Google Play services 11.0 and up.

Nearby Connections uses WiFi, Bluetooth LE & Classic Bluetooth under the hood to discover and establish connections to nearby devices. It abstracts away the inherent complexity of these radios by leveraging the strengths of each, while circumventing their respective weaknesses. Aside from the obvious advantage of sidestepping the pain of dealing with the vagaries of these radios across different OS versions and devices, this abstraction enables seamlessly upgrading the bandwidth of a connection by switching between the radios as and when it makes sense, as well as getting invisible over-the-air updates to use new radio technology as it becomes available -- with no change whatsoever in the application code.

At the heart of this API is a connection (with Unix-socket-like semantics) that you can use to transfer bytes, files, or streams of data. There are two supported connection topologies:
  • Star: Useful for creating 1:N topologies where there's a centralized device that others are especially interested in. For example, the host of an offline game, or the teacher's device in a classroom quiz app.
  • Cluster: Useful for creating M:N topologies that allow for creating looser mesh-like networks. For example, a classroom app that supports forming ad-hoc project groups for realtime collaboration, or an offline hyper-proximity-based chat app.
As a part of the process of building this API we worked with a few partners, each with unique offline-data-transfer needs and environments. It's been great to see what they've built on top of early versions of this API, and their feedback has been invaluable in guiding us towards today's launch. Take a look at some of the cool things they're building:
  • The Weather Channel is building on-demand mesh networks in data-deficient areas to spread urgent weather warnings.
  • Hotstar enables offline media sharing in places with spotty/no internet connectivity (like on public transportation, airplanes, etc.)
  • GameInsight is using Nearby Connections to not only find nearby players, but also to run entire games offline.
  • Android TV is building a remote control app (powered by Nearby Connections) to simplify initial setup, and to enable subsequent second screen experiences.
Now that the API is publicly available, we can't wait to see how you will use Nearby Connections in your applications. To get started, visit our developer site, check our code samples, and post any questions you have on Stackoverflow (tagged with google-nearby). To stay up to date on the latest Android Nearby offerings (and our other Context-related APIs), please subscribe to our mailing list.



Your iPhone & iPad are ready to get to work with new apps for Docs, Sheets, & Slides

You suddenly remember you need to add "buy milk" to your grocery list, but don't have a pen or paper in sight. You’re on the subway with no reception and need to update your soccer club spreadsheet before you get to practice. You desperately need to make edits to your marketing strategy PowerPoint before you present, but you only brought your iPad to the meeting.

We've all been in binds like this before, but the good news is, now there's a way out.

With today’s launch of the Slides app for iPhone & iPad and updates to the Docs and Sheets apps, we’re delivering on our promise to make it possible for you to work with any file, on any device, any time. You can now create that grocery list, edit that spreadsheet, and update that slide deck with no problem.
Here's the lowdown on what you can now do with Docs, Sheets, and Slides:
  1. You can truly get stuff done from any device—your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Android tablet, laptop or desktop computer. Any change you make on any of these devices is saved automatically, so you can pick up right where you left off any time, anywhere that you can sign in. 
  2. The Docs, Sheets and Slides apps come with offline editing built right in. Just make the files you want to edit available offline. Any changes you make offline get automatically synced when you reconnect, just like when you make offline edits from your computer. 
  3. And while converting Office files to Docs, Sheets and Slides is a cinch, the new iPhone/iPad apps also let you edit Office files directly -- just like on the Android apps and the web. 
Simply put, no matter where you are, how spotty the WiFi is, or what file type you're working with, you can get stuff done your way.

Posted by Li-Wei Lee, Software Engineer

Work with any file, on any device, any time with new Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Odds are, you don't use just one device throughout the day—maybe it's a tablet at home over breakfast, a phone on the train to work, and then a computer or laptop once you're in the office. In other words, you expect to be able to get stuff done no matter where you are, which device you’re using, or what you’re working on.

That’s why today, Docs, Sheets, and Slides are getting major updates on both mobile and desktop. With this release, you can now work on any document, at any time, on any device, both with and without an Internet connection.

Mobile apps for Docs, Sheets and now Slides 
We recently launched mobile apps for Docs and Sheets that allow you to create and edit files on the go, even if you’re offline. We’re rounding out the trio with a new Slides mobile app that’s available starting today on Android and in the coming weeks on iOS.
Edit and share Office files — without Office 
Sometimes people send you files and you need to be able to open them, make some edits, and send them back. If they don’t use Docs, Sheets and Slides it can be a challenge. Starting today, you no longer have to worry, because both the web and mobile apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides let you edit Office files—without conversion—so you can now edit and send back files in their original format.

The updated mobile apps for Docs, Sheets and Slides come with Office editing built right in, and our new Chrome extension allows you to edit and share files directly from Google Drive, Gmail or from your Chromebook, where the extension is pre-installed. These updates will be available starting today, but may take a couple of days to fully roll out.

Of course, if you want to collaborate seamlessly with others at the same time, simply convert the files to Docs, Sheets or Slides.
Suggested Edits: a new way to collaborate 
People love using Docs because it’s so easy to work together in one place, rather than making edits and giving feedback by emailing multiple versions of the same document.

But sometimes instead of giving your collaborators free reign to edit away, you’d rather they make suggestions that you can accept or reject later. That’s why today we’re excited to add Suggested Edits in Docs. This new feature is now available for anyone with commenting access in Google Docs on the web, and is coming soon to our mobile apps.

Work the way you want 
With today’s updates to Docs, Sheets, and Slides, we’ve got you covered, regardless of how, where, or when you need to get something done. You now have mobile apps for Docs, Sheets and Slides, the ability to edit and share Office files, and a brand new way to collaborate with Suggested edits. It’s a big update, but more importantly, we hope it’s a big improvement for you.

Posted by Ryan Tabone, Director of Product Management