Google Developers Blog: 2016

Start with a line, let the planet complete the picture

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Jeff Nusz, Data Arts TeamLand Lines

Open CV's Structured Forests machine learningImageJ's Ridge Detection library

Example output from the line detection processing. The dominant line is highlighted in red while secondary lines are highlighted in green.

vantage-point tree

An early example of gesture matching using vantage point trees, where the drawn input is on the right and the closest results on the left.

Another example of user gesture analysis, where the drawn input is on the right and the closest results on the left. Land Linescase studyGit Hubg.co/landlines

Formatting text with the Google Slides API

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Originally posted on G Suite Developers blog Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, G Suite It's common knowledge that presentations utilize a set of images to impart ideas to the audience. As a result, one of the best practices for creating great slide decks is to minimize the overall amount of text. It means that if you do have text in a presentation, the (few) words you use must have higher impact and be visually appealing. This is even more true when the slides are generated by a software application, say using the Google Slides API, rather than being crafted by hand. The G Suite team recently launched the first Slides API, opening up a whole new category of applications. Since then, we've published several videos to help you realize some of those possibilities, showing you how to replace text and images in slides as well as how to generate slides from spreadsheet data. To round out this trifecta of key API use cases, we're adding text formatting to the conversation. Developers manipulate text in Google Slides by sending API requests. Similar to the Google Sheets API, these requests come in the form of JSON payloads sent to the API's batchUpdate() method. Here's the JavaScript for inserting text in some shape (shapeID) on a slide: { "insertText": { "objectId": shapeID, "text": "Hello World!\n" } In the video, developers learn that writing text, such as the request above, is less complex than reading or formatting because both the latter require developers to know how text on a slide is structured. Notice for writing that just the copy, and optionally an index, are all that's required. (That index defaults to zero if not provided.) Assuming "Hello World!" has been successfully inserted in a shape on a slide, a request to bold just the "Hello" looks like this: { "updateTextStyle": { "objectId": shapeID, "style": { "bold": true }, "textRange": { "type": "FIXED_RANGE", "startIndex": 0, "endIndex": 5 }, "fields": "bold" } requestsSLIDESdeckID)SLIDES.presentations().batchUpdate(presentationId=deckID, body=requests).execute() To better understand text structure & styling in Google Slides, check out the text concepts guide in the documentation. For a detailed look at the complete code sample featured in the DevByte, check out the deep dive post. To see more samples for common API operations, take a look at this page. We hope the videos and all these developer resources help you create that next great app that automates producing highly impactful presentations for your users!

Google Developers YouTube Channel Reaches 1 Million Subscribers!

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Posted by David Unger, Program Manager Google DevelopersGoogle DevelopersAndroid DevelopersChrome DevelopersFirebase

Scratch Blocks update: Making it easier to develop coding apps for kids

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Posted by Champika Fernando, Product Manager, Google, and Kasia Chmielinski, Product Lead, MIT Scratch Team We want to empower developers to build great creative learning apps for kids. That's why, earlier this year, we announced Scratch Blocks, a free, open-source project created by the MIT Scratch and Google Kids Coding teams. Together, we are building this highly tinkerable and playful block-based programming grammar based on MIT's popular Scratch language and Blockly's architecture. With Scratch Blocks, developers can integrate Scratch-style coding into apps for kids. Today, we're excited to share our progress in a number of areas: 1. Designing for tinkerability

Research from the MIT Media Lab has highlighted the importance of providing children with opportunities for quick experimentation and rapid cycles of iteration. For example, the Scratch programming environment makes it easy for kids to adjust the code while it's running, as well as try coding blocks by just tapping on them. Since our initial announcement in May, we've focused on supporting this type of tinkerability in the Scratch Blocks project by making it very easy for developers to connect Scratch Blocks directly to the Scratch VM (a related open-source project being developed by MIT). In this model, instead of blocks being converted to a text-based language like JavaScript which is then interpreted, the blocks themselves are the code. The result is a more tinkerable experience for the end-user. 2. Designing for all levels Computational thinking1 is a valuable skill for everyone. In order to support developers building a wide diversity of coding experiences with Scratch Blocks, we've designed two related block grammars that can be used in a variety of contexts. One grammar uses icon-based blocks that connect horizontally, while the other uses text-based blocks that connect vertically.

We started by developing the horizontal grammar, which is well-suited for beginners of all ages due to its simplicity and limited number of blocks; additionally, this grammar is easier to manipulate on small screens. You can see an example of the horizontal icon-based grammar in Code a Snowflake (an activity in this year's Google Santa Tracker) built by the Google Kids Coding Team. More recently, we've added the vertical grammar, which supports a wider range of complex concepts. The horizontal grammar can also be translated into vertical blocks, making it possible to transition between the grammars. We imagine this will be useful in a number of situations, including designing for multiple screen sizes, or as an element of the app's learning experience. 3. Designing for all devices

We're building Scratch Blocks for a world that is increasingly mobile, where people of all ages will tinker with code in a variety of environments. We've improved the mobile experience in many key areas, both in Scratch Blocks as well as the underlying Blockly project:

Redesigned blocks for improved touchability

Fast loading of large projects on low-powered devices

Optimization of block manipulation and code editing on touch screens

Redesigned multi-touch support for a better experience on touch devices

How to get involved These first six months of Scratch Blocks have been a lot of work - and a ton of fun. To stay up to date on the project, check out our Github project, and learn more on our Developer Page. [1] Learn more about Computational Thinking

Announcing updates to Google’s Internet of Things platform: Android Things and Weave

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Originally posted on Android Developer Blog Posted by Wayne Piekarski, Developer Advocate for IoT The Internet of Things (IoT) will bring computing to a whole new range of devices. Today we're announcing two important updates to our IoT developer platform to make it faster and easier for you to create these smart, connected products. We're releasing a Developer Preview of Android Things, a comprehensive way to build IoT products with the power of Android, one of the world's most supported operating systems. Now any Android developer can quickly build a smart device using Android APIs and Google services, while staying highly secure with updates direct from Google. We incorporated the feedback from Project Brillo to include familiar tools such as Android Studio, the Android Software Development Kit (SDK), Google Play Services, and Google Cloud Platform. And in the coming months, we will provide Developer Preview updates to bring you the infrastructure for securely pushing regular OS patches, security fixes, and your own updates, as well as built-in Weave connectivity and more. There are several turnkey hardware solutions available for you to get started building real products with Android Things today, including Intel Edison, NXP Pico, and Raspberry Pi 3. You can easily scale to large production runs with custom designs of these solutions, while continuing to use the same Board Support Package (BSP) from Google. We are also updating the Weave platform to make it easier for all types of devices to connect to the cloud and interact with services like the Google Assistant. Device makers like Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings already use Weave, and several others like Belkin WeMo, LiFX, Honeywell, Wink, TP-Link, and First Alert are implementing it. Weave provides all the cloud infrastructure, so that developers can focus on building their products without investing in cloud services. Weave also includes a Device SDK for supported microcontrollers and a management console. The Weave Device SDK currently supports schemas for light bulbs, smart plugs and switches, and thermostats. In the coming months we will be adding support for additional device types, custom schemas/traits, and a mobile application API for Android and iOS. Finally, we're also working towards merging Weave and Nest Weave to enable all classes of devices to connect with each other in a secure and reliable way. So whether you started with Google Weave or Nest Weave, there is a path forward in the ecosystem.

This is just the beginning of the IoT ecosystem we want to build with you. To get started, check out Google's IoT developer site, or go directly to the Android Things, Weave, and Google Cloud Platform sites for documentation and code samples. You can also join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+ to get the latest updates and share and discuss ideas with other developers.

Start building Actions on Google

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Posted by Jason Douglas, PM Director for Actions on Google The Google Assistant brings together all of the technology and smarts we've been building for years, from the Knowledge Graph to Natural Language Processing. To be a truly successful Assistant, it should be able to connect users across the apps and services in their lives. This makes enabling an ecosystem where developers can bring diverse and unique services to users through the Google Assistant really important. In October, we previewed Actions on Google, the developer platform for the Google Assistant. Actions on Google further enhances the Assistant user experience by enabling you to bring your services to the Assistant. Starting today, you can build Conversation Actions for Google Home and request to become an early access partner for upcoming platform features. Conversation Actions for Google Home Conversation Actions let you engage your users to deliver information, services, and assistance. And the best part? It really is a conversation -- users won't need to enable a skill or install an app, they can just ask to talk to your action. For now, we've provided two developer samples of what's possible, just say "Ok Google, talk to Number Genie " or try "Ok Google, talk to Eliza' for the classic 1960s AI exercise.

You can get started today by visiting the Actions on Google website for developers. To help create a smooth, straightforward development experience, we worked with a number of development partners, including conversational interaction development tools API.AI and Gupshup, analytics tools DashBot and VoiceLabs and consulting companies such as Assist, Notify.IO, Witlingo and Spoken Layer. We also created a collection of samples and voice user interface (VUI) resources or you can check out the integrations from our early access partners as they roll out over the coming weeks. Introduction to Conversation Actions by Wayne Piekarski Coming soon: Actions for Pixel and Allo + Support for Purchases and Bookings Today is just the start, and we're excited to see what you build for the Google Assistant. We'll continue to add more platform capabilities over time, including the ability to make your integrations available across the various Assistant surfaces like Pixel phones and Google Allo. We'll also enable support for purchases and bookings as well as deeper Assistant integrations across verticals. Developers who are interested in creating actions using these upcoming features should register for our early access partner program and help shape the future of the platform. newsletterGoogle+ communityStackOverflow

Modifying email signatures with the Gmail API

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Originally posted on G Suite Developer blog Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, G Suite earlier this year Email continues to be a dominant form of communication, personally and professionally, and our email signature serves as both a lightweight introduction and a business card. It's also a way to slip-in a sprinkling of your personality. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could automatically change your signature whenever you wanted without using the Gmail settings interface every time? That is exactly what our latest video is all about. If your app has already created a Gmail API service endpoint, say in a variable named GMAIL, and you have the YOUR_EMAIL email address whose signature should be changed as well as the text of the new signature, updating it via the API is as pretty straightforward, as illustrated by this Python call to the GMAIL.users().settings().sendAs().patch() method: signature = {'signature': '"I heart cats." ~anonymous'} GMAIL.users().settings().sendAs().patch(userId='me', sendAsEmail=YOUR_EMAIL, body=signature).execute() For more details about the code sample used in the requests above as well as in the video, check out the deepdive post. In addition to email signatures, other settings the API can modify include: filters, forwarding (addresses and auto-forwarding), IMAP and POP settings to control external email access, and the vacation responder. Be aware that while API access to most settings are available for any G Suite Gmail account, a few sensitive operations, such as modifying send-as aliases or forwarding, are restricted to users with domain-wide authority. Developers interested in using the Gmail API to access email threads and messages instead of settings can check out this other video where we show developers how to search for threads with a minimum number of messages, say to look for the most discussed topics from a mailing list. Regardless of your use-case, you can find out more about the Gmail API in the developer documentation. If you're new to the API, we suggest you start with the overview page which can point you in the right direction! Be sure to subscribe to the Google Developers channel and check out other episodes in the G Suite Dev Show video series.

AMP Cache Updates

Monday, December 5, 2016

Posted by John Coiner, Software Engineer

Today we are announcing a change to the domain scheme of the Google AMP Cache. Beginning soon, the Google AMP Cache will serve each site from its own subdomain of https://cdn.ampproject.org. This change will allow content served from the Google AMP Cache to be protected by the fundamental security model of the web: the HTML5 origin. No immediate changes are required for most publishers of AMP documents. However, to benefit from the additional security, it is recommended that all AMP publishers update their CORS implementation in preparation for the new Google AMP Cache URL scheme. The Google AMP Cache will continue to support existing URLs, but those URLs will eventually redirect to the new URL scheme. How subdomain names will be created on the Google AMP Cache The subdomains created by the Google AMP Cache will be human-readable when character limits and technical specs allow, and will closely resemble the publisher's own domain. When possible, the Google AMP Cache will create each subdomain by first converting the AMP document domain from IDN (punycode) to UTF-8. Every "-" (dash) will be replaced with "--"(2 dashes) and every "." (dot) will be replaced with a "-" (dash). For example, pub.com will map to pub-com.cdn.ampproject.org. Where technical limitations prevent a human readable subdomain, a one-way hash will be used instead. Updates needed for hosts and service providers with remote endpoints Due to the changes described above, CORS endpoints will begin seeing requests with new origins. The following updates will be required:

Expand request acceptance to the new subdomain: Sites that currently only accept CORS requests from https://cdn.ampproject.org and the publisher's own origins must update their systems to accept requests from https://[pub-com].cdn.ampproject.org, https://cdn.ampproject.org, and the AMP publisher's own origins.

Tighten request acceptance for security: Sites that currently accept CORS requests from https://*.ampproject.org as described in the AMP spec, can improve security by restricting acceptance to requests from https://[pub-com].cdn.ampproject.org, https://cdn.ampproject.org, and the AMP publisher's own origins. Support for https://*.ampproject.org is no longer necessary.

Support for new subdomain pattern by ads, analytics, and other technology providers: Service providers such as analytics and ads vendors that have a CORS endpoint will also need to ensure that their systems accept requests from the Google AMP Cache's subdomains (e.g.


https://ampbyexample-com.cdn.ampproject.org

), in addition to their own hosts.

Retrieving the Google AMP Cache URL For platforms that display AMP documents and serve from the Google AMP Cache, the best way to retrieve Google AMP Cache URLs is to continue using the Google AMP Cache URL API. The Google AMP Cache URL API will be updated in Q1 2017 to return the new cache URL scheme that includes the subdomain. You can use an interactive tool to find the Google AMP Cache subdomain generated for each site over at ampbyexample.com. Timing and testing resources Google Search is planning to begin using the new URL scheme as soon as possible and is monitoring sites' compatibility. In addition, a developer testing sandbox is available at g.co/ampdemo/cache to help ensure a smooth transition. After making the updates described above, please use the sandbox to test accessing your site via Google Search. The sandbox loads AMP pages using the new domain scheme, so if you spot CORS-related errors in this configuration, these issues should be addressed to avoid errors when the domain scheme change is fully rolled out.

Updated Udacity Android course prepares students for the Associate Android Developer Certification

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Originally posted on Android Developers Blog Posted by Jocelyn Becker, Senior Program Manager, Android Training As one of our most popular Udacity courses, the Developing Android Apps course was recently updated to ensure developers have the resources to build high quality apps. This course, which has already helped more than half a million developers learn to build Android apps, has been through the car wash and come out sparkling clean and updated. Google and Udacity have worked together to update the course to include the very latest changes in Android and Android Studio, including how to use the new Constraint Layout editor, and how to use Firebase Job Dispatcher. Learn best practices for building Android apps using Android 7.0 (Nougat) while keeping your apps backwards compatible in older versions, learning at your own pace in your own time. You sent us feedback that some of the lessons were a little difficult to get through, so we've restructured the lessons and added smaller apps for you to build as you progress through the course. So not only will you build the Sunshine weather app as a complete, integrated application that spans the entire course, but you'll also create an app in each lesson to help you learn individual concepts.

Build a To Do app and add new tasks as you learn how to build a ContentProvider.

This course brings back Android experts Dan Galpin and Reto Meier from Google, and Lyla Fujiwara from Udacity, and introduces new faces from Google and Udacity.https://www.udacity.com/course/ud851 Combined package for Developing Android Apps course and Associate Android Developer Certification This updated course teaches the skills that are tested by the Associate Android Developer certification exam. Udacity is offering a package that combines the updated Developing Android Apps course with a voucher for the Associate Android Developer certification exam. If you pass this exam, you will earn the Associate Android Developer Certification and show that you are competent and skilled in tasks that an entry-level Android developer typically performs. Enroll in Udacity's Fast Track to get prepared and take the Associate Android developer exam at: https://www.udacity.com/course/nd818.

Generating slides from spreadsheet data

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

G Suite Developers Blog Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, G Suite The G Suite team recently launched the very first Google Slides API, opening up a whole new set of possibilities, including leveraging data already sitting in a spreadsheet or database, and programmatically generating slide decks or slide content based on that data. Why is this a big deal? One of the key advantages of slide decks is that they can take database or spreadsheet data and make it more presentable for human consumption. This is useful when the need arises to communicate the information reflected by that data to management or potential customers. Walking developers through a short application demonstrating both the Sheets and Slides APIs to make this happen is the topic of today's DevByte video. The sample app starts by reading all the necessary data from the spreadsheet using the Sheets API. The Slides API takes over from there, creating new slides for the data, then populating those slides with the Sheets data. Developers interact with Slides by sending API requests. Similar to the Google Sheets API, these requests come in the form of JSON payloads. You create an array like in the JavaScript pseudocode below featuring requests to create a cell table on a slide and import a chart from a Sheet:
var requests = [ {"createTable": { "elementProperties": {"pageObjectId": slideID}, "rows": 8, "columns": 4 }}, {"createSheetsChart": { "spreadsheetId": sheetID, "chartId": chartID, "linkingMode": "LINKED", "elementProperties": { "pageObjectId": slideID, "size": { "height": { ... }, "width": { ... } }, "transform": { ... } } }}];requestssheetIDchartIDslideIDpresentations().batchUpdate()SLIDES SLIDES.presentations().batchUpdate(presentationId=slideID, body=requests).execute() Creating tables is fairly straightforward. Creating charts has some magical features, one of those being the linkingMode. A value of "LINKED" means that if the Sheet data changes (altering the chart in the Sheet), the same chart in a slide presentation can be refreshed to match the latest image, either by the API or in the Slides user interface! You can also request a plain old static image that doesn't change with the data by selecting a value of "NOT_LINKED_IMAGE" for linkingMode. More on this can be found in the documentation on creating charts, and check out the video where you'll see both those API requests in action. For a detailed look at the complete code sample featured in the video, check out the deep dive post. We look forward to seeing the interesting integrations you build with the power of both APIs!

TensorFlow 0.12 adds support for Windows

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Derek Murray

Native support for TensorFlow on Windows was one of the first requests we received after open-sourcing TensorFlow. Although some Windows users have managed to run TensorFlow in a Docker container, we wanted to provide a more complete experience including GPU support. With the release of TensorFlow r0.12, we now provide a native TensorFlow package for Windows 7, 10, and Server 2016. This release enables you to speed up your TensorFlow training with any GPU that runs CUDA 8. We have published the latest release as a pip package in PyPI, so now you can install TensorFlow with a single command: C:\> pip install tensorflow And for GPU support: C:\> pip install tensorflow-gpu More details about Windows support and all of the other new features in r0.12 are included in the release notes. We're excited to offer more people the opportunity to use TF at maximum speed. Follow us on Twitter to be the first to hear about future releases – we're @tensorflow. Acknowledgements Many people have contributed to making this release possible. In particular, we'd like to thank Guenther Schmuelling and Vit Stepanovs from Microsoft for their significant contributions to Windows support.

It’s that time again: Google Code-in starts today!

Monday, November 28, 2016

Originally posted on Google Open Source BlogBy Mary Radomile, Open Source Programs OfficeGoogle Code-in

bite-sized tasksopen source organizationsyou

Coding

Documentation/Training

Outreach/Research

Quality Assurance

User Interface

triprulesFAQssiteGetting Started Guidefind resources here

Welcoming the third class of Launchpad Accelerator with expansion into new countries!

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Roy Glasberg, Global Lead, Launchpad Program & Accelerator After two successful classes, we're excited to announce the next group of promising startups for the third class of Launchpad Accelerator. The startups from Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico will be joined by developers from five additional countries: Argentina, Colombia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The program includes intensive mentoring from Google engineers, product managers and other expert mentors from top technology companies and VCs in Silicon Valley. Participants receive equity-free support, credits for Google products, PR support and work closely with Google for six months in their home country. Class 3 kicks off early next year (January 30) at Launchpad Space, our physical space in San Francisco where developers and startups can get free technical training, one-on-one mentoring and more education geared towards helping them successfully build their apps & startups. Here's the full list of participating startups (by country):

Argentina
TiendaNube	YOP	Workana
Brazil
Delivery Direto	QuintoAndar	DogHero
Mobills	Portal Telemedicina	Meus Pedidos
Colombia
Platzi
Mexico
Tizkka	Unima	Econduce
India
Flyrobe	HashLearn	Rentomojo
KaptureCRM	Curofy	Happy Adda Studios
Playment
Indonesia
Snapcart	Qlue	iGrow
Jurnal	Mapan (Ruma)	PicMix
Philippines
ZipMatch
Thailand
Wongnai	Skootar
Vietnam
ELSA Speak	Haravan

If you're interested in applying for future Launchpad Accelerator cohorts, we encourage you to follow us on the Launchpad Accelerator site to receive updates. We also expect to add more countries to the program in the future. Stay tuned!