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seo Introducing Google Play game services 2013

Seo Master present to you: Author PhotoBy Greg Hartrell, Lead Product Manager

We love to talk about games at Google. Especially the old ones, like Pac-man, Pitfall and Frogger. Since those classics, games have changed a lot. They’ve moved from that clunky box in your living room to the screen that you carry with you in your pocket wherever you go. They’re mobile, they’re social, and they’re an important part of Google Play.

Today, we’re launching Google Play game services, a core part of building a gaming platform for the next generation of games. These services help you make your games more social, with achievements, leaderboards, and multiplayer, as well as more powerful, storing game saves and settings in the cloud. They are available on Android, and many on iOS or any other connected device. By building on Google’s strengths in mobile and cloud services, you can focus on what you’re good at as game developers: creating great gaming experiences for your users.

With game services, you can incorporate:
  • Achievements that increase engagement and promote different styles of play.
  • Social and public leaderboards that seamlessly use Google+ circles to track high scores across friends and across the world.
  • Cloud saves that provide a simple and streamlined storage API to store game saves and settings. Now players never have to replay Level 1 again.
  • Real-time multiplayer for easy addition of cooperative or competitive game play on Android devices. Using Google+ Circles, a game can have up to 4 simultaneous friends or auto-matched players in a game session together with support for additional players coming soon.



Several great Android games are already using these new game services, including World of Goo, Super Stickman Golf 2, Beach Buggy Blitz, Kingdom Rush, Eternity Warriors 2, and Osmos.

And many more titles launch today as well:



Google Play game services are available today through an SDK for Android, and a native iOS SDK for iPhone and iPad games. Web and other platform developers will also find corresponding REST APIs, with libraries for JavaScript, Java, Python, Go, Dart, PHP, and more.

We’re excited to see what games will do with these new services and experiences, and this is only the beginning. Wait until you get to the boss battle... er.. Check out our developer site to get started: https://developers.google.com/games/.


Greg Hartrell is Lead Product Manager on Google Play game services, devoted to helping developers make incredible games through Google Play. In his spare time, he enjoys jumping from platform to platform, boss battles and matching objects in threes.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
2013, By: Seo Master

seo Gmail for mobile HTML5 Series - Part 3: Using AppCache to Launch Offline 2013

Seo Master present to you: On April 7th, Google launched a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices built on HTML5. We shared the behind-the-scenes story through this blog and decided to share more of our learnings in a brief series of follow up blog posts. In the last two posts, we covered everything you need to know in order to make effective use of AppCache. This week, we'll be having some fun and trying to disect the inner workings of AppCache by looking at the database it uses to store its resources. Before we start though, I'd like to point out one tip that can be useful while debugging AppCache related problems on the iPhone: how to clear your Application Cache.

There are two steps involved here:
  1. Go to Settings->Safari and tap "Clear Cache".
  2. Open Safari and terminate it by holding down the home screen button for 10 seconds.
The first step is pretty intuative. The problem is that the browser does not immediately notice that the cache has been cleared, and so needs to be restarted.

Now onto the fun stuff! There is no way to inspect the application cache from within the browser. However, if you are using the iPhone Simulator to develop your webapp, you can find all of the Application Cache resources and metadata in a SQLite3 database located at:

~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/User/Library/Caches/com.apple.WebAppCache/ApplicationCache.db

Let's have a look at what is contained within this database.

$ sqlite3 ApplicationCache.db
SQLite version 3.4.0
Enter ".help" for instructions
sqlite> .mode column
sqlite> .headers on
sqlite> .tables
CacheEntries CacheResourceData CacheWhitelistURLs FallbackURLs
CacheGroups CacheResources Caches SchemaVersion
sqlite> select * from CacheGroups;
id manifestHostHash manifestURL newestCache
---------- ---------------- ------------------------------------------------- -----------
1 906983082 http://mail.google.com/mail/s/?v=ma&name=sm 1

The CacheGroups table holds an overview of what manifests exist. A manifest is identified by its URL and the manifestHostHash is used to track when the contents of a manifest changes.

sqlite> select * from Caches;
id cacheGroup
---------- ----------
1 1

Here you can see that I have only one cache in my database. If the Application Cache was in the middle of updating the cache, there would be a second entry listed here for the cache currently being downloaded.

sqlite> select * from CacheEntries limit 1;
cache type resource
---------- ---------- ----------
1 2 1

The CacheEntries table holds a one-to-many relationship between a cache and resources within it.

sqlite> select * from CacheResources where id=1;
id url statusCode responseURL
---------- ------------------------------------------- ---------- -----------------------
1 http://mail.google.com/mail/s/?v=ma&name=sm 200 http://mail.google.c...

mimeType textEncodingName headers data
------------------- ---------------- --------------
text/cache-manifest utf-8

sqlite> .schema CacheResourceData
CREATE TABLE CacheResourceData (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, data BLOB);

This shows what information is stored for each resources listed in a manifest. As you can see the CacheResources and CacheResourceData tables contain everything that is needed in order to simulate a network response to a request for a resource. Let's see exactly what is stored in the database for Mobile Gmail's database.

sqlite> select type,url,mimeType,statusCode from CacheEntries,CacheResources where resource=id;
type url mimeType statusCode
---------- ---------------------------------------------- ------------------- ----------
2 http://mail.google.com/mail/s/?v=ma&name=sm text/cache-manifest 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/xls.gif image/gif 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/pdf.gif image/gif 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/ppt.gif image/gif 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/sound.gif image/gif 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/doc.gif image/gif 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/graphic.gif image/gif 200
1 http://mail.google.com/mail/s text/html 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/generic.gif image/gif 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/zip.gif image/gif 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/html2.gif image/gif 200
4 http://mail.google.com/mail/images/txt.gif image/gif 200

From this list, it is fairly easy to see what the meaning of the type field is. A host page has type 1, a manifest has type 2, and a normal resource has type 4. In order to know whether or not to load a page using AppCache, the browser checks this list to see if there is a URL of type 1 within it.

This concudes our three-part series on HTML5's Application Cache. Stay tuned for the next post where we will explore other areas of how we use HTML5 in Gmail. And just another reminder that we'll be at Google I/O, May 27-28 in San Francisco presenting a session on how we use HTML5. We'll also be available at the Developer Sandbox, looking forward to meeting you in person.

References
The HTML5 working draft: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

Apple's MobileSafari documentation: http://developer.apple.com/webapps/docs/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariJSRef/DOMApplicationCache/DOMApplicationCache.html

Webkit Source Code: http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/WebCore/loader/appcache

2013, By: Seo Master

seo Android: momentum, mobile and more at Google I/O 2013

Seo Master present to you:
By Hugo Barra, Product Management Director, Android

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

Update 5/11: Added video of keynote

This morning at Google I/O, the Android team shared some updates. It’s hard to believe a little more than two and a half years ago, we were just one device, launching in one country, on one carrier. Thanks to the ecosystem of manufacturers, developers and carriers, the platform has grown exponentially. There are now:
  • 100 million activated Android devices
  • 400,000 new Android devices activated every day
  • 200,000 free and paid applications available in Android Market
  • 4.5 billion applications installed from Android Market
Mobile—one OS everywhere
Over the past two and a half years, we’ve shipped eight releases of Android and there are now more than 310 Android devices around the world, of all shapes and sizes. This morning we talked about our next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. Our goal with Ice Cream Sandwich is to deliver one operating system that works everywhere, regardless of device. Ice Cream Sandwich will bring everything you love about Honeycomb on your tablet to your phone, including the holographic user interface, more multitasking, the new launcher and richer widgets.

We also launched Music Beta by Google, a new service that lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to your computer and Android devices. With the new service, your music and playlists are automatically kept in sync, so if you create a new playlist on your phone, it’s instantly available on your computer or tablet. You can use a feature called Instant Mix to create a playlist of songs that go well together. You can even listen to music when you’re offline: we automatically store your most recently played music on your Android device and you can choose to make specific albums or playlists available when you’re not connected. The service is launching in beta today to U.S. users and is available by invitation.



We’ve also added Movies for rent to Android Market. You can choose to rent from thousands of movies starting at $1.99 and have them available across your Android devices—rent a movie on your home computer, and it’ll be available for viewing on your tablet or phone. You can rent from Android Market on the web today, and we’ll be rolling out an update to Verizon XOOM customers beginning today. We’ll start rolling out the update to Android 2.2 and above devices in the coming weeks.

The Android ecosystem has been moving really fast over the last two and a half years and rapid iteration on new and highly-requested features has been a driving force behind Android’s success. But of course that innovation only matters if it reaches consumers. So today we’re announcing that a founding team of industry leaders, including many from the Open Handset Alliance, are working together to adopt guidelines for how quickly devices are updated after a new platform release, and also for how long they will continue to be updated. The founding partners are Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola and AT&T, and we welcome others to join us. To start, we're jointly announcing that new devices from participating partners will receive the latest Android platform upgrades for 18 months after the device is first released, as long as the hardware allows...and that's just the beginning. Stay tuned for more details.

More—extending the platform beyond mobile
From the beginning, Android was designed to extend beyond the mobile phone. With that in mind, we’ve developed Android Open Accessory to help developers start building new hardware accessories that will work across all Android devices. We previewed an initiative called Android@Home, which allows Android apps to discover, connect and communicate with appliances and devices in your home. We also showed a preview of Project Tungsten, an Android device for Music Beta to give you more control over music playback within the Android@Home network.

You can watch the entire Android keynote from Google I/O on our Google Developer YouTube Channel shortly. On behalf of the team, we want to thank the entire Android community of developers, OEMs and carriers who are pushing the platform into new areas and building great experiences for consumers. Without you, the Android platform wouldn’t have grown so large in the past two and a half years. We look forward to seeing where you take it next.



Hugo Barra is Director of Product Managment for Android.


Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
2013, By: Seo Master

seo Apps4Android: Developing accessibility apps for Android 2013

Seo Master present to you:
By Steve Jacobs, President, IDEAL Group, Inc., and CEO, Apps4Android, Inc

This post is part of Who's at Google I/O, a series of guest blog posts written by developers who are appearing in the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O.


IDEAL Group's Android Development Team has developed and released several apps in the Android Market. In this post, we'll highlight three of our apps which capture some of the best aspects of developing on Android.

IDEAL Magnifier


Android smartphones can have amazing hardware, and the platform gives developers the ability to tap into that power. Traditionally, handheld video magnifiers have been standalone, dedicated, hardware devices that can cost hundreds of dollars. Thanks to Android's Camera APIs, we're able to offer similar functionality in the form of a free, open source app.

In addition to using Android's zoom and flash features to make things easier for our users to see, we also enable our users to apply color effects such as converting everything to monochrome and even inverting the colors to improve contrast. Despite the wide variety of Android devices available, we found it relatively easy to support multiple devices since Android enables developers to check what the maximum zoom level is and what color effects are supported. Here's a YouTube video demonstrating IDEAL Magnifier in action.

IDEAL Item Identifier including Talking Barcode Maker


Thanks to Android's Intents system and its MediaRecorder and Text-To-Speech (TTS) APIs, we were able to produce an open source app which turns a user's phone into a talking barcode reader. Talking barcode readers enable blind and visually impaired users to scan the barcode of a product and hear what that item is. In addition, many of the higher end models offer the ability to let users create their own barcodes which they can stick onto items. Unfortunately, like video magnifiers, these devices have traditionally been quite expensive.

We solved the problem of detecting and reading barcodes without spending any development time by simply delegating this task to the ZXing Barcode Scanner. Once we get the UPC code of a product, we do a lookup of that UPC and speak the name of that product.

For custom labels, we record what the user is saying and save it to a file locally. We then use the Send Intent to enable users to email themselves a QR code which contains the automatically generated filename of that recording so that we play back that file when users scan this code. Users can print out the QR code on any sticky label, and voila, their very own custom label. Here's a video demonstrating IDEAL Item ID in action.

Vista Center

The Vista Center is a Palo Alto, California-based organization that helps the blind and visually impaired. We volunteered to create an Android app for them to help users access their educational materials which include topics such as how to use ticket machines and how to set up Android phones for accessibility.

This turned out to be a much easier project than expected, thanks to Android's accessibility features and the strong open source culture that is part of the Android platform's DNA. Specifically, we were able to take advantage of the Google Accessibility Team's I/O challenge which encouraged contestants to open source their submissions. We modified the ccTube app so that it always does a search on startup for videos from the Vista Center, and since Android has accessibility built right into the platform, we didn't need to do anything special to make it work with the TalkBack screen reader.

(Hat tip to Google's Charles L. Chen for helping us connect with the Vista Center and pointing us to Google I/O's Accessibility Challenge, and to Casey Burkhardt, who wrote ccTube and open sourced his code.)

Android is a tremendous platform for building tools that empower people. We're very excited by the fast pace of Android evolution and can't wait to see what the next iteration of this wonderful platform will have to offer.


Come see Apps4Android in the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O on May 10-11.

Steve Jacobs’ greatest passion is to enhance the independence, quality of life, education and mobile communications experiences for tens of millions of consumers with disabilities, senior citizens (like Steve), people who never learned to read, and everyone else.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
2013, By: Seo Master

seo Social features for Endomondo Sports Tracker 2013

Seo Master present to you:
By Jesper Majland, Endomondo Android Developer

This post is part of Who's at Google I/O, a series of guest blog posts written by developers who are appearing in the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O.


Endomondo is a sports community focused on making exercising more fun, more social and more motivating. Android includes great APIs to support adding a social community to an existing application.

Our Android app, Endomondo Sports Tracker, uses the device’s GPS to measure distance and speed while you are doing your favorite distance-based sport. The result can be shared, commented upon and analysed online within the social Endomondo community.

Until recently, the Endomondo community has only been accessible from a desktop web browser. Now we are bringing this community to your pocket.

So far, we have implemented these three feature areas:

1. Find and connect friends.

We use the ContactsContract API to scan the device for local contacts. We then hash-encode the names and email addresses and send them to our servers to see if they match existing members of the community. The result is a list of possible friends already using Endomondo. The user can then send a friend request by clicking on the relevant person.


2. Sync with a cloud service to get updates.

Once the user has added some friends, we can add some content from our cloud service.
The Sample Sync Adaptor API was exactly what we were looking for. First, we created a new Endomondo account using the AccountManager. Our next step was to write our own synchronization manager by extending AbstractAccountAuthenticator. When the user logs in or signs up, our app automatically creates a new account. The new account can be controlled using Android’s built in “Accounts & sync settings” service.

You can find a very good “how to implement” description here: part 1, part 2.

3. Extend the app to access Contact info.

Our in-app friend list now shows a list of all friends in the community, with a short description of the latest activity and a nice profile picture for each.

We use QuickContactBadges to show friends' profile pictures and to quickly pivot to other ways to contact them; perfect for planning a run together!

When our users and their friends add new accounts, the Android ContactsContract framework will automatically merge contacts, adding a very handy feature to our app without us having to do anything!

For implementation inspirations, take a look here: QuickContactsDemo.

We’re just getting started with adding social dimensions to Endomondo. There are plenty more exciting developments in the works. One of them is the ability to send pep talk messages to friends out exercising, directly from the app. You can download our app from the Android Market and try it out for yourself.

Any input or good ideas are more than welcome. Please post your feedback in the comments.


Come see Endomondo in the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O on May 10-11.

Jesper Majland is involved with all parts of app developing from idea, design and implementation to test/release and bug fixing. In his spare time, he tries to get outside to bike, ski or go for a short run.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
2013, By: Seo Master

seo Gmail for mobile HTML5 Series - Part 2: Using AppCache to Launch Offline 2013

Seo Master present to you: On April 7th, Google launched a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices built on HTML5. We shared the behind-the-scenes story through this blog and decided to share more of our learnings in a brief series of follow up blog posts. Last week we explained how to go about creating a simple manifest file, and how the browser uses it to load a page. This week we will go a bit more in-depth about the subject.

One of the problems we faced in creating our manifest file, was how to update it when our javascript changes. At first we thought that we might have to change one of the URLs each time we wanted to push an update. As it turns out, the URLs listed in the manifest do not have to change at all in order cause an update, changing the whitespace or a comment will also do the trick. For Gmail, we a comment in the manifest that contains a hash of all of the resources listed in the manifest. That way, if any of the resources change, the manifest will also change and cause a background update to occur for all of our clients. An example of what this looks like is shown below.

CACHE MANIFEST
# version: 3f1b9s84
jsfile1.js
... other URLs ...

There are other types of entries that are possible in a manifest, but that the iPhone does not currently support. According to the spec, there are 3 categories of URLs that can be listed in a manifest:
  • Cache (what we have dealt with so far),
  • Fallback,
  • Network
Although fallback and network URLs are not yet supported on the iPhone, they are mostly supported in the Webkit Nightly builds. Network URLs are those that are never cached by AppCache, and that are allowed to be satisfied by the network. Fallback URLs are those that are attempted, and then satisfied by by AppCache only if the network attempt fails. Both Network and Fallback URLs are prefix matches. An example of what this looks like is shown below.

CACHE MANIFEST
jsfile1.js

NETWORK:
/images/

FALLBACK:
/thumbnails/ images/missing_thumb.jpg

This manifest tells the browser that GET requests to any URL under /images/ are allowed to hit the server. Without this being listed, GET requests for it would fail immediately. This manifest also tells the browser that URLs under /thumbnails/ are allowed to hit the server, but if they fail, satisfy the request by server missing_thumb.jpg, which will be stored in AppCache.

So far all of the features we've covered about AppCache have not needed any Javascript to use them. This is undoubtedly by design, as it makes it extremely easy to use. However, it is always useful to know what advanced functionality can be unlocked using Javascript. The Application Cache is exposed as a singleton through window.applicationCache. It provides events that can be used to indicate when updates are happening and a status property that can be one of:
  • 0 - UNCACHED
  • 1 - IDLE
  • 2 - CHECKING
  • 3 - DOWNLOADING
  • 4 - UPDATEREADY
In Gmail, we use the status property to determine if the page was loaded out of AppCache, or if it was loaded from the network. In order to do this, we have the following code run at the very start of page load:

if (window.applicationCache.status == 0) {
// Page was loaded from the Network.
} else {
// Page was loaded from AppCache
}

There are also a couple of functions available, swapCache and updateCache, which we'll not go into detail on since we have not found any use for them yet.

Stay tuned for the next post where we will explore how to use the sqlite3 command-line tool to inspect the iPhone Simulator's AppCache database. And just another reminder that we'll be at Google I/O, May 27-28 in San Francisco presenting a session on how we use HTML5. We'll also be available at the Developer Sandbox, looking forward to meeting you in person.

References

The HTML5 working draft:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

WHATWG working draft:
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/offline.html#appcache

Apple's MobileSafari documentation:
http://developer.apple.com/webapps/docs/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariJSRef/DOMApplicationCache/DOMApplicationCache.html

Webkit Source Code:
http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/WebCore/loader/appcache


2013, By: Seo Master

seo Google I/O goes mobile 2013

Seo Master present to you:
By Roman Nurik, Android Developer Advocate

The Google I/O mobile app for Android is back for 2011 and looking better than ever before. We’ve added some new features to make it easier for you to connect with the I/O session content on the go, even if you don’t have a ticket into Moscone Center.

For the 2011 edition we redesigned the app to support Android tablets, taking advantage of the extra screen space to offer a realtime activity stream for Google I/O as well as a tablet optimized layout. For the first time, you’ll be able to stay up to date with I/O as it happens, regardless of whether you’re using your computer, tablet, or smartphone.


Our most popular features from last year are making a comeback for the Google I/O 2011 mobile app as well. Browse through session content and schedules, orient yourself with a map, check out the Sandbox, and take notes to get the most out of your experience at the conference.

Speaking of Android, please remember that if you have an old, unlocked Android device, you’ll be able to donate it at the Android for Good booth at I/O to support NGOs and educational institutions in developing countries.


Get the Google I/O 2011 mobile app today by scanning the QR code above or by visiting this link from your computer or your Android device.

Roman is an Android Developer Advocate at Google, focusing on user experience, visual design, and multimedia. He has an irrational love for icon design and typography.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
2013, By: Seo Master

seo Gmail for mobile HTML5 Series: Using AppCache to Launch Offline - Part 1 2013

Seo Master present to you: On April 7th, Google launched a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices built on HTML5. We shared the behind-the-scenes story through this blog and would like to share more of our learnings in a brief series of follow up blog posts.

The HTML5 draft adds a lot of exciting functionality to browsers. Perhaps the most exciting is adding a way for websites to be launched offline. For devices that have a high bandwidth and highly available connection, offline functionality might not be so important. For web applications running on mobile devices however, being able to launch offline can dramatically improve the web application experience.
AppCache support on the iPhone is still under development, but as of firmware 2.2.1, it is usable.

To make use of AppCache, a webpage must provide a "manifest" to the browser that lists all of the URLs that it intends to use. Creating an HTML5 manifest file is extremely simple, as shown by the following example.
CACHE MANIFEST
jsfile1.js
jsfile2.js
styles.css
/images/image1.png
/images/image2.png
It is important to note that it is not necessary to list the URL of the main webpage in the manifest because it is treated as an implicit entry. However, if you have more than one top level URL that you want to be available offline, they must all be listed in the manifest. In addition, they must all set a manifest attribute on the HTML tag that points to the manifest. For example, if the manifest URL was "/sitemanifest", then each page in the site would have an HTML tag that looked like this:
<html manifest="/sitemanifest">
Finally, the manifest must be served using the content type "text/cache-manifest". And that's it!

So now that you know how to create a manifest for your site, it's a good idea to know what's going on during page load. When the page is loaded for the first time, it will load as if there is no application cache associated with it. Once it has finished loading, the browser will fetch the manifest and all resources listed in it that have not already been fetched during page load. From this point on, any GET request that your page makes that is not listed in the manifest will fail, and any GET request that is listed in it will not hit the network, but will be satisfied by the cache. Once your page is loaded into AppCache, the next time the user loads the site, all of the resources will be served out of the cache. The only GET request done on page load will be for the manifest file, in order to see if it has changed. If it has changed, then all of the resources in it are fetched in the background and will be used the next time the user refreshes the page.

Stay tuned for the next post where we will share more about what we know about AppCache and how we use it on the Gmail team. Also, we'll be at Google I/O, May 27-28 in San Francisco presenting a session on how we use HTML5. We'll also be available at the Developer Sandbox, and we look forward to meeting you in person.

References

The HTML5 working draft:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

Apple's MobileSafari documentation: http://developer.apple.com/webapps/docs/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariJSRef/DOMApplicationCache/DOMApplicationCache.html

Webkit Source Code:
http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/WebCore/loader/appcache

2013, By: Seo Master

seo African developers finding success with Google technologies 2013

Seo Master present to you: Author PhotoBy Chukwuemeka Afigbo, Program Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa

Cross-posted from the Google Africa Blog

Creating applications and services that use Google platforms to make the internet more relevant to Africans is a big part of Google’s vision in Africa. This is why we are always excited whenever we come across individuals or companies whose efforts are in line with this vision. Here are a few of the interesting applications we have seen in recent months.

Battabox, co founded by Christian Purefoy and Yemisi Ilo, is an online social television platform developed in Nigeria that aims to provide everything Nigerian from music, film, street-life to news, comedy and cooking using the YouTube platform. Crowdsourcing videos is an important part of the Battabox strategy and they were able to achieve this using YouTube Direct running on Google App Engine integrated into their website. They also provided an Android App that enables users to upload videos directly from their Android phones.




Battabox website screenshot

There are many other examples from further afield. In South Africa we met Nomanini who have a Google App Engine backend for Lula, their airtime vending device, which promises to change the way airtime is distributed in the region. Envaya SMS is an amazing application that turns your Android phone into an SMS gateway and has been used by many NGOs in East Africa. SAF SMS is a school management solution built with Google Web Toolkit that has been adopted in more than 100 schools in Nigeria. We also met Serengeti Advisers, a consultancy firm in Tanzania that uses Google Chart Tools to create interactive reports on their website.



Nomanini’s Lula terminal communicates with a backend powered by Google App Engine

As part of our drive to meet and interact with app developers in Africa, our Android Developer Relations team also recently hosted the developers of AfriNolly and the Nigerian Constitution Android app on their weekly Android DevRel office hours hangout on Google+ for Europe, Middle East and Africa. At the hangout, these African developers shared information about their apps with other Android developers.

You can follow the exploits of these and more developers in Sub Saharan Africa as they continue to make things happen with Google APIs and platforms by keeping an eye on our case studies page.

Do you feel your app should be featured here? Let us know!


Chukwuemeka Afigbo is a Program Manager in the Sub-Saharan Africa Outreach Team. He is an avid football (soccer) fan.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
2013, By: Seo Master

seo Android for Good at Google I/O 2011 2013

Seo Master present to you: By Zi Wang of the Android Team

Do you have an unlocked Android device that you no longer need? If you’re coming to Google I/O, you can make a world of difference by donating it to Android for Good.

Android for Good evolved from a program at Google started by one passionate engineer with an idea to help the developing world through technology. A small team collected Android devices from Googlers around the world and organized their donation to groups including Grameem’s AppLab Community Knowledge Worker Initiative in Uganda, Save the Elephants in Kenya, V-Day in the Democratic Republic of Congo, VillageReach in Mozambique, VetAid in Tanzania & Kenya, and UNHCR in Central Africa.

This year, we want to make it easy for everyone at Google I/O to get involved as well. We know you like to keep up to speed with the latest and greatest technology, so you may have an older Android device you don’t need anymore. If that device is unlocked (such as the T-Mobile G1, Nexus One, or Nexus S) and in good working condition, bring it along to Google I/O and drop it off at the Android for Good booth, located on the third floor of Moscone Center. Although it might seem old to you, that device could mean a new beginning when placed in the right hands.

Zi Wang is a Product Marketing Manager on the Android Team. In his 20% time, Zi is working on a very cool project called Android in Space.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
2013, By: Seo Master

seo Code Conversations Episode 1 - Chris DiBona on Google's Open Source Programs 2013

Seo Master present to you:

"Code Conversations" is a new series of videos intended to film casual conversations with notable Google developers and legends in the technology field. No agenda, no topic... just thoughts. This video is the first episode of this series, in which Chris DiBona, our intrepid open source programs manager talks to Stephanie Liu of the Developer Team about his "sweet goatee" in the Chrome Comic. He also explains why Google open sourced Chrome and Android and why we didn't do it sooner. He also touches on why much of Google's software isn't open sourced.

Intros:

Chris DiBona is the open source programs manager at Google, where his team oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through the release of open source software projects and programs such as the Google Summer of Code. Before joining Google, Chris was an editor at Slashdot, has edited the books Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution and Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution and formerly co-hosted the FLOSS weekly with Leo Laporte. His personal blog is called Ego Food.

Stephanie Liu is a Programs Manager on the Developer Team here at Google.



We'll be checking your comments on this post for feedback and ideas for future Code Conversations.2013, By: Seo Master

seo Introducing Google+ Sign-In: simple and secure, minus the social spam 2013

Seo Master present to you: By Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management, Google+

Cross-posted from the Google+ Developers Blog

Today we’re adding a new feature to the Google+ platform: application sign-in. Whether you’re building an app for Android, iOS or the web, users can now sign in to your app with Google, and bring along their Google+ info for an upgraded experience. It’s simple, it’s secure, and it prohibits social spam. And we’re just getting started.



In this initial release, we've focused on four key principles to make things awesome for users:

1. Simplicity and security come first 
If you sign in to Gmail, YouTube or any other Google service, you can now use your existing credentials to sign in to apps outside of Google. Just review the Google+ permissions screen (outlining the data you're sharing with the app, and the people who can see your activity), and you're all set. Google+ Sign-In also comes with the protections and safeguards you’ve come to expect from your Google account (like 2-step verification), so you can always sign in with confidence.


Managing your signed-in apps is easy too: visit plus.google.com/apps at any time, or open the new Google Settings app on Android.

2. Desktop and mobile are better together 
Many developers offer web and mobile versions of their app, yet setting things up across a browser, phone and tablet is still a major hassle. Starting today, when you sign in to a website with Google, you can install its mobile app on your Android device with a single click.


3. Sharing is selective; spraying is just spam 
Sometimes you want to share something with the world (like a high score), but other times you want to keep things to yourself (like fitness goals). With Google+ Sign-In and circles you decide who to share with, if at all. In addition: Google+ doesn’t let apps spray “frictionless” updates all over the stream, so app activity will only appear when it’s relevant (like when you’re actually looking for it).


4. Sharing is for doing, not just viewing 
Pictures and videos are great for viewing, but sometimes you actually want to do stuff online. That's why, when you share from an app that uses Google+ Sign-In, your friends will see a new kind of "interactive" post in their Google+ stream. Clicking will take them inside the app, where they can buy, listen to, or review (for instance) exactly what you shared.




If you’re building an app for Android, iOS or the web, and you’d like to include Google+ Sign-In, simply dive into our developer docs and start checking stats once your integration is live. Android apps will require the latest version of Google Play Services, which is rolling out to all devices in the next day or so.

To see what other developers are doing with Google+ Sign-In, just visit any of the following sites, and look for the new "Sign in with Google" button (also rolling out gradually):



Written by Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management, Google+

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor
2013, By: Seo Master

seo Now playing: developer-created videos 2013

Seo Master present to you:

In the last few months, we've posted videos of developers sharing how they built their applications with Google developer tools and technologies. These included developers building their AJAX front-ends with Google Web Toolkit, writing mobile apps for the Android platform, and scaling their web apps with App Engine. We really enjoyed working with these developers to produce these videos. However, we thought it would be great to allow any developer to create their own video talking about their application and help them share their video with other developers on code.google.com.

Today, we're happy to announce that we're now accepting developer-created videos through this video submission page. If you've got a great app built with Google developer products and want to be considered to be featured on code.google.com, all you need to do is:
  1. Check out these instructions and guidelines
  2. Create a short video (or videos) based on the above guidelines and upload it to your YouTube account.
  3. Submit your video details on the submission page.
  4. We'll be reviewing submissions regularly and selecting videos to feature on code.google.com and/or our developer blogs.
You don't need professional equipment or even a studio to produce a good video. Here are 2 examples of videos created by developers. Note that both were shot with hand-held video recording devices and basic video editing software. And as you can see, the "sets" used are just their own workspaces:

Jimmy Moore, developer of Mibbit:



Best Buy's Giftag.com, which was recently featured on this blog:



Ready to tell us your story? Visit the submission page to get started.2013, By: Seo Master

seo Come on over, the Open Source Programs Office has its own blog 2013

Seo Master present to you:

When we first launched code.google.com (webarchive), it was largely a site for documenting our open source activities and had some details about Google's supported APIs and file formats. In the ensuing 3 years, code has grown to encompass protocol documentation, project hosting and even a mobile operating system. Similarly, the activities of the Open Source Team have grown from simple license compliance to the aforementioned hosting, releasing massive amounts of code and introducing student programs like the Summer of Code and its high school cousin, the Highly Open Participation Contest. Since we've grown so much, we felt it was well past time to spin off a blog that specifically covers the open source activities of the company. So that's just what we've done. Come check it out, and if you like, subscribe!2013, By: Seo Master
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