Congratulations to our US Grow with Google Developer Scholars!

Posted by Peter Lubbers, Head of Google Developer Training

Grow with Google in partnership with Udacity, is awarding 5,000 Nanodegree program scholarships to help aspiring developers in the US continue their digital skills training and prepare for jobs as Android or Mobile Web developers.

As part of the Grow with Google Developer Scholarship program, scholars completed an initial challenge course at Udacity - completing on average over 100 hours of coursework, building coding project portfolios and engaging with their local developer community. Today, Google and Udacity are excited to recognize the 5,000 top performers in the challenge course, and offer them a chance to continue their training through a Nanodegree program with a full scholarship.

By successfully completing a Nanodegree program, scholars earn an industry-recognized credential helping to create a path for increased job opportunities as well as prepare for one of Google's Developer Certifications: Associate Android Developer or Mobile Web Specialist. These developer training programs offer scholars the opportunity to build their skills and become job-ready, helping to close the gap in the more than 500,000 open computing jobs in the US.

We are incredibly inspired by the hard work and passion shown by all our Grow with Google developer scholars -- including these stellar scholars:

Bela from Tennessee, a mother of two working toward her goal of becoming a web developer. Bela recently shared her personal story of determination to complete her developer training.

Desmend from Illinois, who is taking what he learns in his Android developer course and sharing it with local high school students that he mentors -- teaching them about technology and the type of career opportunities offered to developers.

Sean from Alabama, a veteran using his course training to transition into the civilian workforce as an Android developer.

And Demetra from New York, who utilized the online training and forums to achieve her goal of advancing her skills in web development.

This scholarship effort is part of the Grow with Google initiative, which is aimed at helping create economic opportunities for Americans by offering free tools, training, and events. Udacity is excited to partner with Google on this powerful effort and together we look forward to seeing what these scholars will achieve in the coming year.

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/congratulations-to-grow-with-google-developer-scholars.html

Showcase your innovations at the 2018 China-US Young Makers Competition

Posted by Bill Luan, Senior Program Manager & Greater China Regional Lead, Developer Relations

The 2018 China-U.S. Young Maker Competition launched this week by the event co-organizer Hackster.IO. Project submissions are now open to all makers, developers, and students ages 18-40 in both China and the United States. Google is the corporate sponsor for this year's competition.

Since 2014, this competition has been running annually in supporting the U.S.-China High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange program. The competition encourages makers in both countries to create innovative products focusing on community development, education, environmental protection, health & fitness, energy, transportation and sustainable development.

Participants have the freedom to choose appropriate technologies to enable their innovations, and we encourage makers to consider open source technologies, such as TensorFlow and AIY Projects for artificial intelligence use cases, Android Studio for mobile applications, as well as Android Things for IoT solutions.

The top 10 projects in the U.S. will win an all-expenses-paid trip to Beijing, to compete against Chinese makers on August 13-17 for the chance at $30,000 in prizes. Further, there are 35 additional chances to win Google prizes! So join the competition, and let your innovation shine on the global stage!

For more details, please see the event announcement on Hackster.IO.

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/showcase-your-innovations-at-2018-china.html

AIY Projects: Updated kits for 2018

Posted by Billy Rutledge, Director of AIY Projects

Last year, AIY Projects launched to give makers the power to build AI into their projects with two do-it-yourself kits. We're seeing continued demand for the kits, especially from the STEM audience where parents and teachers alike have found the products to be great tools for the classroom. The changing nature of work in the future means students may have jobs that haven't yet been imagined, and we know that computer science skills, like analytical thinking and creative problem solving, will be crucial.

We're taking the first of many steps to help educators integrate AIY into STEM lesson plans and help prepare students for the challenges of the future by launching a new version of our AIY kits. The Voice Kit lets you build a voice controlled speaker, while the Vision Kit lets you build a camera that learns to recognize people and objects (check it out here). The new kits make getting started a little easier with clearer instructions, a new app and all the parts in one box.

To make setup easier, both kits have been redesigned to work with the new Raspberry Pi Zero WH, which comes included in the box, along with the USB connector cable and pre-provisioned SD card. Now users no longer need to download the software image and can get running faster. The updated AIY Vision Kit v1.1 also includes the Raspberry Pi Camera v2.

AIY Voice Kit v2 includes Raspberry Pi Zero WH and pre-provisioned SD card

AIY Voice Kit v1.1 includes Raspberry Pi Zero WH, Raspberry Pi Cam 2 and pre-provisioned SD card

We're also introducing the AIY companion app for Android, available here in Google Play, to make wireless setup and configuration a snap. The kits still work with monitor, keyboard and mouse as an alternate path and we're working on iOS and Chrome companions which will be coming soon.

The AIY website has been refreshed with improved documentation, now easier for young makers to get started and learn as they build. It also includes a new AIY Models area, showcasing a collection of neural networks designed to work with AIY kits. While we've solved one barrier to entry for the STEM audience, we recognize that there are many other things that we can do to make our kits even more useful. We'll once again be at #MakerFaire events to gather feedback from our users and in June we'll be working with teachers from all over the world at the ISTE conference in Chicago.

The new AIY Voice Kit and Vision Kit have arrived at Target Stores and Target.com (US) this month and we're working to make them globally available through retailers worldwide. Sign up on our mailing list to be notified when our products become available.

We hope you'll pick up one of the new AIY kits and learn more about how to build your own smart devices. Be sure to share your recipes on Hackster.io and social media using #aiyprojects.

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/aiy-projects-updated-kits-for-2018.html

Text Embedding Models Contain Bias. Here's Why That Matters.

Time to Upgrade from GCM to FCM

Originally posted by Jen Person on the Firebase Blog.

In 2016, we unveiled Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) as the next evolution of Google Cloud Messaging (GCM). Since then, we've been working hard to make Firebase Cloud Messaging even more powerful than its predecessor. Like GCM, Firebase Cloud Messaging allows you to send notifications and data messages reliably to iOS, Android, and the Web at no cost. In addition, FCM includes a host of new features, such as an intuitive notifications interface in the Firebase console, better reporting, and native integrations with other Firebase products. With FCM, you can target and test notifications to re-engage your users with greater ease and efficiency.

We're excited to devote more time and attention to improving FCM. That's why today we're announcing that all developers will need to upgrade to FCM within a year. The GCM server and client APIs have been deprecated and will be removed as soon as April 11th, 2019. We recommend you upgrade sooner rather than later so you can start taking advantage of the new features we're building in FCM right away!

To help you through the upgrade, we've created a step-by-step migration guide and answered a few of the most common questions you'll probably have below.

What else is new in FCM?

Once you upgrade, you'll be able to use all of the new features and functionality available in FCM, like platform overrides and topic combinations. You'll also be able to send notifications directly from the Firebase console! What's more, FCM integrates seamlessly with other Firebase products like A/B Testing and Predictions.

Want to test different messages to see which one drives more conversions? You can use FCM with A/B Testing to run experiments to optimize your notifications. Want to engage users who are likely to churn or spend money in your app? You can use FCM with Predictions to target notifications to users based on their predicted behavior.

These are some of the awesome features you'll have at your fingertips with FCM. In the future, we'll be adding many more!

Will I still be able to send messages to my existing users?

If you have projects that are still using the GCM APIs, you will need to update your client and server code to use FCM before April 11, 2019. But rest assured, your existing GCM tokens will continue to work with FCM so you won't lose the ability to send messages to your existing users.

How do I upgrade?

The full process is outlined in our migration guide, or if you prefer video content, you can also check out this Firecast for details.

On a high level, upgrading consists of three main parts: console-side, app-side, and server-side.

• In the Firebase console, you'll need to create a new Firebase project using your app's existing Cloud Project ID.
• In your app, you'll need to make some code changes. The amount of changes will depend on what features of GCM you currently use, such as topic subscriptions and token generation.
• On the server side, you'll need to change the server endpoint from GCM to FCM.

Keep in mind that you don't have to complete all three parts of the process in one sitting - you can take it at your own pace. For example, you can choose to configure the console today and work on the app code another time. You're also free to update your app's code right now, and tackle the server-side requirements later.

What happens to my users who don't update their apps?

As long as users have GCM logic in their apps, they will still receive messages. FCM is backwards compatible with GCM, so even if you don't update your server endpoint now, you can still update your app's logic, and vice versa.

What data will Firebase collect and use? I'm concerned about privacy.

Please see the Firebase terms and the Firebase Privacy and Security Policy. You can disable Google Analytics for Firebase to reduce the amount of data that is collected, but keep in mind this will also disable some FCM features.

What if I still have questions?

We're here to help you through the upgrade process. Check out this nifty FAQ page as a start. We also encourage you to post your questions on StackOverflow. Or, feel free to reach out to Firebase support through any of these means.

To save you clicking time, here are some of the links that are also worth a read. Start with the upgrade guide, and then check out the other links to find out more.

• Migrating from GCM to FCM
• Migrate from Google Cloud Messaging to Firebase Cloud Messaging - Firecasts
• Migrating from GCM to FCM - FAQ
• Firebase support
• FCM Introduction
• About Firebase Cloud Messaging
• Example - Android Quickstart - Messaging
• Authorizing Send Requests

What if I already migrated?

Awesome! How'd it go? Tweet me at @ThatJenPerson to tell me what went well and what didn't. Sharing your experience helps us make improvements!

We look forward to welcoming you to FCM, the next evolution of GCM!

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/time-to-upgrade-from-gcm-to-fcm.html

Browse the updated Google I/O 2018 schedule and reserve seats for Sessions

The Google I/O 2018 schedule just got a big update!

Find additional Sessions and Codelabs, as well as new App Reviews, Office Hours, and After Hours events. Times and locations for all events are also now available, so you can start planning accordingly. New this year: we'll have a series of Keynote Sessions, which take a broader look at how the technology we build can impact the world around us! The I/O schedule is subject to change until the event, so check back often, and keep an eye out for scheduled Meetup events taking place at the Community Lounge to help you connect and network with other developers.

Attending in person

To help make it easier to attend your favorite talks and minimize lines, confirmed attendees will be able to reserve seats for Sessions in advance of I/O - as long as they’re signed in with the same email address used to register for the 2018 event. A portion of seats will still be available first-come, first-served onsite.

To reserve a seat:

• Navigate to google.com/io/schedule, sign in, and click on the ticket icon for each Session you want to reserve.
• If a particular Session has already reached the reservation capacity, you'll see an hourglass icon instead. If you've joined a waitlist and a spot opens up, we'll automatically change your reservation status to reserved.
• You can reserve as many Sessions as you'd like per day, but only one reservation/waitlist per time slot is allowed.
• Reservations will remain open until 1 hour before the start time for each Session.
• NOTE: Reservations are only available for Sessions, not other event types listed on the schedule.

Reserve seats via the main Schedule page…

…Or via the Session detail pages.

Anyone who's signed in can also star all event types listed on the schedule as a way to easily find them later on or on other devices.

In addition to more than 160 technical and Keynote Sessions, onsite guests will have the chance to explore various Sandbox domes, covering product areas like Android, Assistant, Design, IoT, Web, just to name a few. Sandboxes are dedicated spaces to learn and play with our latest products and platforms via interactive demos, physical installations, and more.

You can also take advantage of 100+ Office Hours and App Reviews. Office Hours gives you a chance to meet one-on-one with Google experts to ask all your technical questions, and App Reviews will give you the opportunity to receive advice and tips on your specific app-related projects.

Don't forget to save time in your schedule for Codelabs. Here, you'll have everything you need to learn about the latest and greatest Google technologies via self-paced tutorials, or bring your own machine and take your work home with you. Google staff will be on hand for helpful advice and to provide direction if you get stuck.

Joining remotely?

Don't worry - you're not alone and you won't miss a thing! We'll be livestreaming the majority of our Keynotes and Sessions from Shoreline. If you prefer to watch I/O with your developer community, find an I/O Extended viewing party near you.

We'll also let you experience I/O firsthand via our I/O Guides who will be touring the venue and giving you eyes on the ground.

I/O is only 27 days away! We'll continue to share updates in the upcoming weeks to help you get ready and make the most of this year's event. Stay tuned!

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/updated-google-io-2018-schedule-and-session-reservations.html

Highlights from TensorFlow Dev Summit 2018

Originally posted by Sandeep Gupta, Product Manager for TensorFlow, on behalf of the TensorFlow team on the TensorFlow Blog.

On March 30th, we held the second TensorFlow Developer Summit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA! The event brought together over 500 TensorFlow users in-person and thousands tuning into the livestream at TensorFlow events around the world. The day was filled with new product announcements along with technical talks from the TensorFlow team and guest speakers. Here are the highlights from the event:

Machine learning is solving challenging problems that impact everyone around the world. Problems that we thought were impossible or too complex to solve are now possible with this technology. Using TensorFlow, we've already seen great advancements in many different fields. For example:

• Astrophysicists are using TensorFlow to analyze large amounts of data from the Kepler mission to discover new planets.
• Medical researchers are using ML techniques with TensorFlow to assess a person's cardiovascular risk of a heart attack and stroke.
• Air Traffic Controllers are using TensorFlow to predict flight routes through crowded airspace for safe and efficient landings.
• Engineers are using TensorFlow to analyze auditory data in the rainforest to detect logging trucks and other illegal activities.
• Scientists in Africa are using TensorFlow to detect diseases in Cassava plants to improving yield for farmers.

We're excited to see these amazing uses of TensorFlow and are committed to making it accessible to more developers. This is why we're pleased to announce new updates to TensorFlow that will help improve the developer experience!

We're making TensorFlow easier to use

Researchers and developers want a simpler way of using TensorFlow. We're integrating a more intuitive programming model for Python developers called eager execution that removes the distinction between the construction and execution of computational graphs. You can develop with eager execution and then use the same code to generate the equivalent graph for training at scale using the Estimator high-level API. We're also announcing a new method for running Estimator models on multiple GPUs on a single machine. This allows developers to quickly scale their models with minimal code changes.

As machine learning models become more abundant and complex, we want to make it easier for developers to share, reuse, and debug them. To help developers share and reuse models, we're announcing TensorFlow Hub, a library built to foster the publication and discovery of modules (self-contained pieces of TensorFlow graph) that can be reused across similar tasks. Modules contain weights that have been pre-trained on large datasets, and may be retrained and used in your own applications. By reusing a module, a developer can train a model using a smaller dataset, improve generalization, or simply speed up training. To make debugging models easier, we're also releasing a new interactive graphical debugger plug-in as part of the TensorBoard visualization tool that helps you inspect and step through internal nodes of a computation graph in real-time.

Model training is only one part of the machine learning process and developers need a solution that works end-to-end to build real-world ML systems. Towards this end, we're announcing the roadmap for TensorFlow Extended (TFX) along with the launch of TensorFlow Model Analysis, an open-source library that combines the power of TensorFlow and Apache Beam to compute and visualize evaluation metrics. The components of TFX that have been released thus far (including TensorFlow Model Analysis, TensorFlow Transform, Estimators, and TensorFlow Serving) are well integrated and let developers prepare data, train, validate, and deploy TensorFlow models in production.

TensorFlow is available in more languages and platforms

Along with making TensorFlow easier to use, we're announcing that developers can use TensorFlow in new languages. TensorFlow.js is a new ML framework for JavaScript developers. Machine learning in the browser using TensorFlow.js opens exciting new possibilities, including interactive ML and support for scenarios where all data remains client-side. It can be used to build and train modules entirely in the browser, as well as import TensorFlow and Keras models trained offline for inference using WebGL acceleration. The Emoji Scavenger Hunt game is a fun example of an application built using TensorFlow.js.

We also have some exciting news for Swift programmers: TensorFlow for Swift will be open sourced this April. TensorFlow for Swift is not your typical language binding for TensorFlow. It integrates first-class compiler and language support, providing the full power of graphs with the usability of eager execution. The project is still in development, with more updates coming soon!

We're also sharing the latest updates to TensorFlow Lite, TensorFlow's lightweight, cross-platform solution for deploying trained ML models on mobile and other edge devices. In addition to existing support for Android and iOS, we're announcing support for Raspberry Pi, increased support for ops/models (including custom ops), and describing how developers can easily use TensorFlow Lite in their own apps. The TensorFlow Lite core interpreter is now only 75KB in size (vs 1.1 MB for TensorFlow) and we're seeing speedups of up to 3x when running quantized image classification models on TensorFlow Lite vs. TensorFlow.

For hardware support, TensorFlow now has integration with NVIDIA's TensorRT. TensorRT is a library that optimizes deep learning models for inference and creates a runtime for deployment on GPUs in production environments. It brings a number of optimizations to TensorFlow and automatically selects platform specific kernels to maximize throughput and minimizes latency during inference on GPUs.

For users who run TensorFlow on CPUs, our partnership with Intel has delivered integration with a highly optimized Intel MKL-DNN open source library for deep learning. When using Intel MKL-DNN, we observed up to 3x inference speedup on various Intel CPU platforms.

The list of platforms that run TensorFlow has grown to include Cloud TPUs, which were released in beta last month. The Google Cloud TPU team has already delivered a strong 1.6X performance increase in ResNet-50 performance since launch. These improvements will be available to TensorFlow users with the 1.8 release soon.

Enabling new applications and domains using TensorFlow

Many data analysis problems are solved using statistical and probabilistic methods. Beyond deep learning and neural network models, TensorFlow now provides state-of-the-art methods for Bayesian analysis via the TensorFlow Probability API. This library contains building blocks like probability distributions, sampling methods, and new metrics and losses. Many other classical ML methods also have increased support. As an example, boosted decision trees can be easily trained and deployed using pre-made high-level classes.

Machine learning and TensorFlow have already helped solve challenging problems in many different fields. Another area where we see TensorFlow having a big impact is in genomics, which is why we're releasing Nucleus, a library for reading, writing, and filtering common genomics file formats for use in TensorFlow. This, along with DeepVariant, an open-source TensorFlow based tool for genome variant discovery, will help spur new research and advances in genomics.

Expanding community resources and engagement

These updates to TensorFlow aim to benefit and grow the community of users and contributors - the thousands of people who play a part in making TensorFlow one of the most popular ML frameworks in the world. To continue to engage with the community and stay up-to-date with TensorFlow, we've launched the new official TensorFlow blog and the TensorFlow YouTube channel. We're also making it easier for our community to collaborate by launching new mailing lists and Special Interest Groups designed to support open-source work on specific projects. To see how you can be a part of the community, visit the TensorFlow Community page and as always, you can follow TensorFlow on Twitter for the latest news.

We're incredibly thankful to everyone who has helped make TensorFlow a successful ML framework in the past two years. Thanks for attending, thanks for watching, and remember to use #MadeWithTensorFlow to share how you are solving impactful and challenging problems with machine learning and TensorFlow!

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/highlights-from-tensorflow-dev-summit.html

Launchpad Accelerator expands with regional programs

Posted by Josh Yellin - Global Lead, Launchpad Accelerator

For the past five years, Launchpad has been connecting startups from around the world with the best of Google - its people, network, methodologies, and technologies. We have worked with market leaders including BrainQ (Israel), Flutterwave (Nigeria), Jumo (South Africa), Nestaway (India), and Nubank (Brazil), empowering their sustainable growth through high-touch programs in AI/ML implementation, leadership best-practices, and access to global capital.

In order to better support startup ecosystems in key regions, we're thrilled to expand Launchpad Accelerator by introducing new, standalone initiatives. Building on Google VP Yossi Matias's initial engagement with startups in Tel Aviv, we are introducing accelerators in Tel Aviv, Israel; Lagos, Nigeria; and São Paulo, Brazil. These regional accelerators are representative of our long-term commitment to support and learn from startup ecosystems around the world.

In Tel Aviv, we are working with Machine Learning startups. Our first class launched in March with four ML startups focused on healthcare technology solutions. If you are interested in joining our next class, you can find more information here.

In Lagos, we are working with seed-stage companies solving a range of market-related problems. Our first class, which also launched in March, includes 12 startups working across e-commerce, education, and supply chain. Learn more about the Launchpad Africa program here.

In São Paulo, we will be working with growth-stage companies that operate across a number of sectors. The application for Class One is currently open and will begin in May 2018. If you wish to apply, please do so here.

We will continue to operate a program in San Francisco for top growth-stage global startups. With the addition of accelerators in key regions, we are able to design more customized programs, develop stronger relationships with our partners on the ground, and support the growth of local startup ecosystems.

Stay updated on developments and future opportunities by subscribing to the Google Developers newsletter.

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/launchpad-accelerator-expands-with.html

Google Fonts launches Korean support

Posted by the Google Fonts team

The Google Fonts catalog now includes Korean web fonts for designers and developers working with the nation's unique Hangul writing system. While some of the fonts themselves have been available in beta for years now, we introduced official support for Korean earlier this month after devising a more efficient means of serving Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) font files, which have very large character sets and file sizes.

We've always wanted to offer CJK fonts, and over the years we've worked on foundational technologies such as WOFF2 and CSS3 unicode-range in order to make this possible. Last year, Google engineers experimented with different approaches to slicing fonts into smaller subsets, and found that certain techniques had very good results that enabled this launch.

The Hangul script is distinct from Chinese Hanzi and Japanese Kanji characters. In some ways, it shares greater similarity with Western writing systems because it is constructed from a phonetic alphabet. Whereas the visual features of Hanzi and Kanji logograms give no direct indication of their pronunciation, Hangul is a phonographic script in which written words are built from their constituent sounds.

Hangul starts with a set of 19 consonants and 21 vowels (1). When writing a sentence, individual characters are first identified (2), then combined into blocks that represent compete words (3), and finally conjugated and arranged in grammatical form to create a sentence (4).

Despite the elegant logic underlying Hangul script, Korean fonts present the same basic difficulty for developers that Chinese and Japanese fonts do. Hangul characters may be constructed from just 40 basic elements, but the final forms add up quickly. Korean fonts eventually require over ten thousand characters, meaning the files are too large for most users to download so that they will appear instantly upon visiting a website. A typical full Korean font hovers around 4Mb, whereas even fairly extensive Latin fonts rarely exceed 250Kb.

During the time that Korean fonts were only available on the Google Fonts Early Access system, we were surprised that many web developers were willing to accept the latency implications of serving full font files to their users. Still, in order to graduate these fonts out of our Early Access system, we needed to devise a way for them to work for a wider cross-section of web users, especially those with relatively slow connections.

The Google Fonts API offers larger font files as several subsets, such as "latin" and "cyrillic." When the service launched, these subsets had to be selected by developers. For a few years, we've enabled the 'unicode-range' property of CSS3 for browsers that support it. This means when a large font file is sliced into subsets, the ranges of the Unicode characters in each subset are declared as part of the @font-face declaration. This allows browsers to fetch only a particular subset when those characters appear in a web page.

One of the key benefits of the Google Fonts API is cross-site caching, and this benefit continues to apply to the delivery of font subsets through unicode-range. The font files we serve are used by many domains, so after you visit a site and your browser downloads its fonts, the files are saved in the browser's cache. Then the next time you visit another site that uses the same font files, there's no need for your browser to download it again. This latency benefit only increases over time, and since the many subsets of large font files are cached the same way, you'll see the same cross-site benefits with our CJK fonts.

Over the years we have worked with the W3C and browser developers to ensure that unicode-range would become well supported. Now that Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge have shipped this feature, there is enough support to enable a new means of delivering Korean web fonts that works seamlessly for these browsers.

Support for the unicode-range feature has become widespread, according to caniuse.com

In order maximize efficiency, we wanted to know which characters it made the most sense to cluster together in a subset. We devised a slicing strategy by analyzing text on the Korean-language web to extract patterns of Unicode characters, building topic models of which ones tend to appear together on the same page.

As we evaluated different slicing strategies to decide which Korean characters to include in each subset, our goal was to minimize both the number of subsets and the number of requests. If we sliced the script into 1,000 arbitrary subsets, without factoring in usage and commonality, we would get way too many HTTP requests. We built a testing framework to see how a variety of strategies worked with real-world traffic using our Early Access system, and we launched Korean fonts in our directory with the most efficient one we've found so far.

Strategy 1 is no slicing. The best strategy had 20 times fewer connection requests than the worst, which simply divides the font into equal parts without accounting for patterns of language use.

Moving forward, we think we can do even better. With our scale, a small improvement can justify a lot of effort. By continuing to use our testing framework on different approaches to slicing, we can tune our serving to be as efficient as possible. For the web developers who use our API, and all end users, these kinds of changes are totally transparent and don't require any further work on your part. For example, when WOFF2 came out in 2015, every user with a browser supporting WOFF2 got a 25% faster experience. We transparently make things better for all users on an ongoing basis, and there's enormous potential for future improvements in the delivery of CJK fonts.

This launch began with five Korean fonts originally designed by the leading Korean type foundry Sandoll for Naver. Since the initial launch, we have grown the collection to 23 Korean families, and to showcase them we commissioned a digital specimen website from Math Practice, a digital design studio in New York City. Here you can see beautiful Korean typography in action—and with fast page loads made possible by our new slicing technique.

Thanks to SooYoung Jang, Irin Kim, E Roon Kang, Wonyoung So, Guhong Min, Hannah Son, Aaron Bell, Marc Foley, and all the typeface designers involved in growing the Korean fonts collection and developing the minisite.

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/google-fonts-launches-korean-support.html

Transitioning Google URL Shortener to Firebase Dynamic Links

Posted by Michael Hermanto, Software Engineer, Firebase

We launched the Google URL Shortener back in 2009 as a way to help people more easily share links and measure traffic online. Since then, many popular URL shortening services have emerged and the ways people find content on the Internet have also changed dramatically, from primarily desktop webpages to apps, mobile devices, home assistants, and more.

To refocus our efforts, we're turning down support for goo.gl over the coming weeks and replacing it with Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL). FDLs are smart URLs that allow you to send existing and potential users to any location within an iOS, Android or web app. We're excited to grow and improve the product going forward. While most features of goo.gl will eventually sunset, all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination.

For consumers

Starting April 13, 2018, anonymous users and users who have never created short links before today will not be able to create new short links via the goo.gl console. If you are looking to create new short links, we recommend you use Firebase Dynamic Links or check out popular services like Bitly and Ow.ly as an alternative.

If you have existing goo.gl short links, you can continue to use all features of goo.gl console for a period of one year, until March 30, 2019, when we will discontinue the console. You can manage all your short links and their analytics through the goo.gl console during this period.

After March 30, 2019, all links will continue to redirect to the intended destination. Your existing short links will not be migrated to the Firebase console, however, you will be able to export your link information from the goo.gl console.

For developers

Starting May 30, 2018, only projects that have accessed URL Shortener APIs before today can create short links. To create new short links, we recommend FDL APIs. FDL short links will automatically detect the user's platform and send the user to either the web or your app, as appropriate.

If you are already calling URL Shortener APIs to manage goo.gl short links, you can continue to use them for a period of one year, until March 30, 2019, when we will discontinue the APIs.

As it is for consumers, all links will continue to redirect to the intended destination after March 30, 2019. However, existing short links will not be migrated to the Firebase console/API.

URL Shortener has been a great tool that we're proud to have built. As we look towards the future, we're excited about the possibilities of Firebase Dynamic Links, particularly when it comes to dynamic platform detection and links that survive the app installation process. We hope you are too!

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/transitioning-google-url-shortener.html

Announcing TensorRT integration with TensorFlow 1.7

[Video] Hamilton app built in 3 months with Flutter reaches 1M+ installs

Originally posted on Flutter's Medium by Martin Aguinis

Hamilton and Posse, a design and development agency in New York, had three short months to develop and launch mobile apps for the hit Broadway show. How did they accomplish that? Using Flutter, Google's new mobile UI framework.

Reaching millions of users — with an outstanding half a million monthly active users and featured on both the App Store and Google Play— the apps let fans enter the ticket lottery, buy merchandise, play trivia, take selfies with a #HamCam, read frequently updated news and interviews, and more.

Watch this video case study to see how Flutter continues to help apps like Hamilton succeed on iOS and Android. You can read more details about the development of this app on Posse's blog post.

Flutter is free and open source. Get started today at flutter.io. We can't wait to see what you build!

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/video-hamilton-app-built-with-flutter.html

Funding 15,000 web and android scholarship in Africa - to provide employable developer skills

Posted by William Florance, Head, Economic Impact Programs

Africa's digital journey is rapidly gaining speed. According to the recent data, over 73 million people came online in Africa for the first time in 2017- that's more than the population of the UK! This means there are now about 435 million people on the continent using the Web to engage, connect and access information online. That's a good thing! But with this growth comes with an increased need to scale efforts to make the Web more relevant and useful to African users. This will require more skilled hands working with individuals and local businesses to develop content and platforms that will support Africa's digital growth.

In July 2017, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, announced a pledge to provide digital skills training to ten million people in Africa, and also to provide mobile developer training to 100,000 Africans. Today, in line with that commitment, we're excited to announce the launch of our new Africa Web and Android Scholarship program aimed at providing 15,000 scholarships to developers resident in Africa countries.

Working in partnership with Udacity and Andela, we will be offering 15,000 2-month 'single course' scholarships and 500 6-month nanodegree scholarships to aspiring and professional developers across Africa. The training will be available online via the Udacity training website, and the Andela Learning Community will support the students (in Nigeria and Kenya) through mentorship, in-person meet-ups, and online communities.

In order to access the full nanodegree scholarships, learners will have to complete lessons and quizzes courses being offered under the Udacity single course scholarships (also known as challenge courses) in addition to their active participation and support of classmates in the student community. We will be offering 10,000 scholarships to beginners (with little or no programming experience) and 5,000 to professional developers (with +1 year of experience) spread across Android and mobile web development tracks. The 10,000 beginner scholarships will include Android beginner courses and basic introduction to HTML & CSS; while the 5,000 intermediate scholarships include Android fundamentals for intermediate and building offline web applications courses respectively. Both courses are taught in English through an online program on Udacity open to Africa residence. The top 500 students at the end of the challenge will earn a full Nanodegree scholarship to one of four Nanodegree programs in Android or web development.

The application period closes on April 24th. Interested or want to learn more, visit https://www.udacity.com/google-africa-scholarships?utm_source=devblog

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/supporting-developers-in-africa.html

Discontinuing support for JSON-RPC and Global HTTP Batch Endpoints

Firebase Crashlytics graduates from beta

Originally posted on the Firebase Blog by Jason St. Pierre, Product Manager.

Back in October, we were thrilled to launch a beta version of Firebase Crashlytics. As the top ranked mobile app crash reporter for over 3 years running, Crashlytics helps you track, prioritize, and fix stability issues in realtime. It's been exciting to see all the positive reactions, as thousands of you have upgraded to Crashlytics in Firebase!

Today, we're graduating Firebase Crashlytics out of beta. As the default crash reporter for Firebase going forward, Crashlytics is the next evolution of the crash reporting capabilities of our platform. It empowers you to achieve everything you want to with Firebase Crash Reporting, plus much more.

This release include several major new features in addition to our stamp of approval when it comes to service reliability. Here's what's new.

Integration with Analytics events

We heard from many of you that you love Firebase Crash Reporting's "breadcrumbs" feature. (Breadcrumbs are the automatically created Analytics events that help you retrace user actions preceding a crash.) Starting today, you can see these breadcrumbs within the Crashlytics section of the Firebase console, helping you to triage issues more easily.

To use breadcrumbs on Crashlytics, install the latest SDK and enable Google Analytics for Firebase. If you already have Analytics enabled, the feature will automatically start working.

Crash insights

By broadly analyzing aggregated crash data for common trends, Crashlytics automatically highlights potential root causes and gives you additional context on the underlying problems. For example, it can reveal how widespread incorrect UIKit rendering was in your app so you would know to address that issue first. Crash insights allows you to make more informed decisions on what actions to take, save time on triaging issues, and maximize the impact of your debugging efforts.

From our community:

"In the few weeks that we've been working with Crashlytics' crash insights, it's been quite helpful on a few particularly pesky issues. The description and quality of the linked resources makes it easy to immediately start debugging."

- Marc Bernstein, Software Development Team Lead, Hudl

Pinning important builds

Generally, you have a few builds you care most about, while others aren't as important at the moment. With this new release of Crashlytics, you can now "pin" your most important builds which will appear at the top of the console. Your pinned builds will also appear on your teammates' consoles so it's easier to collaborate with them. This can be especially helpful when you have a large team with hundreds of builds and millions of users.

dSYM uploading

To show you stability issues, Crashlytics automatically uploads your dSYM files in the background to symbolicate your crashes. However, some complex situations can arise (i.e. Bitcode compiled apps) and prevent your dSYMs from being uploaded properly. That's why today we're also releasing a new dSYM uploader tool within your Crashlytics console. Now, you can manually upload your dSYM for cases where it cannot be automatically uploaded.

Firebase's default crash reporter

With today's GA release of Firebase Crashlytics, we've decided to sunset Firebase Crash Reporting, so we can best serve you by focusing our efforts on one crash reporter. Starting today, you'll notice the console has changed to only list Crashlytics in the navigation. If you need to access your existing crash data in Firebase Crash Reporting, you can use the app picker to switch from Crashlytics to Crash Reporting.

Firebase Crash Reporting will continue to be functional until September 8th, 2018 - at which point it will be retired fully.

Upgrading to Crashlytics is easy: just visit your project's console, choose Crashlytics in the left navigation and click "Set up Crashlytics":

Linking Fabric and Firebase Crashlytics

If you're currently using both Firebase and Fabric, you can now link the two to see your existing crash data within the Firebase console. To get started, click "Link app in Fabric" within the console and go through the flow on fabric.io:

If you are only using Fabric right now, you don't need to take any action. We'll be building out a new flow in the coming months to help you seamlessly link your existing app(s) from Fabric to Firebase. In the meantime, we encourage you to try other Firebase products.

We are excited to bring you the best-in class crash reporter in the Firebase console. As always, let us know your thoughts and we look forward to continuing to improve Crashlytics. Happy debugging!

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/firebase-crashlytics-graduates-from-beta.html

Artifact management for open source software

Posted by Kit Merker, JFrog

It's often said that open source is free like speech, not free like beer. But every so often, the developers behind an open source project can take advantage of free services to make their project better.

We believe in supporting the good work of open source projects to help the maintainers, who do an often thankless job, to be more productive.

Last year, we collaborated with Google to announce the availability of Artifactory Pro hosted on Google Cloud Platform free of charge for qualifying open source projects. The idea was to make sure that open source maintainers could reliably share their build outputs between team members for development, testing and deployment. This will help ensure that the open source projects which developers around the world rely on are easy to consume.

Since the announcement, over 30 projects have qualified for and joined, including OpenMRS, Psono, and Grails.

If you run an open source project and are interested, we encourage you to apply.

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/artifact-management-for-open-source.html

Join the “Build Actions for Your Community” Event Series

Posted by Ido Green, Developer Advocate

Ever wanted to learn about developing for the Google Assistant and meet other developers that are passionate about conversational UI? Well, we've got some good news!

Today, we are launching a global series of events about Actions on Google, run by Google Developers Groups (GDG) and other community groups. In these events, you'll be able to meet other developers and go together through educational content, uniquely crafted for these events by Google engineers. This includes tutorials on how to build your first Action and advanced sessions on how to use more complex features of the platform. By the end of the event you attend, you'll be able to build an Action for your community - be it your hometown, your professional network, or interest group.

And if you don't see an event near you, don't worry - you can always organize your own. We'll help!

It's going to be a great year for Actions developers. Please join us and check out the dedicated event website with all the event details and more information: developers.google.com/events/buildactions!

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/join-build-actions-for-your-community.html

Open Sourcing Resonance Audio

Posted by Eric Mauskopf, Product Manager

Spatial audio adds to your sense of presence when you're in VR or AR, making it feel and sound, like you're surrounded by a virtual or augmented world. And regardless of the display hardware you're using, spatial audio makes it possible to hear sounds coming from all around you.

Resonance Audio, our spatial audio SDK launched last year, enables developers to create more realistic VR and AR experiences on mobile and desktop. We've seen a number of exciting experiences emerge across a variety of platforms using our SDK. Recent examples include apps like Pixar's Coco VR for Gear VR, Disney's Star Wars^TM: Jedi Challenges AR app for Android and iOS, and Runaway's Flutter VR for Daydream, which all used Resonance Audio technology.

To accelerate adoption of immersive audio technology and strengthen the developer community around it, we’re opening Resonance Audio to a community-driven development model. By creating an open source spatial audio project optimized for mobile and desktop computing, any platform or software development tool provider can easily integrate with Resonance Audio. More cross-platform and tooling support means more distribution opportunities for content creators, without the worry of investing in costly porting projects.

What's Included in the Open Source Project

As part of our open source project, we're providing a reference implementation of YouTube's Ambisonic-based spatial audio decoder, compatible with the same Ambisonics format (Ambix ACN/SN3D) used by others in the industry. Using our reference implementation, developers can easily render Ambisonic content in their VR media and other applications, while benefiting from Ambisonics open source, royalty-free model. The project also includes encoding, sound field manipulation and decoding techniques, as well as head related transfer functions (HRTFs) that we've used to achieve rich spatial audio that scales across a wide spectrum of device types and platforms. Lastly, we're making our entire library of highly optimized DSP classes and functions, open to all. This includes resamplers, convolvers, filters, delay lines and other DSP capabilities. Additionally, developers can now use Resonance Audio's brand new Spectral Reverb, an efficient, high quality, constant complexity reverb effect, in their own projects.

We've open sourced Resonance Audio as a standalone library and associated engine plugins, VST plugin, tutorials, and examples with the Apache 2.0 license. Most importantly, this means Resonance Audio is yours, so you're free to use Resonance Audio in your projects, no matter where you work. And if you see something you'd like to improve, submit a GitHub pull request to be reviewed by the Resonance Audio project committers. While the engine plugins for Unity, Unreal, FMOD, and Wwise will remain open source, going forward they will be maintained by project committers from our partners, Unity, Epic, Firelight Technologies, and Audiokinetic, respectively.

If you're interested in learning more about Resonance Audio, check out the documentation on our developer site. If you want to get more involved, visit our GitHub to access the source code, build the project, download the latest release, or even start contributing. We're looking forward to building the future of immersive audio with all of you.

from
http://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/resonance-audio-goes-open-source.html