By Greg Hartrell, Lead Product Manager

Cross-posted from the Android Developers Blog

When we’re not guiding a tiny bird across a landscape of pipes on our phones, we’re getting ready for our biggest-ever Developer Day at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. On Tuesday 18 March, all the teams at Google dedicated to gaming will share their insights on the best ways to build games, grow audiences, engage players and make money. Some of the session highlights include:

• Growth Hacking with Play Games
• Making Money on Google Play: Best Practices in Monetization
• Grow Your Game Revenue with AdMob
• From Players to Customers: Tracking Revenue with Google Analytics
• Build Games that Scale in the Cloud
• From Box2D to Liquid Fun: Just Add Water-like Particles!

And there’s a lot more, so check out the full Google Developer Day schedule on the GDC website, where you can also buy tickets. We hope to see you there, but if you can’t make the trip, don’t worry; all the talks will be livestreamed on YouTube, starting at 10:00 am PDT (5:00 pm UTC).

Then from 19-21 March, meet the Google teams in person from AdMob, Analytics and Cloud at the Google Education Center in the Moscone Center’s South Hall (booth no. 218), and you could win a Nexus 7.


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

By Adam Dawes, Product Manager, Google Accounts Team

Improving security while making it easier for users to sign in is the perennial challenge we face in the authentication trade. Federated sign-in has long held this promise but to be successful, it needs to be simple for users to understand and easy for developers to deploy. Today, the OpenID Foundation announced that the OpenID Connect specification has been ratified and is now available as an open standard for the world. We think it is going to make a big difference in improving people’s login experience all over the Internet. This new authentication standard is layered on top of OAuth 2.0 so that all the technology that sites already use to connect to other sites' APIs can also be reused for authentication. And like OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect provides strong protections for users by only sharing account information that users explicitly tell us to.


We’re putting our weight behind this new standard, providing formal support from its launch as well as building it into Google+ Sign-In. And to keep things as simple as we can for developers, we’re also going to consolidate all our federated sign-in support onto the OpenID Connect standard. This means that we will deprecate support for our older federated sign-in protocols including OpenID 2.0 on April 20, 2015, and our early version of OAuth 2.0 for Login, including the userinfo scopes and endpoint, on September 1, 2014 (see migration timetable for full details).

The easiest way to take advantage of our support for OpenID Connect is to use Google+ Sign-In, which provides easy-to-integrate libraries on the most popular platforms. Google+ Sign-In provides not only OpenID Connect sign-in but also other great features to give your app deeper integration with Google like over-the-air installs, cross-device sign-on, analytics as well as powerful social features for users who have a Google+ profile. You can still hand roll your integration to Google using the OpenID Connect protocol if you prefer, but you’ll miss out on these features. Please see our migration guide to get started moving to Google+ Sign-In and OpenID Connect.


Adam Dawes is a Product Manager on the Google Accounts Team where he is working to make it easy for users to share their data while maintaining full control over it. Outside the Googleplex, Adam enjoys exploring the outdoors with his family.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

This guest post was written by Massimiliano Pippi, Sr. Software Engineer, Evonove

Python developers have been using Django for a many years, most notably through django-nonrel, a fork of the original project that adds support for NoSQL databases. In 2012, Google App Engine 1.6.2 was released, with direct support for official Django releases and Google Cloud SQL.

Now that App Engine works with Django, you can deploy fairly complex web apps together with packages and middleware that use Django’s ORM. For example, with a little help from applications like Django Appengine Toolkit, which abstracts part of the Google Cloud configuration, you can deploy a fully functional blog in minutes.

These days there don’t seem to be many in the Django community taking advantage of App Engine integration, but I think it’s a good time for that to change. The brand new Cloud Console and the gCloud tool, new services like Cloud SQL and the efforts in supporting the Python SDK can make the life of a Djangonaut a lot easier on Google Cloud platform. We’re all looking forward to continued improvement in the client libraries and docs, but the current tools make it worthwhile to use right now. With a little code we can get very close to something like “one click deploy”.

See this post for details.


Massimiliano Pippi spends his day at work writing code, mostly Python, and experimenting with the whole stack of web applications, trying to stretch his skills in different directions. Open source fan and contributor, he is a passionate and active community member.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

By Louis Gray, Program Manager, Google Developers Live

Cross-posted from +Google Developers

We have developers, studios, and the Internet, so we made you some videos! And this weekly show is your guide to what we did last week. Watch and enjoy.



Or you can go directly to the videos and posts mentioned:

• QUIC Next gen Transport http://goo.gl/Qzi4ER
• Making Sense of the Graph http://goo.gl/bFAKgJ
• Maps SDK for iOS 1.7 http://goo.gl/uBV6k3
• Maps Live: Heatmaps http://goo.gl/6p2kEw
• YTL: Quota in v3 http://goo.gl/c5WPsm
• CS 256 OH 5 http://goo.gl/xAKKqW
• BigQuery, Python, etc. http://goo.gl/F4eExF
• Wallet Objects API http://goo.gl/WLNuUY
• Cloud SQL http://goo.gl/JeQ7U1
• Infinite scroll http://goo.gl/xyWmU2

To make sure you don't miss a single event, subscribe to Google Developers on YouTube or just click the red YouTube button on the right nav, and check us out at http://developers.google.com/live.


+Louis Gray is a Program Manager on Google's Developer Relations Team, running Google Developers Live. He believes life is but a (live) stream.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

By Greg Knoke, Developer Relations

Cross-posted on the Google Apps Developer Blog.

The most challenging part of learning anything new is often simply getting started. Unfortunately, when it comes to programming, the first few minutes (or more) are often occupied with cumbersome details such as setting up an environment, which results in very little time spent actually writing code. We were certain there must be a better way.

Code School has been doing exciting things with learning to program online. This is why we decided to team up with them to create a way for developers to learn to use the Google Drive API, with no setup required. In the new Discover Drive course, you can learn at your own pace from your web browser. You’ll spend less time fussing with coding environments and more time writing code.

To find out what the course is all about, go check it out at Code School. Happy coding!


Greg Knoke is a Technical Writer in the Google Drive Developer Relations Team. Prior to joining Google, he worked as a scientist developing image and signal processing algorithms. His current interests include new technologies, content management, information architecture, cooking, music, and photography.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

By John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst

You think infinite scroll is cool? Search-friendly infinite scroll is even cooler! We just announced on the Webmaster Central Blog how to make infinite scroll pages more search-friendly, helping search engines access all the individual items in the category/gallery so the content is available in search results.

With some implementations of infinite scroll, crawlers aren’t great at scrolling down or clicking “load more”, so they may not crawl items displayed after the initial page load. To help the crawler see all the content, we recommend converting the infinite scroll page to paginated series by using the HTML5 History API. (Of course, the pagination is seamless to the user.)


Here’s a demo of infinite scroll with pagination. The demo isn’t production-ready, but the key search engine-friendly points to note are:

• Coverage: All individual items are accessible. With traditional infinite scroll, individual items displayed after the initial page load aren’t discoverable to crawlers.
• No overlap: Each item is listed only once in the paginated series (that is, no duplication of items).

For the full details, check out our new post on the Webmaster Central blog.


John Mueller is a Webmaster Trends Analyst in Zurich, working with webmasters and Google engineers to make the web better. In his time off, he builds robots with his kids to take over the world (or at least mow the lawn).

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

By Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President

Cross-posted from the Google Cloud Platform Blog

Please join me and the senior engineering leadership of Google Cloud Platform at Google Cloud Platform Live in San Francisco on March 25, 2014. We’ll announce a number of new products, features and updates to Google Cloud Platform, and showcase the investments we’re making in building the world’s best public cloud.

We are making a small number of tickets available to the general public to attend the event in San Francisco, so request a spot early in order to be on the list. For people who can’t attend in person, we are opening our offices in New York City and Seattle to a limited number of guests for a live viewing party with local flavor. And for people across the globe, you can tune in on YouTube to catch all the sessions live.

See you on March 25th!


Urs Hölzle is Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

By Joe Faith, Product Manager

Cross-posted from the Google Cloud Platform Blog

Google Cloud SQL is a fully managed MySQL service hosted on Google Cloud Platform, providing a database backbone for applications running on Google App Engine or Google Compute Engine. Today, we are announcing Cloud SQL is generally available (GA), now with: encryption of customer data, a 99.95% uptime SLA, and support for databases up to 500GB in size.

Secure Encrypted Data
Cloud SQL data is now automatically encrypted. This adds to the existing security and reliability features, including:

• Customer data, including in database tables and temporary files, is automatically stored encrypted (with encryption of backups coming soon).
• All Cloud SQL traffic on Google’s internal networks is encrypted.
• External connections can be encrypted using SSL.
• All hosts and Google App Engine applications connecting to your instance must be explicitly authorized.
• MySQL user grants can be used to control access at the database, table, or even column level.
• Data is replicated multiple times in multiple locations.
• Scheduled backups are automatically taken by default.

Larger databases
All Cloud SQL instances can now store up to 500GB, from our smallest D0 instance costing just $0.025 per hour up to D32 instances with 16GB of RAM. Your data is replicated multiple times in multiple zones and automatically backed up, all included in the price of the service. And you only pay for the storage that you actually use, so you don’t need to reserve this storage in advance.

SLA for availability
Replicated storage means we can guarantee 99.95% availability of the service. And because even a reduced service is not acceptable for many applications, we have set a high bar for availability: for example, we regard a single minute of just 20% connection failure as a downtime. See the SLA for more details.

Developer traction
Cloud SQL has seen some great developer traction, with a range of businesses relying on it for core applications:

• Costco uses Google Compute Engine and Cloud SQL to run public e-commerce sites. As Don Burdick, Senior Vice President of Global Ecommerce at Costco, says, “Costco is the world's leading membership club warehouse with annual sales exceeding $100B. As part of our philosophy to keep costs down and pass savings on to our members, in June 2013 we implemented our ecommerce site for Mexico on Google Cloud Platform. The site has been operational since October 2013 and the Google Cloud Platform performance has exceeded our expectations. As a result of this project's success, we're currently migrating the website of one of our other countries to Google Cloud Platform.”
• LiveHive is a social selling application used by 25,000+ sales professionals. Fritz Mueller, Vice President of Products says, "We found Google's Cloud SQL service to be an ideal combination of performance and convenience. Performance is key to us because we provide our customers with real-time data about their sales execution. With Google's Cloud SQL, we focus on building the functionality our customers want without worrying about reliability, scalability and upgrades."
• Ocado manages logistics and e-commerce for some of the largest supermarkets in the UK. General Manager James Donkin says, “We're excited about the flexibility Cloud SQL brings to support quick development cycles that foster innovation, while scaling easily when required.”
• Mark Kornfilt, co-founder of Live video streaming platform LiveStream, said “Thanks to Google App Engine and Cloud SQL, we were able to go from a new product concept to its launch in less than two months. This allows us to focus on building the product instead of worrying about operations, and provides all the tools needed to build a robust, reliable and scalable web app out of the box.”

Try it now
Learn more about Google Cloud SQL and try it now here.


Joe Faith is a Product Manager on the Google Cloud Team. In a previous life he was a researcher in machine learning, bioinformatics, and information visualization, and was founder of charity fundraising site Fundraising Skills.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

By Louis Gray, Program Manager, Google Developers Live

Cross-posted from +Google Developers


We made so many Google Developers Live videos this week that if you watched them end to end, it would – well, it would take a long time. So here’s our weekly summary of what happened, to help you pick and choose what looks good to you. But feel free to watch them all if you like.



Or you could go directly to the videos and posts mentioned:

• DevBytes: Google Cast SDK http://goo.gl/VWEv9D
• Behind the Code: Using the Data Layer http://goo.gl/y8ow1W
• dotJS Interviews Addy Osmani and Nicolas Geoffray http://goo.gl/4uv8Bl
• YouTube Developers Live: Subscribing to a Channel in v3 http://goo.gl/F5PFzd
• Women Techmakers with Karen Sandeler and Marina Zhurakhinskaya http://goo.gl/HDfZEg
• Introduction to Google Apps Script (Japanese) http://goo.gl/sFLbs5
• GDL Spain: Go for Pythonistas http://goo.gl/ESZhsy
• Summer of Code Organization Applications Deadline http://goo.gl/U4dsF3

To make sure you don't miss a single event, subscribe to Google Developers on YouTube or just click the red YouTube button on the right nav, and check us out at http://developers.google.com/live.

+Louis Gray is a Program Manager on Google's Developer Relations Team, running Google Developers Live. He believes life is but a (live) stream.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

By Paul Kinlan, Developer Advocate and aspiring Creative Coder

I sometimes hear phrases like “Artists create, developers code”, but nothing could be further from the truth. We are all a creative bunch with a passion for exploring and creating amazing works that push the boundaries of what we believe is possible with modern computing technology. Sometimes we just need some inspiration and an outlet.

This summer, Google are teaming up with the Barbican in London to celebrate the creative use of technology with a DevArt interactive gallery, as part of the Digital Revolution exhibition. And we want you to be a part of it.



As part of this exhibition, we’re looking for the next up-and-coming developer artist. This is your opportunity to express your creativity in new ways, and to have your work featured in the Barbican and seen by millions of people around the world.

To get started all you need is an idea, a Github account and a browser to visit g.co/devart to show us what you would create. From there, we’ll pick one creator whose work will sit alongside some of the world’s finest interactive artists who are also creating installations for DevArt: Karsten Schmidt, Zach Lieberman, and the duo Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet.

You can use any blend of technologies such as OpenFrameworks or Processing, Arduino or Raspberry Pi for your project. The only requirement is that you use at least one Google technology from any of the four groups below:

• Languages: Go or Dart.
• Platforms: Chrome Apps, Android, Google Compute Engine or App Engine.
• Toolkits: Any use of Google Web Toolkit or Polymer.
• APIs: Any use of a Google API. The full list is here.

All the installations are being actively developed as Open Source on Github, giving you a rare look into artists’ ways of working with modern technologies.

Head over to g.co/devart to kick off your project. If you are excited to be a part of this project but need some more inspiration, look over our collection of catalogued entries from our artists and others to see how they start to explore their creativity.


Paul Kinlan is a Developer Advocate in the UK on the Chrome team specialising on mobile. He lives in Liverpool and loves trying to progress the city's tech community from places like DoES Liverpool hack-space.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

By John Affaki, Engineering Manager

Updated Feb. 14 to say that the Google Cast SDK for Android is now available.

Back in July we announced the developer preview of the Google Cast Software Development Kit (SDK), the underlying Chromecast technology that enables multi-screen experiences across mobile devices (phones, tablet, laptops) and large-screen displays. Starting today, the Google Cast SDK is available for developing and publishing Google Cast-ready apps.

The Google Cast SDK is simple to integrate because there’s no need to write a new app. Just incorporate the SDK into your existing mobile and web apps to bring your content to the TV. You are in control of how and when you develop and publish your cast-ready apps through the Google Cast developer console. The SDK is available on Android and iOS as well as on Chrome through the Google Cast browser extension.



Receiver app support
You have many options for displaying content on Chromecast. For simple media applications, you can use the default media player that can play back HTML5 media content. You can also customize it with your own branding and style using CSS.

For non-media applications, or for more flexibility and design options, you can build your own custom receiver application using standard web technologies. With a custom receiver you can build virtually any application while including support for many streaming protocols, including MPEG-DASH, HLS, and Microsoft Smooth Streaming, all of which are available in the Media Player Library.

Sample apps
To make it easier for you to provide an optimized user experience on the TV screen, we have created sample apps for Android, iOS and Chrome. For Android, you’ll find a Cast Companion library to make your integration of Google Cast even easier.

Availability
All Chromecast devices have already been updated to the latest software with support for the Google Cast SDK. The Google Cast extension for Chrome supporting the latest SDK will start rolling out today. The Google Cast SDK for Android is now available on Android devices worldwide as part of the Google Play services 4.2 update. The Google Cast SDK for iOS is available starting today. You can find the details for each platform in our documentation.

Head over to the Google Cast Developers site to get started with the Google Cast SDK. We look forward to your feedback and seeing what you develop with the SDK.

Happy casting!


John Affaki manages the client software and services teams for Google Cast. He never grew out of childhood and spends his free time playing video games and reading comic books, but is glad to have some real kids now.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor