AdMob Native Express UITableView - Mobile Ads Garage #12

Episode #12 of the Mobile Ads Garage has hit the airwaves! Native Express ads fit right in with list-based user interfaces, and in this episode you'll learn how to integrate them into an iOS app that uses a UITableViewController for its primary UI. Along the way you'll get a detailed set of steps, see screencasts of implementation in Xcode, plus get a handy technique for tapping into the ad lifecycle to load one after another instead of all at once!

Find out how you compare to developers around you, and around the world. Get instant feedback from VisionMobile's 15-minute developer survey, and insights into the global community in February 2017. http://vmob.me/DE1Q17Google3

Land Lines, an experiment exploring +Google Earth satellite images through gesture. Doodle to begin http://g.co/landlines

Formatting text with the Google Slides API

One of the best practices for creating great slide decks is to minimize the amount of text. It means that if you do have text in a presentation, the (few) words that you do use must have higher impact and be visually appealing. This is even more true when the slides are generated by a software application rather than being crafted by hand, for example, when using the recently-launched (http://goo.gl/o6EFwk) Google Slides API.

In this DevByte video, Google engineer +wesley chun shows developers how to format text using the Slides API. The sample app in the video creates a slide with several text paragraphs then uses the API to format that text in a variety of ways. If you want to dig into the code, check out the deep dive post (http://goo.gl/YwUilm)

Find out more at https://goo.gl/zkbilV

#SlidesAPI #GSuite #GoogleSlides #SheetsAPI

Earlier this week, the Google Developers YouTube channel crossed the 1 million subscribers threshold. Thank you! https://goo.gl/RbnWBg

Images for Billions #3

Double exposure — you caught us! Using vector drawables formats on Android incurs some costs, as graphics are generated at the correct pixel density for your user’s device at run-time. Twice, even, when you consider supporting landscape mode.

Fear not — while we still recommend using vector drawables to reduce APK size, there are a few things you can do to mitigate run-time overheads incurred. Shipping an SVG and converting to bitmap on first load, and then storing that in a managed cache, limits run-time overhead to first load and keeps the APK small. Storing in a managed cache will then ensure that frequently used images like icons aren’t then re-generated repeatedly.

On the web, SVG (including Inline SVG) has great support on mobile and desktop browsers, and optimization tools can significantly reduce SVG size. Likewise, Data URIs are well supported. Both can be inlined in CSS.

Vector assets: https://developer.android.com/studio/write/vector-asset-studio.html
Inline SVG: http://udacity.github.io/responsive-images/examples/2-11/svgDataUri/
Inline SVG support: http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg-html5
Optimization tools: http://petercollingridge.appspot.com/svg-optimiser
Data URI support: http://caniuse.com/#feat=datauri

This is the third of five weekly posts we’re sharing on how to optimize images on Android and Web for billions of users. Check out our full lists of resources at g.co/dev/billions.

G+ Images post #1: https://goo.gl/6jZiVA
G+ Images post #2: https://goo.gl/uNn7hj

On this week's #DevShow: Google Assistant, Augmented Reality, Machine Learning, and more with +Timothy Jordan!

Learn about Kubernetes and Cloud on #CoffeeWithAGoogler via +Laurence Moroney https://goo.gl/zTWUDY

Images for Billions #4

When your Android app is doing the work of fetching images over a network, you can leave your users waiting if connections are slow. Two tips to keep things feeling speedy:

First, prioritize text data requests before images. This lets your user navigate past loading images that they don’t need anyway.

Next, display placeholder colors while fetching images. The palette support library lets you select a placeholder color block based on the requested image’s color balance, and set that as the background in an ImageView, so the look of your app stays consistent while loading images.

This is the fourth of five weekly posts we’re sharing on how to optimize images on Android and Web for billions of users. Check out our full lists of resources at g.co/dev/billions.

G+ Images post #1: https://goo.gl/6jZiVA
G+ Images post #2: https://goo.gl/uNn7hj
G+ Images post #3: https://goo.gl/IH3wQF

Pallet support library: https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/support-library/features.html#v7-palette

Here’s an example of using placeholder colors to show images are loading:

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

Today we are announcing a full range of solutions to make it easier to build secure smart devices and get them connected. We are updating the Weave platform to provide an easy way to add cloud connectivity and management to devices, and enable access to Google services like the Google Assistant and many more over time. We are also releasing a Developer Preview of Android Things, an operating system for connected devices that has the support and scale of existing Android developer infrastructure. You can now develop IoT software using Android Studio and the Android SDKframework APIs.

Learn more about Google’s IoT platform from our blog post at https://goo.gl/ElHpIz, and join our new Google+ IoT community at https://g.co/iotdev.

#Weave #AndroidThings

On this week's #DevShow: Google Maps APIs, Firebase Test Lab for Android and more with Timothy Jordan.

Actions on Google: Introduction to Conversation Actions

Starting today, you can build Conversation Actions using Actions on Google. This developer platform allows you to bring your services to the Google Assistant on Google Home. Using the Actions SDK, developers can directly parse requests and construct responses that adhere to the Conversation API. Developer tools such as API.AI make the experience even easier, and you can use a graphical user interface to define the conversation.

It is really easy to get started with Actions on Google, and you can learn more from our blog post https://goo.gl/RjhcOF and the introduction video below. Join us at our new G+ community at http://g.co/actionsdev to keep up to date and share ideas with other developers.

#ActionsOnGoogle