Fridaygram: Nigel Tufnel’s delight

By Scott Knaster, Google Code Blog Editor

One of the most rewarding aspects of working on neat technology is when you can make a difference in the real world. Our Custom Search team has been collaborating with U. S. agencies to produce a job search engine for use by returning military veterans. This is especially cool because today is Veterans Day in the U. S.

Once you’ve seen the customized job search engine, I hope you’ll be inspired to use Custom Search or some other interesting technology to make a difference with your own projects. And speaking of interesting projects...

Wan and exhausted, a team of six men emerged last week from a mock spacecraft after spending almost a year and a half on a simulated trip to Mars. The six lived in windowless capsules in Moscow for 520 days to see how they would react to the confinement.

One physiologist, a trainer, a surgeon, and three engineers made up the diverse crew, who were said to be in good health at the end of the mission. Their virtual trip to Mars qualifies as either a really grueling job or a bizarre vacation.

Wonderful as the simulated Mars mission was, it can’t compete with this classic video – especially today. Have a great weekend!


Wondering what this post is doing on Google Code Blog? Once a week, on Friday, we lighten up and have a little fun, posting curious, clever, and interesting bits and pieces. One more thing: we hope you find one not-so-hidden date-appropriate message in this post.

Startup Weekend and GTUGs

By Stephanie Liu, Developer Relations, Startup and Community Outreach

We announced a partnership with Startup Weekend today that will support budding entrepreneurs all over the world.

If you’ve never experienced a Startup Weekend before, it’s an intense 54 hour event where excited entrepreneurs (developers, designers, product and business folks) get together on a Friday afternoon, pitch ideas, form into teams, then feverishly hack on a prototype application to demo on Sunday night. It’s an energizing event, where strangers become teammates overnight, and the focus is on doing instead of talking.

We love the spirit of these weekends – it’s the spirit of entrepreneurship and creation, and at the heart of it all are developers. That’s why we’re working with our local developer communities (Google Technology User Groups) and Startup Weekend to host pre-Startup Weekend bootcamps on relevant Google tech (like App Engine, Android, and Chrome/HTML5, with more to come).

Find a Bootcamp or Startup Weekend coming up near you! You can also join your local GTUG.


Stephanie Liu joined Google in 2005, and has worked with a variety of products, including AdWords, Google Video, and YouTube. She's currently focused on outreach programs to early stage tech startups, as well as growing and supporting Google's developer community (gtugs.org),

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Google Apps EMEA developer tour

By Nicolas Garnier, Developer Relations Team

A few of us from Developer Relations will be going around EMEA in the next few months to meet with developers and talk about some Google Apps technologies for developers.

This tour will start with Ryan Boyd and Michael Manoochehri speaking about different Google Apps topics at Google Developer Days in Tel-Aviv and Berlin, and a GTUG meeting in Munich.

Then I will be giving an Apps Script talk at the Barcelona Developers Conference followed by a series of Apps Script Hackathons in France (multiple locations), Zurich, Munich and Dublin.

For more information about the tour and to register for these events, please visit the Google Apps EMEA Developer Tour website.



We plan to organize many other Google Apps events close to you in the near future. Look for updates on the Google Apps EMEA Developer Tour website or keep an eye out for further announcements on this blog.


Nicolas Garnier joined Google’s Developer Relations in 2008 and lives in Zurich. He is a Developer Advocate focusing on Google Apps and Web APIs. Before joining Google, Nicolas worked at Airbus and at the French Space Agency where he built web applications for scientific researchers.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

OAuth 2.0 Playground: open to developers

By Nicolas Garnier, Developer Relations Team

Cross-posted on the Google Apps Developer Blog

In March, we announced that all of the Google Web APIs adopted support for OAuth 2.0. It is the recommended authorization mechanism when using Google Web APIs.

Today, we are announcing the OAuth 2.0 Playground, which simplifies experimentation with the OAuth 2.0 protocol and APIs that use the protocol. Trying out some requests in the OAuth 2.0 playground can help you understand how the protocol functions and make life easier when the time comes to use OAuth in your own code.

Selecting the APIs to authorize

With the OAuth 2.0 Playground, you can walk through each step of the OAuth 2.0 flow for server-side web applications: authorizing API scopes (screen shot above), exchanging authorization tokens (screen shot below), refreshing access tokens, and sending authorized requests to API endpoints. At each step, the Playground displays the full HTTP requests and responses.

Exchanging the authorization code for a refresh token and an access token

The OAuth Playground can also use custom OAuth endpoints in order to test non-Google APIs that support OAuth 2.0 draft 10.

OAuth configuration screen

You can click the link button to generate a link to a specific Playground state. This allows quick access to replay specific requests at a later time.

Generating a deep link to the playground’s current state

Please feel free to try the OAuth 2.0 Playground. We are happy to receive any feedback, bugs, or questions in the OAuth Playground forum.

Nicolas Garnier joined Google’s Developer Relations in 2008 and lives in Zurich. He is a Developer Advocate focusing on Google Apps and Web APIs. Before joining Google, Nicolas worked at Airbus and at the French Space Agency where he built web applications for scientific researchers.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

App Engine 1.6.0 out of Preview release

By By Greg D'Alesandre, App Engine team

Three and a half years after App Engine's first Campfire One, App Engine has graduated from Preview and is now a fully supported Google product. We started out with the simple philosophy that App Engine should be "easy to use, easy to scale, and free to get started". And with 100 billion+ monthly hits, 300,000+ active apps, and 100,000+ developers using our product every month, it's clear that this philosophy resonates. Thanks to your support, Google is making a long term investment in App Engine.

When we announced our plans to leave Preview earlier this year, we made a commitment to improving the service by adding support for Python 2.7, Premier Accounts, and Backends as well as several changes launching today:

• Pricing: The new pricing structure announced in May (and updated based on feedback from the community) will now be reflected in your bill starting Nov 7.
• Terms of Service: We have a new terms of service, including a 3 year deprecation policy, effective today.
• Service Level Agreement: All paid applications on the High Replication Datastore are covered by our SLA.

We are holding a series of App Engine Office Hours via Google+ this week for anyone with questions about how this new pricing impacts your application. The list of times can be found on the Google Developers events page, with links to join the hangout while the office hours are scheduled. Also, please don't hesitate to contact us at appengine_updated_pricing@google.com with any questions or concerns.

You can read the full details of our release on the App Engine blog. We'd like to thank you for investing in our platform for the last three years. We look forward to what the future will bring.


Greg D'Alesandre is now the Senior Product Manager for App Engine after coming back from riding the Google Wave in Sydney. And he's obsessed with chocolate, no, seriously, obsessed.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

You heard it here first–add Google Developers on Google+

Scott

Monica

By Scott Knaster and Monica Tran, Google Developers Team

Did you know that 722 Googlers contributed to Google I/O in big ways and small in 2011? And that by the end of our Google Developer Day world tour, we will have sent 195 speakers around the world? Or that a team of 22 technical writers crafts all of the documentation you see at Google Code? It really does take a village, and that village includes you. So starting today, you can add our Google Developers page to your circles on Google+ to meet the people behind the products and platforms.

Our Google Developers page will be your primary source for updates from our platform teams, in addition to exclusives on events, behind-the-scenes Hangouts, and maybe banter on new API tweaks or even the latest YouTube sensation. It’ll also be the first place to get info on Google I/O 2012 (including I/O Live and I/O Extended), so we encourage you to get a head start by setting up your Google+ profile and adding Google Developers to a circle.

We’ve got an exciting lineup for you in the coming weeks, so keep checking back as we share our circles, announcements about Google I/O, and get our Google+ page rolling. And in case you’re wondering about Google+ Pages or want to create your own page, read more on the Official Google Blog.


Scott Knaster is a Technical Writer and is editor of the Google Code Blog. He has every issue of MAD magazine, which tells you something about him.

You might remember Monica Tran from I/O Live or one of our eight Google Developer Days around the world. This year, she’s back to lead the charge on Google I/O 2012.

Get ready for g|egypt 2.0

By Rania Hadi, MENA Outreach Manager

We had an awesome time at g|egypt last year, and we are excited for version 2.0. Following back-to-back g|days in Dubai and Jordan, we’ll be holding our next g|day in Cairo, Egypt, from December 11-13.

Last year we had great sessions, and this year will be even more packed with all things Google. Each of the three days will have separate tracks, focusing on various audiences: Day 1 is for Business Professionals, Entrepreneurs, & Students; Day 2 is for Webmasters & IT Professionals; and Day 3 is for Developers & Programmers. The sessions will be more advanced this year, so brush up on your AdWords skills, your App Engine coding, and your Google+ knowledge. The more you show, the more likely you’ll get an invitation. We’re even having specific sessions for Android/Mobile application developers this year.

We’ll also be bringing back your favorite Googlers. They’ll be around to interact with you, answer questions, and brainstorm. We’ll have more updates and details to share on our site, but for now, be sure to register. We have a limited number of seats so the stronger your application, the more likely you are to receive a spot at g|egypt 2.0. We’ll send invitations to those who are accepted by December 1st, 2011.

If you still have doubts, check out recent g|uae & g|jordan 2.0 photos for a sneak peek of the fun that awaits!


Rania Hadi has been with Google since 2004 and now works on Outreach in MENA. She focuses on building relationships and promoting Google technologies with the developer and tech communities.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Fridaygram: rock, screech, and roll

By Scott Knaster, Google Code Blog Editor

Seems like every few days, Google+ adds a new feature or three. Sometimes the features are small and useful, and sometimes they’re very cool – like the new YouTube playlist feature that automatically finds music from your favorite artists on YouTube and plays it.

Part of the fun of this feature is how easy it is to use. From your Google+ page, mouse over the YouTube button at the top right, click in the box that slides out, and type the name of an artist. Just like that, you have a YouTube playlist from the artist you chose. You can +1 the videos or even share them back to your circles. It’s low friction and very handy.

From left to right: YouTube slider (closed), slider (open), pop-up playlist, slider (while playing)

Not all sounds are pleasant, and one of the worst is that old classic, fingernails on a chalkboard (did you just shudder?). Because science is awesome, scientists have studied exactly what makes this sound so awful. It’s not the high-pitched screech, they found: it’s the mid-range. They think it’s because our ears have evolved to be sensitive to those sounds. And watching it done makes it sound even worse.

Finally, while you’re enjoying your weekend, take a moment to go to google.com and search for do a barrel roll. This one is extra fun for you Star Fox fans.


Fridaygram is not the typical APIs and tools stuff we usually post about here. Instead, we find fun and cool facts and features to tell you about, from Google and other places. And I’m sorry about the screeching thing.

Build great font tools and services with sfntly

By Stuart Gill, sfntly Architect

Today we’re releasing the sfntly font programming library as open source. Created by the Google Internationalization Engineering team, the sfntly Java and C++ library makes it easy for programmers to build high performance font manipulation applications and services. sfntly is really, really fast: Raph Levien, Google Web Fonts Engineer, says, "Using sfntly we can subset a large font in a millisecond. It’s faster than gzip'ing the result."

Starting today, both Java and C++ programmers can use sfntly to quickly and easily develop code to read, edit, and subset OpenType and TrueType fonts. The Google Web Fonts team uses the Java version to dynamically subset fonts, and the Chrome/Chromium browser uses the C++ version to subset fonts for PDF printing.

sfntly (\s-’font-lē\) was built from the ground up to provide high performance, an easy to use API, and both high-level and low-level access to font data. Font objects are both thread safe and high performance while still providing access for editing. After about a year of internal development sfntly is stable enough to move it into open source and share with others.

Currently, sfntly has editing support for most core TrueType and OpenType tables, with support for more tables being added. Using sfntly’s basic sfnt table read and write capability, programmers can do basic manipulation of any of the many font formats that use the sfnt container, including TrueType, OpenType, AAT/GX, and Graphite. Tables that aren’t specifically supported can still be handled and round-tripped by the library without risk of corruption.

sfntly is already capable of allowing many really exciting things to be done with fonts, but there is much more planned: expanding support for the rest of the OpenType spec and other sfnt-container font formats, other serialization forms, better higher level abstractions, and more.

I encourage you to you join us on our journey as a user or a contributor.


Stuart Gill is a Software Engineer in the Internationalization Engineering team at Google where he focuses on fonts and text. When not doing that he is playing the blues on his guitar, studying Japanese, or puttering about the house and garage.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Fridaygram: small world, little robots, tiny feature

By Scott Knaster, Google Code Blog Editor

Satellite images make the world seem smaller by letting us view images of buildings and neighborhoods that are thousands of miles away. The satellite views in Google Earth and Google Maps are updated periodically. Want to know when that happens? This week we added support for 43 more languages to Follow Your World, a web site that emails you when satellite images are updated for anywhere you like. Just enter a location and your email address, and you’ll be notified when a new aerial image is available.

Back on earth, engineers at UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab have an awesome job: they get to build little robot bugs. Recently, the team added wings to its 10-centimeter Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod (DASH) robot to see how the alteration would affect mobility. The plastic wings helped DASH move faster and climb steeper hills, among other improvements.

Finally, here’s a tiny new feature: if you do a Google search for ip, you’ll see your computer’s IP address. Handy!

And also: check out today’s Google Doodle, which honors the birthday of Mary Blair, a Disney Legend known for her work on It’s a Small World and many other theme park and movie projects. (If you’re reading this after October 21st, you can see the Doodle on our archive page within a few days.)


Small explanation: Fridaygram posts are lighter than our usual stuff, meant to provide a little geeky fun at the end of the week.

Updated at 4:30 PM to say that Follow Your World added language support this week, rather than launching.