APAC Developer Blog

Signing Off

2011-06-09T14:31:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everyone who has been a loyal subscriber of this blog over the past few years. After some discussion, we recognize that we're just not generating enough content on this blog to warrant your time, so we won't be posting here any longer. We encourage you to visit the Google Code blog for a timely dose of developer product and API news, events, trends and best practices all over the world.

Posted by Christine Songco Lau, SE Asia Developer Relations

Google Day Event at Sripatum University, Bangkok, Thailand

2010-03-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

Sripatum University in Bangkok

Students of Sripatum University gathered at the Google Day event

Linne Ha and Professor Singhirunnusorn at the Google Day

Google Program Manager Bill Luan presented Google Maps API and HTML5

Google Day

Googlers met with Dr. Pongkachorn and Bangkok BarCamp organizer John Berns

Google Day event organizers and volunteers post for group photo after the event

From March 9th through March 11th, 2010, Google organized a “Google Day” event at the Sripatum University in Bangkok, Thailand, as part of Google’s Word of Mouth project with the Software Engineering and Computer Science Departments of Sripatum University. Many students from these departments came to the event to help test Google’s speech apps in Thai. Prof. Benny Wasuwath Pongkachorn, Ph.D, and Lecturer Khomsum Singhirunnusorn of the Software Engineering Department also came to the event to provide assistance and guidance. John Berns, the organizer of Bangkok BarCamp community, also joined the event.

At the 3-day “Google Day” event, Linne Ha, International Program Manager of Google Research, working with a network of students and volunteers, conducted testing of local dialect for speech-to-text research. Bill Luan, Technical Program Manager of Developer Relations of Google, presented Google developer technology API trainings to the students and faculty staff at the university: “Introductioin of Google Maps API with business cases”, and “Introduction of HTML5 and the furrue of Web Apps”. During the event, Dr. Pongkachorn also conducted a Q&A session for the students to ask Bill Luan questions about Google technologies and Google corporate culture, while providing the translation between the students and the speaker.

After the event, Dean of Department of Informatics, Prof. Janjai Bhuripanyo, along with Dr. Pongkachorn, met with the Googlers and discussed the department curriculum plans for the future, and demonstrated the embedded application SDK tool developed by the department.

Google wishes to thank Sripatum University for the assistance and collaboration of this event. We look forward to further collaborations in the future in Thailand and in the Southeast Asia region.

Bill Luan

Technical Program Manager
Developer Relations,
Google

DevQuiz - Even registration is fun

2010-02-27T10:31:00.000-08:00

We've been thinking about the best way for the selection of attendees of developer events for more than three years. First-come-first-serve? Lottery? Neither seems to be completely fair; plus, we don't think these can select the most passionate and skillful developers and it's not fun for anyone either.

We were searching for some new way to:

Be fair
Select appropriate developers
Entertain developers

Now we are excited to announce a much better way: DevQuiz.

Those who plan to participate in DevFest Japan 2010 are required to answer questions in DevQuiz. (Sorry, the quiz is only in Japanese) There are several questions; some are really easy ones and others are a bit tough but should not be difficult for developers. The top 400 high achievers will get invitations for DevFest 2010 Japan.

Here's a sample:

Please post your email address (registered for devfest 2010 japan) to this server with the following encryption:

A -> X
B -> Y
C -> Z
D -> A
Z -> W
@ -> @

Post your encrypted email address and keyword as "{{ secret_key}}" to http://devquiz.appspot.com/personalpost

Please do a POST in JSON format as below with Content-type=text/plain

{

"key": keyword

"pass": encrypted mail address

}

We plan to disclose the solutions to quizzes and announce the results at DevFest Japan.

This quiz program is purely experimental and if we get positive feedback, we can have quizzes as a streamlined process for selection of developers at future developer events.

Give DevQuiz a shot, and we hope to see you at this year's DevFest!

Posted by Naoki Ishihara, Developer Relation Japan Team

Bring Your Lab Coats

2009-11-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

With the recent release of Android 2.0 and the growing number of available devices, we want to give developers a convenient way to test drive their apps on these new devices. We also want to make our Android advocates available to answer any questions you may have.

We are pleased to announce that we will host a series of all day Android developer labs over the next month in the following cities (dates in local time):

Mountain View, CA - Nov 9
New York, NY - Nov 16
London, UK - Nov 17
Tokyo, JP - Nov 18
Taipei, TW - Nov 20

Due to limited space, developers who have already published an application in Android Market will be given priority. You can request a spot on a first-come, first-serve basis by going to this page. We will send a follow-up email with venue information and other registration details to those who have secured a spot.

Thank you for your continued excitement in Android. We look forward to meeting many of you in the coming weeks!

Posted by Eric Chu, Android Mobile Platform

Google India Women in Engineering Award, 2010

2009-09-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

Diversity at Google means having a workforce that reflects the diversity of our customers' perspectives, ideas and cultures -- one that thinks and acts inclusively, and fundamentally values people's similarities and differences.

As part of our ongoing commitment to encourage women to excel in computing and technology, 2007-2008 saw the institution of the Google India Women in Engineering Award, with the objective of recognizing and rewarding deserving women students in the field of Computer Science and Engineering. The initiative has been positively and enthusiastically received by both students and colleges, and is now an established entity in the student community.

With two successful editions behind us, we are pleased to return with the Google India Women in Engineering Award, 2010. This year, the award will be open for applications from September 15, 2009 to October 31, 2009, and is open to any woman student of Computer Science, in an under-graduate, post-graduate or doctoral program, that meets the application criteria.

Aspirants to the award will be assessed on their academic excellence, passion for Computer Science and demonstrated leadership; the winners will be announced in 2010 and will take home a sum of INR 1,00,000 each. We look forward to inviting the winners for a conclave at the Google India engineering office, comprising of technical discussion with Google engineers, workshops, break out sessions, panel discussions and the award ceremony.

The award has been instituted to recognize women students who have made a mark in the field of Computer Science and hope it inspires many more to take up studies in this field and pursue it as a career.

Posted by Jayashri Ramamurti, Human Resources Manager, India

Interested in Mobile Applications? Check out the CodeAndroid User and Developer Group

2009-09-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

Reposted from the Solutions for SE Asia blog.

CodeAndroid is the Android Developer group for Singapore, a grassroot developer initiative to promote Android development locally as well as provide network and resources for everyone to benefit from it. Android is an open source operating system for mobile and embedded devices that is developed by the Open Handset Alliance, with the vision to create an open platform for device manufacturers, telcos and developers to foster innovation and speed up the creation of software to meet mobile users' needs. Since its formation in February 2009, CodeAndroid has organized four meet ups and gathered over 50 developers and users for each session, for developers to share their Android experience.

We also welcome non-developers who are interested in learning more about the Android platform and want to pick up basic concepts for development. Please feel free to also attend and network if you are a marketer or business owner looking for people to help you build your Android applications.

Looking forward, CodeAndroid is looking to help other cities around the region to setup CodeAndroid meetups, so as to build an Asia Pacific network of Android developers, to share resources and contacts. Even if you are from outside Singapore, and want to make a contribution to the Android community, feel free to contact us at codeandroid.org@gmail.com!

Check out the Singapore Application Directory for the list of Singapore-developed Android applications. You can also find them in Android Market, accessible via your Android-powered phone like the recently launched HTC Hero.

To keep informed of CodeAndroid happenings, or you wish to contribute to the community, you can follow us via:

CodeAndroid Website: www.Codeandroid.org

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54219346370&ref=mf

Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/CodeAndroid

Twitter: www.twitter.com/codeandroid

Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/group/WeCodeAndroid

IRC Channel (come and chat with us!): #codeandroid on irc.freenode.net (server)

Alternatively you can also download the CodeAndroid widget on your Android phone: Click here on your Android phone to install or search for "CodeAndroid" in Android market.

Mark the date, the next meetup will be on the 26th of September, 2pm at Google Singapore office (we will post up the event post very soon). Stay tuned to our group fan page as we are bringing a web conference call with the folks of Wikitude!

Photos and the slides from our last meetup are below. We would love to see you at our next meetup.

Test Driven Development: Part 2

View more presentations from CodeAndroid.

Design for Responsiveness : Multi-Threading

View more documents from CodeAndroid.

Introduction to Canvas

View more presentations from CodeAndroid.

Why Code 'for' Android and Motodev Studio

View more documents from CodeAndroid.

Guest Post From Zi Yong Chua, CodeAndroid

GTUG Tokyo is Riding the Wave

2009-08-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

In Japan, developers are quite excited about Wave, and we have been encouraging that excitement at Tokyo GTUG by holding multiple Wave-related events. First, we held a remote hack-a-thon from 25th-27th July, where developers could hack over the weekend wherever was comfortable for them.

On 27th evening, nearly 30 people gathered at Google Tokyo Office to watch Google Wave Engineer Seth Covitz give a tech talk and the hack-a-thon participants show off the results of their weekend. The best application of the night (awarded our "Grand Prix Prize"!) was MindMap, a collaborative brainstorming gadget, written by Mariko Gohda. Check out the screencast below:

Other gadget demos included a scheduling gadget by aodag, and a soccer formation visualization gadget by Nakona. The robots API also got love - Nakano.T created a bot to let Wave users play Shiritori, a word game played by saying a word that starts with the last syllable of the word given by the previous player, and Yasushi Ando wrote a robot that demonstrated using JRuby on Google App Engine.

We then held our monthly user group meeting on August 5th, where more than 100 Japanese developers showed up to hear about Google Wave. Atsushi Nakamura first gave a talk in Japanese about using the Google Wave UI and the various APIs (see pic below). Then, Googler Pamela Fox gave a talk in (slow) English that included a live coding walkthrough of the APIs, where she made a gadget that enabled bidding on her Akihibara-acquired furry cat ears, and a robot that emailed her every time a Wave was updated ("Maileybot").

Coming up, Tokyo GTUG will be hosting events about Maps, OpenSocial, Android, and Chrome/HTML 5. We encourage developers to give lightning talks at all of our monthly meetings, so please let us know if interested. Or, just come and listen and learn with us!

Posted by Takashi Matsuo, GTUG Tokyo

GTUG Beijing held its first event

2009-08-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

Google recently started a worldwide effort for local developer community building and promotion, and to facilitate the communication and information exchange among the developers. This program is the Google Technology User Group (GTUG). At the moment, more than seventy cities in thirty plus countries around the world has established local GTUG, more than half of them have started their first events.

The first GTUG in Beijing, mainland China , formally established its presence on August 1st. Its objectives are to provide a community for the developers in Beijing and its vicinity areas to gather together periodically to share knowledge and exchange ideas about open source, free software, open web standards, Google products, and web business opportunities.

At its first event on August 1st, Google Greater China President Kai-Fu Lee and China Open Source Promotion Foundation leader Mr. Kewei Song sent congratulatory notes to the event. Mr. Song also presented the current state of open source in China. Engineers from Google China and local developer communities presented OpenSocial introduction, Google Maps and Android. Attendees were satisfied with the opportunity to join this community event. Event attendee group photo are posted here.

Beijing GTUG hopes to see more web developers in Beijing and the surrounding areas join the group and promote web technology together. We welcome developer community leaders in other cities of China also start your own GTUG. Information about how to start a GTUG is here.

Bill Luan, Developer Relations, Google China

Kyoto GTUG Android Hackathon

2009-08-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

Hello, everybody! I'm the Kyoto GTUG Manager, Daisuke Yamashita.

In the Kyoto GTUG, we want to offer developers a place where they can actually get their hands on the code in hackathons.

Our next hackathon will focus on Android, and will be held on September 5, 2009.

Even if you're not familiar with Android technology, you can still participate because we'll have a few learning sessions before the event.

If you're interested, please join our group and register for the event.

We are looking forward to your participation.

Dates:
14 Aug(Fri) 19:00-21:00 Prior studying for hackathon
21 Aug(Fri) 19:00-21:00 Prior studying for hackathon
29 Aug(Sat) 17:00-19:00 Prior meeting for hackathon
5 Sep(Sat) 10:00-18:00 Android Hackathon in Kyoto

Location:
Meeting roon in Kyoto Research Park

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=ja&msa=0&msid=116246349710164293508.0004705ac023d5a2a0286&ll=34.995076,135.739217&spn=0.007137,0.009645&z=17

134 Chudoji Minami-machi, Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto

(These event supported by Kyoto Research Park Corp [http://www.krp.co.jp/])

Posted by Daisuke Yamashita, Kyoto GTUG Manager

Japanese version follows:

みなさま、はじめまして。京都GTUGマネージャーの山下です。

京都GTUGでは、

勉強会だけでなくHackathonのような、実際にGoogleのテクノロジーを利用する
機会を提供しております。

現在申し込み可能なイベントとしては、9月5日に開催される「Android Hackathon in Kyoto」が
あります。

参加は必須ではありませんが、Hackathonの前に勉強会を２回開催しますので、Androidを初めて
触るという方でもお気軽にご参加頂けます。

みなさまのご参加をお待ちしております。

日時：
8月14日(金) 19:00-21:00 事前勉強会
8月21日(金) 19:00-21:00 事前勉強会
8月29日(土) 17:00-19:00 事前ミーティング
9月5日(土) 10:00-18:00 Android Hackathon in Kyoto

場所：
京都リサーチパーク
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=ja&msa=0&msid=116246349710164293508.0004705ac023d5a2a0286&ll=34.995076,135.739217&spn=0.007137,0.009645&z=17
京都府京都市下京区中堂寺南町１３４番地
(今回のイベントは、京都リサーチパーク株式会社様[http://www.krp.co.jp/]より会場をご提供いただきました。)
(京都リサーチパーク株式会社では、ベンチャー支援事業を行っております。)

グループ: http://group.kyoto-gtug.org/
申し込みフォーム: http://link.kyoto-gtug.org/android-hackathon1
ウェブサイト: http://kyoto-gtug.org/
Kyoto GTUG ロゴファイル: http://sites.google.com/a/kyoto-gtug.org/home/logo-1

Japan's mixi adds mobile support with its OpenSocial RESTful API

2009-07-27T20:44:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Hidetaka Yamashita, and I am in charge of mixi's OpenSocial Mobile project. I am very happy to announce that mixi has recently added support for mobile phones to our OpenSocial platform. mixi.jp is currently the most popular Japanese social networking service (SNS) and has more than 17 million registered users. You may have heard about our recently launched OpenSocial developer sandbox in April. With this announcement, we are introducing our "mixi apps for mobile" platform which is based on OpenSocial's RESTful API using 2-legged OAuth.

Background

In Japan most people use 3G mobile phones that connect to the Internet at max 7.2Mbps. Currently, more people access the web through mobile phones than through PCs. In mixi's case, access from PCs is approximately 30% compared to mobile phone access, which is 70%. Therefore, it is crucial for mixi to offer mobile phone support for OpenSocial applications.

How mixi's mobile platform works

mixi's mobile development platform is targeted for non-native mobile development, where third party developers build mobile social apps on their own application servers. However, when accessing the application from a mobile phone, users still point their phones to the main mixi site as it serves mainly as a proxy to the third party site. As the response returns from the third party site, the mixi Application Proxy processes the response (which is purely content) and merges it into a complete XHTML response (by adding a header and footer). It is then passed back to the requesting mobile phone. Since the core application itself resides on a third party site, developers build their apps using the RESTful API with 2-legged OAuth to securely access social data from mixi.

With mixi's RESTful API with 2-legged OAuth, OpenSocial applications can run anytime, anywhere!

Supported Features

API (requires authentication using 2-legged OAuth). You can access all the core OpenSocial APIs, as well as photos and communities on mixi.

Timeline (for mobile)

Closed beta version - Ongoing now
Consumer launch - September 2009
Official ads program - September 2009
Virtual currency and Payment API - October 2009

To learn more about mixi's new OpenSocial mobile platform please visit: http://developer.mixi.co.jp/. (Note: this site is in Japanese.)

Posted by Hidetaka Yamashita, mixi, Inc.

(This post originally appeared on the OpenSocial blog.)

Google Developer Day, Beijing China

2009-07-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

This year's Google Developer Day (GDD) in Beijing, China, concluded successfully on June 5th at the Beijing International Convention Center. Nearly 1800 people from all over China, including software and web developers, IT industry leaders, product managers, marketing managers, university professors and graduate students, as well as media and press, attended this year's event. The success of this year's event was represented by the rich contents of breakout sessions and the eager participation of various events by the conference attendees. Several event statistics below:

Attendees submitted 7,040 survey feedback forms
14 partners and other companies participated in the partner exhibition display booths
97 developers submitted Google technology application design showcase forms, and these showcase forms were displayed on a giant display board at the conference venue. Many attendees looked through these exhibitions with great interest, and taking photos of many displays to keep as references
This year's China GDD also included an evening entertainmnent with interactive knowledge sharing. 38 developers went on the stage to share their experiences and results of their innovations using Google developer technologies
A team of volunteers from the Google China office, showcased the various Google products
Many developers from leading web 2.0 companies in China displayed their company logos, these companies include developers who use Google Maps, Open Social, Android platforms: Mercedes Benz - Smart Car, Jeep China, Ctrip.com, eLong.com, Kuxun.com, Dianping.com, Anjuke.com, 51.com, J.com, Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile, China Unicom, etc.

Many conference attendees have expressed interests in using Google developer technologies after seeing the innovation and success stories, we are very happy that our efforts provided them the motivation to innovate on the web.

Below are some of survey results:

35% attendee's main goal is to learn new Google developer APIs, 21% wanted to learn more about the APIs they already know or use, 10% were most interested in listen to certain speakers, 15% were most interested in exchange with other developers, and 13% were most interested in exchange with other Googlers
90% attendees said that participating GDD was helpful to their future job
46% attendees said that by attending GDD, they are now likely or will use Google technologies in future development, while only 0.35% said they would still not use any Google technologioes
49% attendees most interested in Google Maps、31% in Open Social, 30% in App Engine, 33% in Chrome and Web technologies, 29% in O3D, and 8% in AdWords API
56% attendees thought one-day event was just about right, while 31% thought it was too short, and another 3% thought it was too long
47% attendees said that they were "very satisfied", and another 43% said they were "satisfied", and only 0.6% said that they were "not satisfied"

The photos of this year's China GDD can be seen and downloaded here: 　

Also, please watch out for the GDD web site for our posting of GDD sessions video recordings and slides download that we will post in the next few days.

We'd like to thank all the attendees and partners for this year's successful GDD in China! We listened to your feedback, and will try to make the event better next year. We look forward to the opportunity in the coming year for more collaborations between Google and local developers. Let's work together to promote the further development of web and web-based applications.

See you at GDD next year!

Bill Luan, Program Manager, Google China Developer Relations

Friend Connect goes îñţérñåţîöñåļ

2009-07-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

With over 5 million sites using Google Friend Connect to awaken and strengthen their communities, we wanted to make it easier for those of you who prefer languages other than English to take full advantage of it. Today, we are happy to announce that Friend Connect is supported in 47 additional languages including many asian languages: Chinese, Filipino, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Vietnamese.

As a site owner, you can view google.com/friendconnect in any of these languages, which should make setting up your site much more intuitive. Better yet, you can now choose the language of your site (which can be different for each of your sites). Once selected, most Google-created gadgets and any translated third party gadgets on your site will automatically render in that language. This ensures that the Friend Connect gadgets are better integrated into your site and easily understood by your visitors. Visit the gadget gallery to see which gadgets are available in your language.

Go to google.com/friendconnect to set up your site. Or if you're developing gadgets for Friend Connect, make sure to check out the documentation on localizing OpenSocial applications.

Posted by Sami Shalabi, Technical Lead, Google Friend Connect

Hello from GTUG Kuala Lumpur!

2009-07-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

Google is very much larger than life in Malaysia. The formation of the Google Technology User Group in Kuala Lumpur says it all during its first meetup on 27th June 2009. Fondly known as GTUG KL, it's an independent technology user group that focuses on Google technology and services and is the first one in Southeast Asia. GTUG KL currently has about 92 members and 23 of them attended the meetup. We had a number of lightning talks that contributed towards making this a successful and engaging event.

Hello Android

Nazrul kicked off the meetup by presenting a talk on the Android software stack. The main focus was on the Android marketplace and how easy it is to start publishing your apps and the challenges faced by developers in the Malaysian mobile market. There was also a brief demo of the Android SDK using the Eclipse plugin.

Kegan Gan, MalaysiaCrime.com, AirSense & 5 things you need to know

Kegan was concerned about the growing crime rate in Malaysia, especially where he lives. With a new member in his family, he was getting serious about it and started up a project called MalaysiaCrime.com. The website uses the Google Maps API and has custom designed markers to indicate what type of crimes are "hot" in an area. You can even post and report crimes in your area using the website.

Next up was Airsense, a high resolution aerial photography project. It adds a new tile overlay over the map with the latest aerial image of an area. Kegan also shared his 5 tips while working on Google Maps API using JavaScript.

Marvin Lee, Introduction to OpenSocial in 5 minutes

Marvin, one of last year's winners of the Google Southeast Asia OpenSocial contest, presented an overview on how to start developing OpenSocial gadgets. He also showed a latest update on his What Say U? OpenSocial app using the Google Friend Connect API.

Lim Chee Aun, My Google App Engine apps

Chee Aun is a well known Mozilla community developer coming from Penang. He talked about Google App Engine projects that he has been building.

Colin Charles, using Google Sites

Colin called Google Sites a faster and simpler version of MS Access. Not because he's a database guy, but because he was particularly impressed at how easy it is to setup your own simple online database using Google Sites. He liked the List Items feature because it was really easy to create a form and start populating the list with data. He demonstrated by showing a list of politicians in Malaysia using social media to stay connected online. You can check it out at http://spot.bytebot.net.

Richard Azlan Abas, my G1 Android phone

Razlan was the only one with a G1 Android phone at the meet-up. He explained why he doesn't carry a laptop anymore, ever since he got a G1 Android phone. The slideout QWERTY keypad & the Google apps accessing his email, documents & news impressed him the most. He can access all that using his G1 Android phone. He was also particularly hot on Android applications and calls for all Android developers in Malaysia to step up the game.

Harmeshver Singh, using Google Sketchup is easy

Resh spoke about how easy it is to use Google Sketchup compared to other 3D modelling tools he has tried. Being an IT student, all that he wanted was something easy to work with. Google Sketchup does just that for him.

Ikhwan Nazri, OfficeKami project

Ikhwan presented his OfficeKami project. OfficeKami is a project started by the guys from Flavert Media Lab, creators of Flash mobile applications in KL. What does it do? Simple: to share with other mobile warriors (as preferred by Ikhwan) suitable mobile office hotspots in Klang valley & all around Malaysia. For every new location these mobile warriors have been to, they willl follow up with a blog post detailing the basic amenities (critical for any mobile warriors) and best of all, they marked the locations on Google Maps.

The lightning talks took almost 2 hours with exchange of opinions, debates and jokes all around between attendees. It was good to see that there was some healthy discussion to be had.

It was then time to vote for the best lightning talks. By the power of crowdsource, the people voted Ikhwan as the best presenter for the day. He went home with the best geek toy you could have on your table, a Google USB transforming hub. And yes, it transforms!

This was the first meetup for GTUG KL. Fun, hot discussions, curious and of course, a lot of sharing and caring. You can also read a nice wrap up post by Marvin Lee and view the meetup photos. If you're in Malaysia (or even if you're not!) and would like to mingle with like-minded Google fans, please join our next meetup in KL. The more the merrier! Check us out at http://sites.google.com/site/gtugkl for upcoming events.

To learn more about Google Technology User Groups, to find one in your area, or to start up your own, please visit gtugs.org.

Posted by Nazrul Kamaruddin and Marvin Lee, GTUG Kuala Lumpur. Photos by Marvin Lee, GTUG KL and Surianee, iTrain.

(This post originally appeared on the Solutions for Southeast Asia blog.)

Google Technology User Groups in Asia Pacific

2009-07-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

At Google I/O this year, we formally introduced the concept of GTUGs (Google Technology User Groups) and the launch of its website. In a short one month and a half, we are happy to report that there are a total of 13 GTUGs chapters in Asia! Many of them are looking for new members and planning for their first events.

If there's one near you, check it out! Let the organizers know you're interested; suggest topics for discussion and even offer to do a talk about your own experiences.

We would love to hear how your events went and welcome you to share your experience on this blog that is dedicated to developers like you in Asia Pacific.

Australia
→ Melbourne GTUG (Melbourne)
→ Sydney-GTUG (Sydney)

India

→ Ahmedabad GTUG (Ahmedabad)
→ Bangalore GTUG (Bangalore)
→ HYD-GTUG (Hyderabad)
→ Pune GTUG (Pune)

Japan

→ Kyoto GTUG (Kyoto)
→ Tokyo-GTUG (Tokyo)

Malaysia

→ GTUG Kuala Lumpur (Kuala Lumpur)

Philippines

→ GTUG Philippines (Manila)

Singapore

→ Singapore GTUG

Sri Lanka

→ Sri Lanka GTUG (Colombo)

Thailand
→ Bangkok-GTUG (Bangkok)

Don't see a chapter near you? Start one! Join our GTUG managers mailing list. Other info at gtugs.org.

Vivian Li, Developer Relations, APAC

Hello SE Asia

2009-07-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

I recently returned from my first trip to Southeast Asia with developer advocates Patrick Chanezon and Pamela Fox. It's the first time Google has been back in the region since the DevFests last year, and we wanted to reconnect with developers.

First stop, Singapore! With e27, we hosted a hackathon at Singapore Management University. Pamela covered all the new things going on in Geo, and Patrick covered new things with Friend Connect, along with many great HTML5 demos. We tried keeping the talking at a minimum so that there was plenty of time to work.

A good crowd showed up and we had some interesting demos at the end, with Peekspy's fan venue site using Google Earth winning crowd favorite. My personal favorite was "The Base is Right," an app that had you guess the price from a random item from Google Base. Bob Barker would be proud :). For a more detailed write-up, check out e27's blog entry.

In Manila, we partnered up with Globe and the Ayala Foundation to hold a workshop to encourage mashups using Google APIs and Globe's APIs.

A large crowd showed up and soldiered through all the talks, even though the aircon was a little spotty. :) Watch a few videos from the event.

Globe is looking to help commercialize the best apps through their billing framework. To submit your application, see here for more info, and join the forum here.

I was really impressed with the developers that I met, and found many enthusiastic people who want more! For those that don't want to wait for us to come around, Google Technology User Groups are a great way for you guys to network and learn from each other about technologies like GWT, Android, OpenSocial, App Engine, our product APIs, and more. We already have four chapters that just started up in the region -

* GTUG-KL, Kuala Lumpur
* SG-GTUG, Singapore
* GTUG Philippines, Manila
* GTUG Bangkok, Bangkok

Check them out, or start one near you.

I really enjoyed my introduction to the region and hope to be back soon to visit more countries. Thanks for the hospitality, Singapore and Manila!

Posted by Stephanie Liu, Google Developer Relations

Google Australia: Unleashing New APIs To Developers World-Wide

2009-06-24T04:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a crazy few months in the Google Sydney office, as the two main engineering teams here have been busy prepping products for launch - and all of them targeted at developers like you! On the first day of Google I/O, Google's biggest developer event of the year, the Maps API team announced Google Maps API v3. This new API has been designed from scratch with latency and mobile compatibility in mind, and we hope to see it power the mashups of the future.

On the second day of I/O, the Sydney team working on the notorious "secret project" revealed Google Wave and the Wave protocol. Google Wave is in developer preview mode now, and a few thousand developers have started tinkering with the various APIs for creating real-time robots and gadgets.

We held an all-day event in the Google Sydney office last week, where we invited 80 local developers to hack with the Wave team for the day. Here are some of the nifty extensions they came up with:

The Napkin Gadgetembeds a Flash SWF that lets users draw inside the canvas with different colors and line widths. The gadget communicates with the JavaScript Gadgets API via a JS->AS3 bridge, and all the code for that is open-sourced. Perhaps the best part of this gadget is that it works perfectly in playback mode, and you can see how the community doodle has evolved over time:

The Syntaxy robot adds syntax highlighting to valid Python code that it finds in blips. This robot works in perfect synergy with Monty, a bot from another developer that evaluates and returns the result of Python expressions:

The Anti-swear bot cleans up waves by replacing profane words with appropriate substitutions, while the Agreeabl bot replies to all of your blips with words of encouragement (originally created for auto-replying to Twitter followers, a praise-hungry crowd). These bots work also nicely together in a Wave, and when combined with the whimsical Cartoony and Kay bots, nonsensical hilarity ensues:

We had a great time hanging out with those local developers, and we look forward to seeing how APAC developers use our new Aussie-bred APIs to create new real-time, mobile-compatible mashups.

Posted by Pamela Fox, Developer Relations

Google Maps APIs and India

2009-06-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

Google Maps, now quite popular with users in India, lets you search for addresses, find businesses, and calculate driving directions. There are many use-cases where you would want to bring the experience of Google Maps combined with the data of a third party website.

Fortunately, we provide various Maps APIs for embedding maps on your website - a JavaScript API, Flash API, and Static API. Using the API, a developer can customize the controls and overlay data on top of the maps using markers, polylines ,polygons or custom tiles using tiles overlay.

The API is free for public facing websites, and there is a paid version available for Intranet, asset tracking, and vehicle tracking scenarios.

We recently released the user-generated content from MapMaker for use in the API, so developers can now specify that they want MapMaker tiles instead of the standard road/hybrid tiles. More information on this feature is available here:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/introduction.html#MapMakerTypes

We also recently launched driving directions for India, and developers can access that data from the API as well. Here is a sample that displays driving directions for the New Delhi region.

Some usage examples from India:

Standard Chartered Bank in India uses Google Maps APIs for their ATM locator service.
http://www.standardchartered.co.in/RichApps/Locator/index.html

Route Guru uses Google Maps APIs and Eicher Data mashup to give landmark based directions in NCR region.
http://routeguru.com

We are excited to see creative uses of the Google Maps API from Indian websites and developers. More information can be found at: http://code.google.com/apis/maps

Rajdeep Dua, Google Developer Relations, India

Google Developer Day 2009 has finally arrived in Japan!

2009-06-09T00:21:00.000-07:00

This morning more than 1,000 developers gathered for the opening of Google Developer Day 2009 Japan.

The opening keynote was attended by mixi's Kenji Kasahara, NTT DOCOMO's Kiyoto Nagata, as well as Google Japan's President Koichiro Tsujino. Joining in on the fun were Google's head of Android in Asia Pacific Tom Moss and OpenSocial engineering director David Glazer.

Due to some unexpected announcements, expectations of an exciting keynote were easily surpassed.

The keynote, entitled "A More Powerful Web, Made Mobile, Made Social, Made Easier", covered many topics:

HTML5 and Chrome

The standardization of HTML5 will finally bring application-class functionality to the browser, and it will be difficult to differentiate between desktop and web applications. Already, most modern browsers implement many of the elements of this emerging standard. Some new elements that were demonstrated:

Canvas - a place for doing real-time 2D/3D graphics/drawing within the browser, controlled by Javascript.
Video - another standard html element for embedding video, without the need for Flash, which allows for all control from Javascript.
O3D - an open source Javascript library that allows for 3D simulations within the browser.
Geolocation API - web applications can now access user location, with user consent, from both the desktop and mobile environments.
Web workers - threading and background processes will now be available, allowing for Javascript applications to be responsive in the face of long running events.
App cache and database - web applications can work offline, allowing for reliable applications in an unreliable network. The IPhone Safari version of Gmail already uses this feature.
WebSockets, Notifications, Rich Text Editing, and others - real-time chat applications, notifications, and full rich text editing now bridge the functionality gap between desktop and web applications.

Android and the Special Surprise

NTT DOCOMO's Kiyoto Nagata talked about the reasons why they chose to release a smartphone using the Android platform. Most important were the open platform and ease of use that Android provides. He spoke about how much he expected the smartphone market to grow, and announced that the HT-03A would be released in Japan this summer. He encouraged developers to innovate with new interesting applications that take full advantage of the smartphone capabilities.

Google discussed the Android Market, with its paid and free application options, highlighting the business opportunities available by releasing applications for the platform. Importantly, the Android Market is open, applications can be uploaded directly by developers. Once on the market, applications will be sorted based on user feedback and sustained interest.

Given the success of the first Android Developer Challenge, Google announced Android Developer Challenge 2. To assist developers with creating great new applications, Google surprised everyone and gave away a special developer version of the new HTC Magic Android phone.

OpenSocial

The web becomes ever more powerful when applications can address a large set of users, without needing reimplementation for every social platform. With OpenSocial, social applications can be deployed to many of today's most popular social websites simultaneously. In addition, Google introduced the OpenSocial Payments API. This API lets application developers easily collect money for application features and other purposes.

mixi's Kenji Kasahara gave an overview of the mixi platform. He explained how mixi benefits from working with OpenSocial, and the growth that mixi has seen as a result. Encouraging developers to add to the vast ecosystem of OpenSocial applications, mixi announced the mixi App Contest.

Open Social allows users to connect with each other and creates a more vibrant community within websites.

Google Wave

Developers were also impressed by the new Google Wave collaboration and communications platform, enamored with the real-time interaction and the productive possibilities it would bring. Among the demos was an automatically translating chat client, using Google's Translate functionality in conjunction with the Wave platform. All event attendees will receive access to the Developer Preview version of Google Wave.

Others

Google Web Elements - easily add bits of functionality to any website.

Maps API v3 - new API designed for Performance, Mobile applications, and Keyless usage.

Google Technology User Groups - first Japanese user group formed, focused on Google technologies. Monthly meetings will be held in Tokyo.

Afternoon sessions covered many of Google's newest technologies, such as OpenSocial, Android, Google App Engine, and the Google Maps API. There were many Google engineers and partners on-hand to introduce these powerful technologies and answer developers' questions. At "Office Hours" between sessions, developers were invited to speak directly with top engineers on many Google products. Please check the full schedule for details on all the events and participants.

As Google Developer Day ends, don't forget to take part in our support programs, including Hackathons that will immediately follow Google Developer Day!

Pictures of the keynote are available here.

Posted by Google Developer Day 2009 Japan team

Google Summer of Code: APAC Represent!

2009-03-27T22:27:00.000-07:00

Posted by Pamela Fox, Maps API Team

Google Summer of Code is coming up in a few months. In this program, you spend the summer (or winter) working on features for open-source projects and get paid for it - thinking about it makes me wish I was still a student. To get an idea of what you could be working on as a student in GSOC, read through the descriptions of 4 past students below. If you're interested in having a similar story, make sure you apply before April 3rd.

Ankit Guglani (Singapore Management University)

Ankit worked on the CC-logger project for the Creative Commons organization, where the goal was to analyze switching patterns and click-through rates to the feeds. His tip to maximize the social aspect of the GSOC experience is to "use the IRC channel to make friends - you meet really interesting people." You can stop by now, #gsoc in Freenode.

Blooma Mohan John (Nanyang Technological University)

Blooma contributed to DSpace, an open-source solution for accessing, managing, and preserving scholarly works. Her project made it easier to do batch imports of content into the system, and is now being used by research and academic institutions globally.

Eugene Tan Jie Ming (Nanyang Technological University)

Eugene contributed to Thousand Parsec, a cross-platform turn based space empire building game. He wrote a 3-d graphics client with a nice user-interface that interacted with the backend server. Eugene suggests that students take extra steps to learn more about real-world software development; "Besides just learning the version control system, try asking the devs about their tools (text editors, IDEs, possible language-specific customizations) and workflow, and consider giving them a go."

Nur Aini Rakhmawati Gunawan (National Taiwan University of Science & Technology)

Nur spent two years in the GSOC program, first as a student and then coming back as a mentor, working on Joomla! both times. As a student, she worked on publishing via email, and as a mentor, she worked on the project exposing Joomla data as RDF and Linked Data. Nur says that both years were learning experiences; "A mentor is not a superior person who knows everything, my student gave me a lot of knowledge as a PhD student."

Moving the Web Forward at RIAction & BarCamp Singapore

2009-03-18T02:22:00.000-07:00

The week of 2nd March 2009 was a busy one for the developer community in Singapore. Google was fortunate enough to participate and speak at two events focused on innovating on the web.

RIAction

RIAction was the first event of its kind to be held in Singapore and focused on the latest trends in the Rich Internet Application space. It brought together speakers from Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and the wider RIA community to share their insights with 300 attendees.

Vinny spoke on how to distribute RIAs to reach a huge audience for free using iGoogle, Gadget Ads, OpenSocial, and Google Friend Connect. You can view and download a copy of his presentation here. Keep an eye out for videos and presentations from the event at the RIAction website. Vinny also spoke on the Maps API for Flash and demonstrated various examples in Flash and Flex.

Check out the RIAction website for videos and presentations from all the talks.

BarCamp Singapore

Barcamp Singapore came on the heels of RIAaction. Barcamp describes itself as "an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment". Over 250 developers and entrepreneurs were out in full force for an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction.

Chandra and Jack hosted sessions that revealed the "unknown" side of Google's offerings. First they offered a run down of almost all of Google's APIs. With 64 APIs to cover in 15 minutes, this was a rapid fire session. Jack then introduced OpenSocial and spoke about what it is and how to get started.

Finally, Chandra presented Tales of Online Marketing. He shared three stories from the trenches that highlighted the importance of being driven by data and analytics, using Google Analytics and Google Website Optimiser, when it comes to maintaining and enhancing your web presence.

Check out Barcamp Singapore for links to writeups and presentations from the day.

It was a pleasure to be invited along and be a part of these events. We got to speak to many enthusiastic developers and entrepreneurs working on some very interesting initiatives. As the web moves forward, it is heartening to see that the Southeast Asian developer community is leading the way in so many fields. Don't forget to keep up with the news in the region by following our Solutions for Southeast Asia and APAC Developer blogs.

Posted by Chandra Raghavan, Jack Tiistola, and Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Google Southeast Asia

Upcoming Singapore Developer Events

2009-02-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

There are 2 exciting events this week in Singapore geared towards the Web 2.0 community. Best of all, these events are free! So make your way down. Googlers will be there too, taking in the presentations, and also presenting on topics such as Building Social Applications for the Cloud, the Flash Maps API, Promoting and Monetising your Applications, and a Brief Tour of the "Other" Google APIs.

RIAaction

"The Singapore Flex Usergroup is very proud to present Singapore’s very first RIA ( Rich Internet Applications) Event - RIAction! Taking place on the 26th February 2009, RIAction will see speakers from Google, Microsoft, Adobe, together with community leaders, coming together for a day of technological updates, roadmaps and application showcase!"

RIAction is on this Thursday 26th February. Find out more and register at http://riaction.sg

BarCamp Singapore 3.0

"BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. All participants are encouraged to give a demo, a session, or help with one. All presentions are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present."

BarCamp is on this Saturday 28 February. Find out more and register at http://barcamp.org/BarCampSingapore3

We hope to see you at one, or maybe even both, of these events!

Posted by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Customer Solutions Engineer

Southeast Asian Developers: Enhance Your Maps!

2009-02-23T09:15:00.000-08:00

While preparing slides for our various DevFest Maps API talks in November, I had the sad realization that many of the maps features I took for granted in the US weren't available to developers in Southeast Asia - things as simple as road data or local businesses. After talking with DevFest developers, I was impressed that that they continued making compelling mashups (like SkyDoor) despite that limitation, and vowed that we'd do whatever we could to better support Southeast Asian developers. Well, good news: we've announced two launches this week that will make Maps API development easier.

MapMaker Tiles in the API

For the countries where we didn't have good road data from local providers, we created the Map Maker tool to let users contribute data. Once a country has enough data, we release the user contributed data on the default map tiles for everyone - and we did that for Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Phillipines this week. But now, you don't have to wait for that to happen to benefit from the data - you can just add special Map Maker map types to your mashup. For more information on how to do so, read this blog post on the Google Geo Developers Blog. Pan around the demo below to see what Manila looks like with these map types:

Local Search for Thailand & Malaysia

The Local Search API lets developers access local search from both JavaScript and non-JS environments, and the Google Bar in the Maps API lets developers enable local search on their mashups in just one line of code. Last week, we launched local search results for Malaysia and Thailand, so developers in those countries can now integrate local search results into their mashups. Try it out in the demo below by entering "auto repair" or "hotels" in the search box:

Enjoy the new features, and let us know in the comments about sites where you've enabled them!

Posted by Pamela Fox, Maps API Team

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Geeking around Sydney, Australia

2009-02-06T20:47:00.000-08:00

It's beautiful beach weather here in Australia (rumors are that we'll hit 44 this weekend - that's 113 for you Americans!), but that doesn't stop developers from geeking out hardcore, and me from joining them. Here's what we've been up to:

Ignite Sydney: At this event, 8 presenters gave talks in the "Ignite" format: 20 slides, 5 minutes, 15 seconds each, no leeway. I gave a talk about "Flex v. HTML 5 for RIAs", where each slide covered a different feature you'd expect in an RIA - drag + drop, 3d graphics, history management, etc. It was both the shortest talk I've given and the most I've ever prepared for a talk. Of the other talks there, my favorites were "Lean programming" (illustrated with stick figures) and "How technology influences sexual awaress" - you can see Meitar presenting that to a room of slightly tipsy individuals in the photo below.

halans

StartupCamp Sydney: At this event, developers, marketers, and designers come together for a weekend of coding and pitching a startup - from scratch! You can see from the photo below how some of our attempts at pitching were a bit less serious than others. After all was said and done, the weekend produced 6 websites, and 36 completely exhausted but satisfied individuals (including myself). A number of the startups used Google Developer tools: Activity Horizon and MyPetNeedsLove used the Google Maps API to plot events and love-hungry pets, respectively, and ThreeFeeds (mine!) used the Google AJAX Search & Feeds API both on the client & server.

liako

For the Aussie developers reading this, here are some upcoming events:

Google Developer Workshops: Over the 6 weeks, we'll have 4 talks/codelabs at the Google Sydney office, each covering a different Google developer product. For more information and registration, visit the website.

JAOO Sydney/Brisbane: At this dual-city developer conference, there will be 2 talks from Googlers: "API Design" by Joshua Bloch, and "Google App Engine: Building an App the Googley Way" by Pamela Fox.

Posted by Pamela Fox, Maps API Team

Registration for Google I/O is now open

2009-01-29T22:06:00.000-08:00

We just announced that registration is open for Google I/O this May (27th, 28th). It's been about a year since the last I/O conference, and a lot has happened since then. This year's conference will take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. Like last year, we're excited to bring several thousand developers together to explore and push the boundaries of web applications using Google and open web technologies. This year, we're offering even more opportunities for developers to showcase the amazing applications they've built.

There's going to be no shortage of exciting things covered at Google I/O: from Chrome, HTML 5, and Android to GWT, OpenSocial, the GEO APIs, and much more. Among some of the cool opportunities for community engagement:

Office Hours - talk to the product experts in very a casual setting. Bring your questions, code snippets, or just come hang out.
Fireside Chats - come listen to an informal panel of developers and Google engineers chat about various products and problems. Perfect time to ask the hard questions.
Tech Talks - a series of informative discussions from more of the experts. Expect the speakers to tackle topics such as computer science problems and programming languages.

And here are just a few of the awesome sessions that will be held:

Using AJAX/RESTful APIs on Mobile Native Apps
Porting a LAMP app to App Engine
Creating powerful dashboards with GWT and the Visualization API
Best practices for writing great, monetizable YouTube apps

......and many more. You can get the full list of topics covered here.

If you're going to be in Silicon Valley during this time, or you want to make a trip out specifically for the event - please register ahead of time , as space will be limited. We'd love to see you there. For those who can't make it, stay tuned for more as I'm sure many of us will be tweeting during the conference and we typically release the content covered shortly after the event.

Like last year, Google I/O will be followed by Developer Days that will take place in various countries around the world. Keep an eye out for an announcement with details on dates and locations.

Hope to see some of our friends from APAC at I/O!

Jason Costa, Developer Relations APAC

Headstart Conference, Bangalore

2009-01-23T07:33:00.000-08:00

Headstart and the Bangalore chapter of ACM organized a conference showcasing cutting-edge technologies and products from start-ups in India. This conference had two tracks: one focused on presentation of research papers, and the other on start-ups.

The conference took place on the 9th and 10th of January, 2009 at the NIMHANS Convention Center in Bangalore. Google was invited to present on OpenSocial in the "Search and Social platforms" track.

Prasad Ram, Google Bangalore Engineering Director, was one of the keynote speakers at the event, which was attended by roughly 400 participants. The agenda included panel discussions on various topics like SAAS architecture and Cloud computing. Tutorials were also held on mobility and virtualization. Finally, there were demo stalls for start-ups to showcase their products.

The audience for the OpenSocial track comprised of about 60 developers/entrepreneurs. Presenting alongside us were Yahoo! Research on the BOSS APIs, as well as Jai Ganesh from Infosys, who presented on social network analysis and its implications on knowledge discovery.
Google presented on the OpenSocial philosophy, OpenSocial APIs, Apache Shindig architecture and Social-site as a usage example.

It was very promising to see such interest in Opensocial amongst the start-ups. The chapter has also shown enthusiasm in holding day long sessions and workshops to provide developers with more insight into the OpenSocial APIs and Shindig.

Here are a few pictures from the conference.

Rajdeep Dua and Vijaya Machavolu, Google Developer Relations, India