Posted by Matt Cowger, Global Head of Startup Architects

Building a GCS Uploader

In my time since joining Google, more than one startup has asked about the possibility of receiving files into Google Cloud Storage (GCS) so that they can be the start of a Pub/Sub based pipeline for all sorts of use cases — image recognition, data ingestion, etc.

To me, this seems like a natural fit for the product. However — there’s no available ‘shim’ layer for doing these — there’s no way to treat GCS like a FTP server, or a direct (simple) web upload target. There are work arounds with gcsfuse or gsutil, but those require end users to install and utilize command line products that are Google specific, and even then have the challenge of not being usable without direct Google credentials in the project. …

Posted by Aza Tulepbergenov, Developer Programs Engineer

Testing is an important part of any development process. Without testing, you risk releasing code that results in a frustrating user experience.

Actions on Google are no different. It’s crucial to test all the pieces of your Action to make sure your users will have success and want to come back to your Action.

There are three main components that need to be tested:

• Natural language understanding (NLU), which is how we know what the user wants, or their intent
• Intent handling logic, such as your webhook code that implements response building
• Business logic, such as talking to a database or making external API…

Posted by Oleksandr Rudenko, Head of Technology, Sleek, Julien Frerot, VP of Platform, Sleek, Jerome Poudevigne, Startup Architect, Google Cloud

Sleek is part of a new wave of corporate services providers who offer “online first” corporate and accounting compliance for their Singapore-registered company.

Traditionally, corporate services were similar to law firms — conservative and paper-based, with very little in the way of automation or digitalisation. Sleek’s online platform allows entrepreneurs and company owners to manage their company compliance from anywhere. An integral part of Sleek’s offering to their customers is the ability to use e-signatures in order to sign corporate documents such as constitutions, shareholder and board resolutions. Customers who have incorporated a Singapore company with international stakeholders are able to generate their governance documents, convert them into PDFs and send the document out to stakeholders all over the world for them to sign the document (inserting their handwritten signature, or typing in their name, with a full audit trail of the user actions). …

Posted by: Jerome Poudevigne, Startup Architect, Google Cloud

Throughout the past couple of years, I have helped a good number of companies, big and small, migrate their systems to the Google Cloud Platform (aka GCP). During the course of these migrations, there are always a few of those moments where people look at a specific Google Cloud feature and say, “now, that’s cool!”.

More often than not, it is because, coming from other platforms, they have gotten used to some features requiring multiple steps, or some operations being complicated, etc. And often they find out that in GCP you can do this specific operation in a couple of clicks, or by setting up a simple text-based configuration. …

One of the best parts about the web is that it’s always evolving and getting better. But with the constant churn of new features and updates, it’s easy to get lost. Fret not though, I’m here with a handy condensed list of the things you should really care about, in the latest updates to the chrome (and web) platform. Here’s what’s new in Chrome 48 (currently in the Beta channel)

Presentation API

Everyone loves finding that perfect video, but showing it to your friends on your small screen is such a bummer. This version of Chrome Android allows websites to present to external devices via Cast, increasing the ways available to sites that want to present “cat vs cucumbers videos”. …