Google I/O 2018 Recap — Day 3

If you’re reading this, Google I/O is now over. Mountain View may be quiet once more, but the excitement from Google I/O is far from over. Sure, the conference is now said and done, but the learnings continue. Google records nearly every single session for developers as it is near impossible to attend every one that may be of interest. So, our developers will continue to search through the depths of Google’s resources to find the latest and greatest to bring to our clients.

For the final day of Google I/O, we wanted to take a moment and share a few favorite updates and pieces of technology that our developers saw during their final day of Google I/O.

Google Maps APIs for Gaming

Pokémon Go was an interesting case in human behavior. It spread like wildfire and quickly resulted in countless news stories of individuals getting hit by cars, falling off motorcycles, climbing into active construction zones and more (example 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… you get the idea). Now, Google has a solution for that too. Android Engineer, Chris Koeberle, stumbled across this limited-release project Google has been working on. To avoid another craze like Pokemon Go, Google is working to create “safe-zones” where events can occur in GPS-based games, like public parks and malls. They’re also working to cut down development time by making it easier to skin Google Maps using Unity. Again, this is not available to everyone, but we don’t expect it to stay that way forever.

Firebase at Work

With so many platforms, app integrations, and more appearing these days, it’s hard to know which ones are truly reliable. Whether they lose support in months or are rife with bugs, many are extremely skeptical about these services. However, Senior Technical Architect, Jonathan Campos, wanted to be sure this isn’t applied to every service out there. “One of the worst rumors plaguing companies is that Firebase isn’t a ‘real’ platform. Rumblings of scalability and security that ‘true’ developers desire isn’t available with Firebase — but none of this has any credible backing. It may have been true when it released, but it shouldn’t be grouped with these bad actors any longer. Firebase is different. Firebase is secure. Firebase is scalable. It can support projects on a global scale and is up-to-date with the latest security standards. It is really impressive how much you can do if you just make the leap.”

Android Things

Powered by IoT Core, Android Things has more support than ever. To put it simply, Android Things is a suite of components and devices that play nice with the Android ecosystem. Instead of fighting to have your little device communicate with your phone, you can spend the bulk of your time making the magic happen.

Director of Android Engineering, Luke Wallace, snapped this photo for us. As it says on the plaque, “This is a gimbal stabilizer built with a raspberry pi and taught with Google’s TensorFlow Lite Machine Learning technology.” If you’re unfamiliar, gimbal stabilizers rotate and turn cameras to keep it focused on a particular object. In this case, the ML modal learned which direction it would need to twist the camera to keep the subject in view. Another awesome Android Things project on display was a sentinel that can monitor your house while you’re away.

Closing out Google I/O

All good things must come to an end, and so must Google I/O 2018. Before we close out the week, we’d like to take a moment to thank our Rocketeers for keeping us informed on the latest and greatest from Google.

The Best is Yet to Come

Be sure to revisit over the next few weeks as we take a deep dive into the new technologies offered by Google. We’ll be looking at how Google’s efforts are improving the human experience, changing how users interact with technology, and how businesses can harness these innovations to improve their own projects and offerings.

If you cannot wait until then, contact us today to learn more about the changes coming to the Android ecosystem, Google’s new Machine Learning and Cloud technologies, and how all of these can improve the way businesses serve their customers.

Originally published at www.bottlerocketstudios.com on May 11, 2018.