Google has released an update for the Google Cast SDK, bringing full closed caption support to Chromecast on Android, Chrome and iOS devices. A new version of the Media Player Library (0.8.0) is also available. Moreover, the receiver SDK, the default receiver and the styled media receiver now also have closed caption support.
A detailed list of changes are outlined in the official release notes.
Yet another announcement from Google I/O today comes in the form of a new Gmail API beta that will make it easier for developers to integrate Gmail features into their apps:
While IMAP is great at what it was designed for (connecting email clients to email servers in a standard way), it wasn’t really designed to do all of the cool things that you have been working on, which is why this week at Google I/O, we’re launching the beta of the new Gmail API.
Designed to let you easily deliver Gmail-enabled features, this new API is a standard Google API, which gives RESTful access to a user’s mailbox under OAuth 2.0 authorization. It supports CRUD operations on true Gmail datatypes such as messages, threads, labels and drafts.
So what’s the benefit over IMAP or other solutions that developers have already been using to integrate Gmail features? Google says the new API, unlike IMAP, “gives fine-grained control to a user’s mailbox.” That means that an app, for example, “only needs to send mail on behalf of a user and does not need to read mail, you can limit your permission request to send-only.” There are also other benefits like speed:
To keep in sync, the API allows you to query the inbox change history, thereby avoiding the need to do “archaeology” to figure out what changed. Finally, a huge benefit is speed. While there’s still some tuning to be done (“beta” – remember?), results from our tests and feedback from pre-release developers suggest that the new Gmail API is delivering dramatic performance improvements over IMAP for web application use cases.
After making the Google Cast SDK public and launching a dedicated forum for Chromecast, Google has announced a public beta version of the Google Cast extension available in the Chrome Web Store.
The Google Cast extension allows users to beam content from a Chrome tab on their desktop to a Chromecast or other devices that support he Google Cast standard. Like Google’s beta versions of Chrome and other apps, the public beta release will provide devs and anyone else that downloads it to the latest features and APIs.
More info on the new beta is available from Google Developer Advocate Shawn Shen on Google+.
Following the release of Chrome 32 on Google’s stable release channel, today Chrome 33 has moved into beta bringing access to Custom Elements, a Web Speech API for speech recognition and synthesis, and more. The new Custom Elements will allow developers to add new HTML elements in web applications in “much cleaner ways” as highlighted by Google in the sample code for a chat app above. With the spec developers will able to:
The release also includes access to the Web Speech API for adding speech recognition and synthesis features to web pages. Google gives the example of dictations being “synthesized to play back in a different language.” Google described some of the other updates in the release including the availability of the requestAutocomplete API for easily implementing web payments on Mac:
Other web platform changes in this release
With rumors of Apple’s upcoming iWatch and its focus on fitness, it’s not a stretch to think that Google couldn’t also be exploring a similar use for its own devices. Now, as spotted by the unofficial Google Operating System blog, it seems we have our first glimpse at a fitness API for Android.
Whether this API will become available in a future Android update or will require new hardware or sensors to fully operate is not yet known. The company has already included some fitness sensors with its Nexus 5, but there’s currently no way for other devices to take advantage of similar data natively. A system fitness API could open up new doors, not just for Google’s own software, but for third-party developers like Nike.
Dropbox kicked off its developer conference in San Francisco today and with it came a few updates including new tools for devs and the announcement that the service now has 175 million users. That’s up about 75 million users from just last November.
The developer conference also included some announcements about new tools coming to let third-party app and website developers easier integrate Dropbox. The company is introducing a platform for developers that includes a new API called Datastores, allowing app devs to store and sync data from their apps across multiple devices and platforms. It’s something developers have been doing on their own for a while (for example 1Password), but now Dropbox is making easy for all:
The Datastore API provides developers a new way to sync data beyond files across a variety of devices and platforms. The Datastore API allows developers to save their app’s structured data (e.g. contacts, to-do items, and game state) on Dropbox and handles all the magic necessary to sync it quickly and reliably. Users of a Datastore-enabled app can be sure their data will be up-to-date across all their devices whether online or offline.
It also showed off new “Drop-ins” that will let devs easily integrate the ability to open and save from Dropbox within their apps:
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Following Google’s announcement that its RSS Reader product would be retired on July 1st, apps like Feedly that relied on the Google Reader backend announced big plans to help itself and other apps through the transition. Feedly has been preparing its move to its own “feedly cloud” back end since the announcement, and earlier this month transitioned its own iOS client to the platform. Today, Feedly is officially launching the new back end and API, as well as a brand new web interface and the first apps to integrate the feedly cloud platform:
As of today, feedly cloud is now live, providing a fast and scalable infrastructure that serves as the backbone to feedly, as well as a number of connected applications. Feedly cloud is open today to all users visiting http://feedly.com, providing a simple one-click migration path from Google Reader. And thanks to the great developer community that has gathered around it, providing multiple safe and sound alternatives to Google Reader. With the release of feedly cloud, feedly today transitions from a product to a platform. We are also today delivering a new, completely stand-alone Web version of feedly.
On top of the new API and feedly cloud back end, the company is also delivering on one of the most requested features for the service: a standalone new web interface that doesn’t require any plugins or browser extensions.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kusQK7PCXTM
If Nuance gets its way with the just announced ‘Voice Ads’ mobile advertising platform, soon every mobile ad could include Siri-like functionality that lets you communicate with and ask questions about the product being advertised.
Nuance, the company behind the voice recognition module now used in Apple’s Siri, today announced a new project to bring its voice recognition technology to the mobile advertising world. The basic concept of the new platform, which Nuance made available through an SDK for advertising companies, is to bring a two-way, interactive conversation to mobile ads. As highlighted by Nuance in the video above, ads that implement the Voice Ads platform will allow users to engage in a Siri-like conversation with an advertisement:
Nuance Voice Ads gives mobile advertisers and creative agencies an opportunity to go beyond the limitations of the four-inch mobile device screen and create a conversation with consumers through the power of voice recognition. Voice Ads finally creates an opportunity for brands to deepen the relationship with their consumers, with targeted interactive ads that deeply engage their core audience – much in the way that the world’s most popular mobile personal assistants have deepened consumers’ relationship with their mobile phones.
In the demo above, Nuance shows an advertisement for a fictional deodorant brand that uses a magic 8-ball theme to answer any question that users might have. The ad of course ends in a pitch for the product in question, as you might expect. Other ads could allow users to ask specific questions about a product’s release date or specs…
The Trulia Android app uses the new Maps API (starting tomorrow), so users can search for a place in 3D.
The Android Developers blog just unveiled version 2.0 for Google Play services.
Google Play services is a new platform that provides developers with improved integration for Google products. The latest version of the platform includes two new APIs, and the most notable one is an anticipated upgrade for Maps.
According to the announcing blog post, the new Google Maps Android API allows developers to “bring many of the recent features of Google Maps for Android to your Android apps.” The API is available supports Froyo devices and up:
The new API uses vector-based maps that support 2D and 3D views, and allow users to tilt and rotate the map with simple gestures. Along with the layers you’ve come to know from Google Maps such as satellite, hybrid, terrain and traffic, the new API lets you include indoor maps for many major airports and shopping centers in your app.
Google further launched Photo Sphere mode in the Camera for Android 4.2, which allows users to create panoramas, and now it is releasing new APIs that enable “developers, businesses, and photographers to explore new uses of Photo Sphere for work and for play.”
Photo Sphere is now an open format, too, so users can create and access it via the web and mobile devices. Go to the Android Developers blog for more information on either API key.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90MIiBvXYcw&feature=player_embedded]
Google just gave itself a pat on the back by detailing how Google Consumer Surveys efficiently polls anonymous web users and helps to analyze voter preferences.
“So how’d you all do in your first election with us?” wrote Googler Brett Slatkin on the official Google Politics blog, “Pretty spectacularly.”
FiveThiryEight’s Nate Silver, a media-dubbed “high priest” of polling, called Google Consumer Surveys the “No. 1 most accurate poll online and the No. 2 most accurate poll overall,” according to Slatkin, while the Pew Research Center said Google’s surveys will “likely be an important addition to the research tool kit available to pollsters.”
The surveys run across the web and subsequently earn websites money for showing them, and web surfers can then anonymously submit their responses, and the cropped data gives publishers, such as Texas Tribune, Denver Post, etc., as well as political campaigns, academics, start-ups, and marketers, detailed research to better improve their products.
In related news, Google does more than collect data; the Internet giant also supplies it. Eric Hysen, of the Google Politics and Elections team, said the search engine saw “unprecedented digital engagement in this election on Google and across the web” during the 2012 U.S. Elections.
Today, alongside the launch of Nexus 4 and Nexus 10, Google is officially making the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean SDK available to developers. Included in the release are the lock screen widgets, the Daydream interactive screensaver mode, enhanced support for external displays, and more. Developers can download the Android 4.2 platform from the Android SDK Manager. Google also has an overview of what’s new on its website and an API overview here.
The full release notes from Google (via the Android Developers Blog) are below:
Google announced in a post today on the AdWords blog that a new API for third-party apps will allow businesses to manage their branded Google+ pages through social media management services like HootSuite.
Initially the API will only be open to six partners including Buddy Media, Involver, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, Vitrue, and HootSuite. Starting with selects users, these services will allow businesses to manage their circles, make posts to their Google+ page, and monitor activity and analytics. On the Hootsuite website, for instance, features listed include the ability to manage circles, as well as “monitor, search, share, and post” right within the app’s interface.
The API will inevitably be opened up to more third-party apps after the initial experiment, and social media management companies can already click here to sign up. Below is an image showing Google+ integration in the updated HootSuite dashboard, which is probably the most in-depth solution, and it looks like just about every aspect of a Google+ page has been included.
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