Android General
Guillermo Castro  

Google I/O 2013: Day two

The second day of Google I/O was filled with session. There are different tracks that you can choose which include topics like Android, Google Glass, Google+, GAE, Google Maps, Youtube, etc. Some sessions were more popular than others, of course. For example, there was one Google Glass session “Developing For Glass” that was completely full, including the overflow room. It is a good thing that most sessions are being recorded and made available later for everyone to see, but you miss on the opportunity to interact with the speakers.

I went to a couple of Android sessions, and saw a couple of demos from different companies that were showcasing their products (this is what you usually do at conference, it isn’t all fun and games). I started with the session “Android Protips: Making Apps Work Like Magic“. It was a somewhat generic session where its main idea is that we can use the new features in Android like Location API to dazzle users with innovative ways of interaction.

After that, I attended the session “Google+ Sign-In for Android Developers” where I learned how to take advantage of Android’s Google+ integration to authenticate an user to your app, and to interact with other people on the user’s circles.

Then I tried to go to the session “Enchant, Simplify, Amaze: Android’s Design Principles“, but it was full. I’m sure it was good but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like this one was recorded. So instead I roamed around the developers sandbox and the companies showcasing their products.

In the session “Google Cloud Messaging” I got to see how you can use GCM to do push notification between your server and your apps in a fast, stable and reliant way.

Google has a new product called Mobile Backend Starter, which allows you to create an easy to configure backend that can be used to store and transmit data to your apps. The speakers actually demoed the generation of a project from start to the point they are sending messages between two phones using this tool. If you’re interested, you can watch the session “From Nothing to Nirvana in Minutes: Cloud Backend for your Android Applications“.

Finally I went to the session “Cross-Platform Auth with Google+ Sign-In“, where I learned how to leverage Google+ user authentication/authorization in several platforms, including Android, iOS and web.

After that I roamed around for a while, got into a hunt game that had me running around the Moscone and then I went to a couple of parties to meet interesting people and talk about all that’s been happening at the conference.

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