Angular 1 and Angular 2 integration the path to seamless upgrade

Originally posted on the Angular blog.

Posted by, Misko Hevery, Software Engineer, Angular

Have an existing Angular 1 application and are wondering about upgrading to Angular 2? Well, read on and learn about our plans to support incremental upgrades.

Summary

Good news!

• Were enabling mixing of Angular 1 and Angular 2 in the same application.
• You can mix Angular 1 and Angular 2 components in the same view.
• Angular 1 and Angular 2 can inject services across frameworks.
• Data binding works across frameworks.

Why Upgrade?

Angular 2 provides many benefits over Angular 1 including dramatically better performance, more powerful templating, lazy loading, simpler APIs, easier debugging, even more testable and much more. Here are a few of the highlights:

Better performance

Weve focused across many scenarios to make your apps snappy. 3x to 5x faster on initial render and re-render scenarios.

• Faster change detection through monomorphic JS calls
• Template precompilation and reuse
• View caching
• Lower memory usage / VM pressure
• Linear (blindingly-fast) scalability with observable or immutable data structures
• Dependency injection supports incremental loading

More powerful templating

• Removes need for many directives
• Statically analyzable - future tools and IDEs can discover errors at development time instead of run time
• Allows template writers to determine binding usage rather than hard-wiring in the directive definition

Future possibilities

Weve decoupled Angular 2s rendering from the DOM. We are actively working on supporting the following other capabilities that this decoupling enables:

• Server-side rendering. Enables blinding-fast initial render and web-crawler support.
• Web Workers. Move your app and most of Angular to a Web Worker thread to keep the UI smooth and responsive at all times.
• Native mobile UI. Were enthusiastic about supporting the Web Platform in mobile apps. At the same time, some teams want to deliver fully native UIs on their iOS and Android mobile apps.
• Compile as build step. Angular apps parse and compile their HTML templates. Were working to speed up initial rendering by moving the compile step into your build process.

Angular 1 and 2 running together

Angular 2 offers dramatic advantages over Angular 1 in performance, simplicity, and flexibility. Were making it easy for you to take advantage of these benefits in your existing Angular 1 applications by letting you seamlessly mix in components and services from Angular 2 into a single app. By doing so, youll be able to upgrade an application one service or component at a time over many small commits.

For example, you may have an app that looks something like the diagram below. To get your feet wet with Angular 2, you decide to upgrade the left nav to an Angular 2 component. Once youre more confident, you decide to take advantage of Angular 2s rendering speed for the scrolling area in your main content area.

For this to work, four things need to interoperate between Angular 1 and Angular 2:

• Dependency injection
• Component nesting
• Transclusion
• Change detection

To make all this possible, were building a library named ng-upgrade. Youll include ng-upgrade and Angular 2 in your existing Angular 1 app, and youll be able to mix and match at will.

You can find full details and pseudocode in the original upgrade design doc or read on for an overview of the details on how this works. In future posts, well walk through specific examples of upgrading Angular 1 code to Angular 2.

Dependency Injection

First, we need to solve for communication between parts of your application. In Angular, the most common pattern for calling another class or function is through dependency injection. Angular 1 has a single root injector, while Angular 2 has a hierarchical injector. Upgrading services one at a time implies that the two injectors need to be able to provide instances from each other.

The ng-upgrade library will automatically make all of the Angular 1 injectables available in Angular 2. This means that your Angular 1 application services can now be injected anywhere in Angular 2 components or services.

Exposing an Angular 2 service into an Angular 1 injector will also be supported, but will require that you to provide a simple mapping configuration.

The result is that services can be easily moved one at a time from Angular 1 to Angular 2 over independent commits and communicate in a mixed-environment.

Component Nesting and Transclusion

In both versions of Angular, we define a component as a directive which has its own template. For incremental migration, youll need to be able to migrate these components one at a time. This means that ng-upgrade needs to enable components from each framework to nest within each other.

To solve this, ng-upgrade will allow you to wrap Angular 1 components in a facade so that they can be used in an Angular 2 component. Conversely, you can wrap Angular 2 components to be used in Angular 1. This will fully work with transclusion in Angular 1 and its analog of content-projection in Angular 2.

In this nested-component world, each template is fully owned by either Angular 1 or Angular 2 and will fully follow its syntax and semantics. This is not an emulation mode which mostly looks like the other, but an actual execution in each framework, dependending on the type of component. This means that components which are upgraded to Angular 2 will get all of the benefits of Angular 2, and not just better syntax.

This also means that an Angular 1 component will always use Angular 1 Dependency Injection, even when used in an Angular 2 template, and an Angular 2 component will always use Angular 2 Dependency Injection, even when used in an Angular 1 template.

Change Detection

Mixing Angular 1 and Angular 2 components implies that Angular 1 scopes and Angular 2 components are interleaved. For this reason, ng-upgrade will make sure that the change detection (Scope digest in Angular 1 and Change Detectors in Angular 2) are interleaved in the same way to maintain a predictable evaluation order of expressions.

ng-upgrade takes this into account and bridges the scope digest from Angular 1 and change detection in Angular 2 in a way that creates a single cohesive digest cycle spanning both frameworks.

Typical application upgrade process

Here is an example of what an Angular 1 project upgrade to Angular 2 may look like.

1. Include the Angular 2 and ng-upgrade libraries with your existing application
2. Pick a component which you would like to migrate
1. Edit an Angular 1 directives template to conform to Angular 2 syntax
2. Convert the directives controller/linking function into Angular 2 syntax/semantics
3. Use ng-upgrade to export the directive (now a Component) as an Angular 1 component (this is needed if you wish to call the new Angular 2 component from an Angular 1 template)
3. Pick a service which you would would like to migrate
1. Most services should require minimal to no change.
2. Configure the service in Angular 2
3. (optionally) re-export the service into Angular 1 using ng-upgrade if its still used by other parts of your Angular 1 code.
4. Repeat doing step #2 and #3 in order convenient for your application
5. Once no more services/components need to be converted drop the top level Angular 1 bootstrap and replace with Angular 2 bootstrap.

Note that each individual change can be checked in separately and the application continues working letting you continue to release updates as you wish.

We are not planning on adding support for allowing non-component directives to be usable on both sides. We think most of the non-component directives are not needed in Angular 2 as they are supported directly by the new template syntax (i.e. ng-click vs (click) )

Q&A

I heard Angular 2 doesnt support 2-way bindings. How will I replace them?

Actually, Angular 2 supports two way data binding and ng-model, though with slightly different syntax.

When we set out to build Angular 2 we wanted to fix issues with the Angular digest cycle. To solve this we chose to create a unidirectional data-flow for change detection. At first it was not clear to us how the two way forms data-binding of ng-model in Angular 1 fits in, but we always knew that we had to make forms in Angular 2 as simple as forms in Angular 1.

After a few iterations we managed to fix what was broken with multiple digests and still retain the power and simplicity of ng-model in Angular 1.

Two way data-binding has a new syntax: [(property-name)]="expression" to make it explicit that the expression is bound in both directions. Because for most scenarios this is just a small syntactic change we expect easy migration.

As an example, if in Angular 1 you have: <input type="text" ng-model="model.name" />

You would convert to this in Angular 2: <input type="text" [(ng-model)]="model.name" />

What languages can I use with Angular 2?

Angular 2 APIs fully support coding in todays JavaScript (ES5), the next version of JavaScript (ES6 or ES2015), TypeScript, and Dart.

While its a perfectly fine choice to continue with todays JavaScript, wed like to recommend that you explore ES6 and TypeScript (which is a superset of ES6) as they provide dramatic improvements to your productivity.

ES6 provides much improved syntax and intraoperative standards for common libraries like promises and modules. TypeScript gives you dramatically better code navigation, automated refactoring in IDEs, documentation, finding errors, and more.

Both ES6 and TypeScript are easy to adopt as they are supersets of todays ES5. This means that all your existing code is valid and you can add their features a little at a time.

What should I do with $watch in our codebase?

tldr; $watch expressions need to be moved into declarative annotations. Those that dont fit there should take advantage of observables (reactive programing style).

In order to gain speed and predictability, in Angular 2 you specify watch expressions declaratively. The expressions are either in HTML templates and are auto-watched (no work for you), or have to be declaratively listed in the directive annotation.

One additional benefit from this is that Angular 2 applications can be safely minified/obfuscated for smaller payload.

For interapplication communication Angular 2 offers observables (reactive programing style).

What can I do today to prepare myself for the migration?

Follow the best practices and build your application using components and services in Angular 1 as described in the AngularJS Style Guide.

Wasnt the original upgrade plan to use the new Component Router?

The upgrade plan that we announced at ng-conf 2015 was based on upgrading a whole view at a time and having the Component Router handle communication between the two versions of Angular.

The feedback we received was that while yes, this was incremental, it wasnt incremental enough. We went back and redesigned for the plan as described above.

Are there more details you can share?

Yes! In the Angular 1 to Angular 2 Upgrade Strategy design doc.

Were working on a series of upcoming posts on related topics including:

1. Mapping your Angular 1 knowledge to Angular 2.
2. A set of FAQs on details around Angular 2.
3. Detailed migration guide with working code samples.

See you back here soon!

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Celebrating 30 years of COM and the future of DOMAINS

Posted by Ben Fried, CIO

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog.)

When you visited Google today, we’re pretty sure you didn’t type 173.194.113.18 into your browser. This string of numbers separated by periods—an IP address—isn’t nearly as easy or memorable as typing google.com. Domain names ending in things like .COM, .NET and .EDU make browsing the web and telling people where to find you online easier. Since this month marks the 30-year anniversary of .COM and several other domain endings, we’re taking a minute to celebrate these often-overlooked suffixes that have changed the way we use the web.

Though they were introduced in 1985, domain names didn’t gain much awareness and use amongst the public until the World Wide Web became available to all during the ‘90s and it became clear they were an important part in unlocking its power. Using these online addresses, people began to spread messages, start businesses and access information that otherwise would have been nearly impossible to find. Popularity and demand for these names grew so much that people were soon willing to pay millions of dollars for the perfect one.

Today there are 270+ million registered domain names; in fact, about 17 million were added just last year. To create more naming options for people online, hundreds of new top-level domains are being added, and many, like .TODAY, .NINJA and .BIKE are already available. We wrote about this back in 2012, and since then we’ve launched three of our own: .HOW, .SOY and .???.

As .COM turns 30, we’re looking back on the history of domain endings and all they’ve made possible. Today there are more choices than ever before for people to find the perfect name for their businesses, projects and ideas on the web. If you’re interested in learning more about this history, or you’d like to register your own piece of the web, head over to Google Domains to claim your .DOMAINS from a .COM to a .GURU.

Here’s to .COM’s 30th, and all that’s yet to come in how we name destinations on the Internet.

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The Polymer Summit 2015 Roundup

Posted by Taylor Savage, Product Manager, Polymer

Yesterday in Amsterdam we kicked off the first ever Polymer Summit, joined live by 800 developers. We focused on three key themes: Develop, Design and Deploy, giving concrete advice on how you can build your web app from start to finish. You can watch a replay of the keynote here.

It has been amazing to see how much the community has grown and how far the project has come: what started as an experiment in a new way of developing on the web platform has steadily grown into the range of tools, product lines, and community contributions we saw presented throughout the Summit. Since Polymer 1.0 launched in May we’ve seen more than 150,000 public facing pages created with Polymer.

In case you missed any of the sessions, we’ve consolidated all of the recordings below:

Develop

• Thinking in Polymer
• End to End with Polymer
• Using ES6 with Polymer
• Testing Polymer Web Components
• Platinum Elements
• There’s an element for that - but what if there isn’t
• A11y with Polymer
• Upgrading to 1.0 with polyup
• Polymers Gesture System

Design

• Adaptive UI with Material Design and Paper Elements
• Polymers Styling System
• Polymers Animation System

Deploy

• Polymer Power Tools
• Polymer Performance Patterns
• Doing a Perf Audit of your Polymer App

Be sure to visit our YouTube channel for the session recordings. For the latest news and upcoming Polymer events, subscribe to the Polymer blog and follow us on Twitter @Polymer.

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Lighting the way with BLE beacons

Posted by Chandu Thota, Engineering Director and Matthew Kulick, Product Manager

Just like lighthouses have helped sailors navigate the world for thousands of years, electronic beacons can be used to provide precise location and contextual cues within apps to help you navigate the world. For instance, a beacon can label a bus stop so your phone knows to have your ticket ready, or a museum app can provide background on the exhibit you’re standing in front of. Today, we’re beginning to roll out a new set of features to help developers build apps using this technology. This includes a new open format for Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons to communicate with people’s devices, a way for you to add this meaningful data to your apps and to Google services, as well as a way to manage your fleet of beacons efficiently.

Eddystone: an open BLE beacon format

Working closely with partners in the BLE beacon industry, we’ve learned a lot about the needs and the limitations of existing beacon technology. So we set out to build a new class of beacons that addresses real-life use-cases, cross-platform support, and security.

At the core of what it means to be a BLE beacon is the frame format—i.e., a language—that a beacon sends out into the world. Today, we’re expanding the range of use cases for beacon technology by publishing a new and open format for BLE beacons that anyone can use: Eddystone. Eddystone is robust and extensible: It supports multiple frame types for different use cases, and it supports versioning to make introducing new functionality easier. It’s cross-platform, capable of supporting Android, iOS or any platform that supports BLE beacons. And it’s available on GitHub under the open-source Apache v2.0 license, for everyone to use and help improve.

By design, a beacon is meant to be discoverable by any nearby Bluetooth Smart device, via its identifier which is a public signal. At the same time, privacy and security are really important, so we built in a feature called Ephemeral Identifiers (EIDs) which change frequently, and allow only authorized clients to decode them. EIDs will enable you to securely do things like find your luggage once you get off the plane or find your lost keys. We’ll publish the technical specs of this design soon.

Eddystone for developers: Better context for your apps

Eddystone offers two key developer benefits: better semantic context and precise location. To support these, we’re launching two new APIs. The Nearby API for Android and iOS makes it easier for apps to find and communicate with nearby devices and beacons, such as a specific bus stop or a particular art exhibit in a museum, providing better context. And the Proximity Beacon API lets developers associate semantic location (i.e., a place associated with a lat/long) and related data with beacons, stored in the cloud. This API will also be used in existing location APIs, such as the next version of the Places API.

Eddystone for beacon manufacturers: Single hardware for multiple platforms

Eddystone’s extensible frame formats allow hardware manufacturers to support multiple mobile platforms and application scenarios with a single piece of hardware. An existing BLE beacon can be made Eddystone compliant with a simple firmware update. At the core, we built Eddystone as an open and extensible protocol that’s also interoperable, so we’ll also introduce an Eddystone certification process in the near future by closely working with hardware manufacturing partners. We already have a number of partners that have built Eddystone-compliant beacons.

Eddystone for businesses: Secure and manage your beacon fleet with ease

As businesses move from validating their beacon-assisted apps to deploying beacons at scale in places like stadiums and transit stations, hardware installation and maintenance can be challenging: which beacons are working, broken, missing or displaced? So starting today, beacons that implement Eddystone’s telemetry frame (Eddystone-TLM) in combination with the Proximity Beacon API’s diagnostic endpoint can help deployers monitor their beacons’ battery health and displacement—common logistical challenges with low-cost beacon hardware.

Eddystone for Google products: New, improved user experiences

We’re also starting to improve Google’s own products and services with beacons. Google Maps launched beacon-based transit notifications in Portland earlier this year, to help people get faster access to real-time transit schedules for specific stations. And soon, Google Now will also be able to use this contextual information to help prioritize the most relevant cards, like showing you menu items when you’re inside a restaurant.

We want to make beacons useful even when a mobile app is not available; to that end, the Physical Web project will be using Eddystone beacons that broadcast URLs to help people interact with their surroundings.

Beacons are an important way to deliver better experiences for users of your apps, whether you choose to use Eddystone with your own products and services or as part of a broader Google solution like the Places API or Nearby API. The ecosystem of app developers and beacon manufacturers is important in pushing these technologies forward and the best ideas won’t come from just one company, so we encourage you to get some Eddystone-supported beacons today from our partners and begin building!

Update (July 16, 2015 11.30am PST) To clarify, beacons registered with proper place identifiers (as defined in our Places API) will be used in Place Picker. You have to use Proximity Beacon API to map a beacon to a place identifier. See the post on Googles Geo Developer Blog for more details.

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Lithium Sulfur battery cells the upcoming replacement for Lithium Ion

Lithium-ion batteries, the current battery technology used in smartphones, has a high specific energy (energy per weight) but has a few drawbacks. Lets take a closer look and compare both technologies.

The main issue with Li-ion is that is requires lithium dissolved in extremely volatile and flammable organic solvents; e.g. dimethoxyethane which has a low flash point -2 °C (28 °F), the temperature at which a volatile substance can evaporate and form an ignitable mixture in air. This makes them extremely dangerous when the charging circuits malfunction and fail to protect the battery from overcharging, and consequently overheating. We have seen some scary stories in the recent past with people waking up to their phone bursting into flames while they were charging overnight, and the battery fires in the new Boeing 787 Li-ion battery packs. So obviously there is need for development into a safer battery composition with similar or better energy capacities.

Recently I did some research into the developing Lithium-Sulfur battery, with extremely promising specifications at the present time better than Li-ion. Li-S is extremely light weight due to the use of sulfur instead of ionic liquids, additionally sulfur is much cheaper to produce than ionic liquids. Despite frequent headlines about new battery compositions with potentially high capacities, Li-S is actually in the production stages and no longer just a concept.  

The chemistry behind Li-S is essentially the lithium gets plated onto the anode when charging and poly-sulfides are reduced and coat the anode when discharging, compared to the use of intercalated anode and cathode plates in Li-ion. This is the main factor which gives Li-S potential to be a battery composition with an extremely high specific energy. The different chemistry also allows the use of much less volatile solvents such as polyethylene glycols (flash point up to 287 °C/548 °F).

The degradation of Li-S is different to Li-ion but is also susceptible to an increased rate of degradation at high temperatures. There are unwanted side reactions that can take place, but are reversible until they dissolve into the solvent. Luckily sulfide compounds are relatively insoluble in electrolyte solutions but any increase in temperature will increase their solubility, so batteries need to be well regulated to prevent rapid charging and discharging.

Manufacturers are beginning to pour money into research and development for Li-S as there are a lot of factors which can be significantly improved, from something as simple milling smaller sulfur and carbon particles to something more difficult like developing a better solvent to improve battery capacity and reduce degradation. (Carbon nanotubes/nanofibres are used as a conductor due to sulfur’s poor electroconductivity, and they are still quite expensive to produce.)

Ive put a graph at the top to compare rechargeable battery technology in the past with Li-S. Now, time to see which OEM will be implementing Li-S first.

TL;DR Lithium-Sulfur batteries are capable of having a higher wattage per weight than Lithium-ion whilst being both safer to the consumer and cheaper to manufacture.

Puncture test comparison

Short circuit test comparison

This article is also to be found on its authors personal blog.

Have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) below this post!

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Connect With the World Around You Through Nearby APIs

Posted by Akshay Kannan, Product Manager

Mobile phones have made it easy to communicate with anyone, whether they’re right next to you or on the other side of the world. The great irony, however, is that those interactions can often feel really awkward when youre sitting right next to someone.

Today, it takes several steps -- whether it’s exchanging contact information, scanning a QR code, or pairing via bluetooth -- to get a simple piece of information to someone right next to you. Ideally, you should be able to just turn to them and do so, the same way you do in the real world.

This is why we built Nearby. Nearby provides a proximity API, Nearby Messages, for iOS and Android devices to discover and communicate with each other, as well as with beacons.

Nearby uses a combination of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and inaudible sound (using the device’s speaker and microphone) to establish proximity. We’ve incorporated Nearby technology into several products, including Chromecast Guest Mode, Nearby Players in Google Play Games, and Google Tone.

With the latest release of Google Play services 7.8, the Nearby Messages API becomes available to all developers across iOS and Android devices (Gingerbread and higher). Nearby doesn’t use or require a Google Account. The first time an app calls Nearby, users get a permission dialog to grant that app access.

A few of our partners have built creative experiences to show whats possible with Nearby.

Edjing Pro uses Nearby to let DJs publish their tracklist to people around them. The audience can vote on tracks that they like, and their votes are updated in realtime.

Trello uses Nearby to simplify sharing. Share a Trello board to the people around you with a tap of a button.

Pocket Casts uses Nearby to let you find and compare podcasts with people around you. Open the Nearby tab in Pocket Casts to view a list of podcasts that people around you have, as well as podcasts that you have in common with others.

Trulia uses Nearby to simplify the house hunting process. Create a board and use Nearby to make it easy for the people around you to join it.

To learn more, visit developers.google.com/nearby?utm_campaign=nearby-api-714&utm_source=gdbc&utm_medium=blog.

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Quantifying the economic value of Chromebooks for schools

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Lead Product Manager, Chromebooks for Education 

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Many schools have told us that Chromebooks have helped them transform learning. Those in Texas and North Carolina have shared stories of students using Chromebooks to better connect with their teachers and peers and expand their learning opportunities (you’ll see more stories in the coming weeks from districts in New York, Florida and Michigan). But beyond opening new avenues for learning, Chromebooks are also helping schools save money, allowing them to meet tight budgets and provide computers to more students.

Plymouth-Canton Community Schools — one of the largest districts in Michigan — for example, told us that they’ve been able to save $200k in the 3rd grade alone, by purchasing Chromebooks over alternative devices. Theyve been able to leverage those savings to purchase charging carts, protective cases for the devices and additional power adaptors so that students can charge the Chromebooks at home and at school. The same has been true outside of the US. Earlier this year, Academies Enterprise Trust, a network of 76 schools across the United Kingdom, anticipated that they could save £7.7m in hardware and maintenance costs by using Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks.

To more fully understand the total cost of ownership and savings impact of Chromebooks, we commissioned IDC to conduct interviews with 10 schools using Chromebooks to support teaching and learning in 7 countries. The study comprised of 10 schools in 7 countries representing 294,620 students in all, across United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand. The interviews consisted of a variety of quantitative and qualitative questions designed to obtain information about the economics of deploying Chromebooks for these school systems as well as the impact of using Chromebooks on their students and faculty. Some of their key findings:

According to one school district in the study, Chromebook’s price point enabled the school system to reach a 1:1 user-device ratio, something it couldn’t have done before given the cost of their previous devices. They said, “We now have a 1:1 device solution with Chromebooks … Without Chromebooks, either we would have fewer devices or we would have had to spend four times as much to get to the same point.” For this district, being able to expand the number of students who have daily or consistent access to educational content on Chromebooks represents a substantial advantage and supports their core missions.

You can read the full whitepaper here, and calculate how much time and money Chromebooks can save for your school.

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Selection Controls 2 The spinner Control

The spinner controls is similar to the ComboBox in C#. it displays a list to select from in a popup window so ot may become a better choice over ListView if you want to save space.

It works in a similar way to that of the the listView

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout 
 android_orientation="vertical"
 android_layout_width="fill_parent"
 android_layout_height="fill_parent"
 >
 <Spinner
 android_layout_width="fill_parent" 
 android_layout_height="wrap_content"
 android_id="@+id/Spinner"
 />
</LinearLayout>

when you click on the spinner it popups like this:

To handle the selected item you can use do it like this:

final String [] items=new String[]{"Item1","Item2","Item3","Item4"};
 ArrayAdapter ad=new ArrayAdapter(this,android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item,items);
 ad.setDropDownViewResource(android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item);
 Spinner spin=(Spinner)findViewById(R.id.Spinner);
 spin.setAdapter(ad);
 spin.setOnItemSelectedListener(new OnItemSelectedListener()
 {

 public void onItemSelected(AdapterView arg0, View arg1,
 int arg2, long arg3) {
 TextView txt=(TextView)findViewById(R.id.txt);
 TextView temp=(TextView)arg1;
 txt.setText(temp.getText());
 
 }

 public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView arg0) {
 // TODO Auto-generated method stub
 
 }
 
 });

The above code displays the selected item text in the textview.

The parameters of the OnItemClick method are:


• Arg0:the Spinner, notice that it is of type AdapterView.

• Arg1: the view that represents the selected item, in this example it will be a TextView

• Arg2: the position of the selected item.

• Arg3: the id of the selected item.

and thats it for the Spinner Control.

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Celect brings science to the art of retail merchandising

Posted by Devavrat Shah, Chief Scientist and Co-founder of Celect

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Blog.)

Editors note: Today’s guest blog comes from Devavrat Shah, Chief Scientist and Co-founder of Celect, which helps retailers understand buying patterns and customer choices.

Retailers spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out what people will buy and when, online or offline. Many retailers see this as an art, but at Celect, we want to add science to this process. The answer lies in what we call the “Choice Engine,” which gathers data on what customers buy and don’t buy – instead of just simply finding out how they rate products they like. Think of the shopping process this way: If someone browses black shirts and red shirts online, but puts a blue shirt in the shopping cart, they’re giving you comparative information. Celect can take these choices and suggest which products a retailer should stock more or less of – as well as predict when price becomes a factor in a shopper’s purchase decision.

My cofounder Vivek Farias and I, both professors at MIT, decided to put our brains together and see if we could bring our technology to the commercial market. We knew our technology was great, so we bootstrapped a team together – two professors, two engineers, and one person on the ground doing business development. Our biggest challenge was scaling our technology even though we had an extremely small development team. We didn’t want to run a system when we didn’t yet have clients.

Fortunately for Celect, we met the criteria for Google Cloud Platform for Startups, giving us $100,000 in credit for Google Cloud Platform products and easy access to engineers and architects to help us make the most of our infrastructure. We quickly found out how good Google’s documentation is, which matters when you’re a startup that needs to move quickly. We get to tap into the expertise of people who’ve spent 10 years building cloud infrastructure, and they know it very well. The web user interface of Google Cloud Storage is very intuitive to navigate, and gives us an overall view of the system and the resources in use.

We run our workloads on Google Compute Engine, which operates easily with our commodity Linux machines – another way we save money as a startup. Google Cloud Platform also gives us peace of mind about security. Retailers trust us with highly proprietary information, and they’re very sensitive to data breaches. When they hear we rely on Google, retailers know we’re adhering to strong security standards.

Since we’re going after large retailers for our product, we need the scalability to store massive datasets. We can create new data stores in Google Cloud Platform so that every client’s data is siloed from the others. It’s the perfect on-demand infrastructure for a company like ours that needs to run lean for the first couple of years.

At this stage in our growth, we want to make very efficient use of every dollar we spend. The past year has been very successful for us, with some great retailer brands signed on and a threefold growth in employees. Google Cloud Platform will grow with us, while helping us develop our products better and faster.

- Posted by Devavrat Shah, Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Celect

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The mail you want not the spam you don’t

Posted by Sri Harsha Somanchi, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Official Gmail Blog.)

The Gmail team is always working hard to make sure that every message you care about arrives in your inbox, and all the spam you don’t want remains out of sight. In fact, less than 0.1% of email in the average Gmail inbox is spam, and the amount of wanted mail landing in the spam folder is even lower, at under 0.05%.

Even still, Gmail spam detection isn’t perfect. So today we’re sharing some of the new ways we are supporting the senders of wanted mail, and using the latest Google smarts to filter out spam.

Getting the mail you do want with Gmail Postmaster Tools

Gmail users get lots of important email from companies like banks and airlines—from monthly statements to ticket receipts—but sometimes these wanted messages are mistakenly classified as spam. When this happens, you might have to wade through your spam folder to find that one important email (yuck!). We can help senders to do better, so today we’re launching the Gmail Postmaster Tools.

The Gmail Postmaster Tools help qualified high-volume senders analyze their email, including data on delivery errors, spam reports, and reputation. This way they can diagnose any hiccups, study best practices, and help Gmail route their messages to the right place. For you, this means no more dumpster diving for that confirmation code ;-)

Google smarts for less spam

Since the beginning, machine learning has helped make the Gmail spam filter more awesome. When you click the “Report spam” and “Not spam” buttons, you’re not only improving your Gmail experience right then and there, you’re also training Gmail’s filters to identify spam vs. wanted mail in the future. Now, we are bringing the same intelligence developed for Google Search and Google Now to make the spam filter smarter in a number of ways.

• For starters, the spam filter now uses an artificial neural network to detect and block the especially sneaky spam—the kind that could actually pass for wanted mail.
• We also recognize that not all inboxes are alike. So while your neighbor may love weekly email newsletters, you may loathe them. With advances in machine learning, the spam filter can now reflect these individual preferences.
• Finally, the spam filter is better than ever at rooting out email impersonation—that nasty source of most phishing scams. Thanks to new machine learning signals, Gmail can now figure out whether a message actually came from its sender, and keep bogus email at bay.

Ultimately, we aspire to a spam-free Gmail experience. So please keep those spam reports coming, and if you’re a company that sends email, then check out our new Postmaster Tools. Together we can get the wanted mail to the right place, and keep the spam where it belongs.

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The new Training Center professional development by and for educators

Posted by Liz Anderson, Global Lead of Adoption Programs, Google for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editors note: Twenty thousand educators from around the world will share ideas, tips, and trends for the upcoming year when they gather at ISTE, one of the largest education technology conferences in the world. If you’ll be in Philadelphia, come visit us in the Expo Hall at #1808. You can learn more about the new Training Center and check out any of over 50 short sessions that will share more ways to engage and inspire students.

Technology can transform education, but only when it enables and supports amazing educators. Effective professional development is thus a crucial part of creating real positive change and preparing students for the future. For this reason, we’re proud to introduce the new Google for Education Training Center, a free, interactive, online platform that helps educators apply Google’s tools in the classroom and beyond.

Professional development has long been a challenge for educators and administrators. A 2015 survey by the American Federation of Teachers found that the "adoption of new initiatives without proper training or professional development" was the primary reason for workplace stress, with 71% of respondents citing it. This is why we worked closely alongside educators to design professional development tools that fit the needs of their peers.

“We didn’t need another help center with how-to articles; we needed to start where teachers start, with learning objectives, classroom tasks and teaching strategies,” said Jay Atwood, EdTech coordinator at Singapore American School and project lead for the Training Center’s lesson creation. “With the new Training Center, we do just that.”

The Training Center provides interactive lessons with a practical classroom focus, allowing educators and administrators to customize their learning paths by choosing fundamental or advanced courses. Each course is organized around three themes:

Educators can access different units and lessons in any order they prefer. After completing either the fundamentals or advanced course, educators can then distinguish themselves as Google Certified Educators, Level 1 or Level 2.

The lessons support different skill sets, grade levels, content specialties, capacities and interests. “I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about Google, but in each session I learned something new,” says Carla Jones, a teacher at Cook Elementary School in Chicago, IL who previewed the Training Center content. “I learned tips and strategies that I could immediately use in my classroom, and each session got me super excited about how to make my classroom more tech integrated.”

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest school district in the United States with more than 600 schools and 400,000 students, worked with Google for Education as a launch partner for the new Training Center. CPS will use the Training Center as an integral part of its technology professional development program, and teachers’ time spent on Training Center courses will count toward their professional development hours.

“The new Google for Education Training Center empowers teachers to drive their own learning and track their progress,” says Donna Román, EdTech instructional specialist at CPS. “It combines differentiated content, flexible pace and application with the collaborative magic of Google Apps for Education in a supportive learning environment.”

The Training Center reflects what we value most about education, focusing on the process of learning rather than the tools themselves. “The Training Center was carefully designed around good pedagogy and instructional practices,” explains Mark Hammons, EdTech coordinator at the Fresno County Office of Education and a contributor to the platform. “Not only will teachers learn how to use Google Apps, but they will also learn how to apply them meaningfully in the classroom.”

To learn more about the Training Center, visit g.co/edutrainingcenter and try out a lesson or two.

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How do we prepare the students of today to be tomorrow’s digital leaders

Posted by Victoria Tuomisto, the Economist Intelligence Unit

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editors note: To understand the extent to which the skills taught in education systems around the world are changing, and whether they meet the needs of employers and society more widely, Google commissioned research from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU surveyed senior business executives, teachers and students. The key findings of the survey and the main issues raised by educators and students were discussed by a diverse panel at the opening session of Education on Air, the free online conference from Google on May 8th. Read the full report here.

With rapidly evolving business needs, technological advances and new work structures, the skills that will be needed in the future are shifting. In response to these changes, policymakers, educators and experts around the world are rethinking their education systems.

During Education on Air a panel of education experts participated in a discussion aimed at understanding how to best adapt education systems to the skills needs of the future:

• Ken Shelton, Educator, Trainer & Google Certified Teacher, USA 
• Jaime Casap, Global Education Evangelist, Google, USA 
• Jouni Kangasniemi, Special Adviser to the Ministry of Education & Culture, Finland 
• Nicole, a secondary student from Isle of Portland Aldridge Community Academy, UK 
• Zoe Tabary, Editor, Economist Intelligence Unit, UK 

The panel considered how to best help students learn and adopt the skills and attitudes that employers in the increasingly digital and networked economy require.

According to the EIUs research report, sponsored by Google for Education and presented by EIU editor Zoe Tabary during Education on Air, problem-solving, teamwork and communication are the most needed skills in the workplace.
                   This video provides a short summary of the report from the Economist Intelligence Unit.

But it seems that education systems have not yet responded to this demand; only a third of executives say they’re satisfied with the level of attainment of young people entering the workplace. Even more striking is that 51% of executives say a skills gap is hampering their organisations performance. Students and educators paint a similar picture.

Panelists echoed the EIU research by suggesting that education systems often lack the capacity to teach a wider range of skills—namely problem-solving, digital literacy, leadership and creativity—that would complement more conventional skills, such as numeracy and literacy. Time constraints, lack of flexibility and a reluctance to innovate with the curriculum are a few of the causes mentioned. For Jouni Kangasniemi, senior advisor to Finlands Ministry of Education and Culture, the key question was how to really embed these skills throughout the curriculum rather than just add them to the mix of skills and subjects.

Progress is being made, however, and panelists shared examples of how the education system is adapting to changing demands. Examples from the Finnish education system, presented by Mr Kangasniemi, suggest that learning results in this area improve when teachers have a certain degree of freedom and trust to adjust the curriculum to the learning styles of the students. Teaching becomes more personalised and student-focused, and supports learning, with questions exchanged collaboratively between teachers and students rather than teachers simply presenting answers and facts.

Technology also has a central role in skills development. According to the EIU research, 85% of teachers report that IT advances are changing the way they teach—but only 23% of 18-25-year-olds think their education system is very effective at making full use of the technologies now available. With the pace of technological change accelerating, education systems should respond by offering training and platforms for teachers that effectively use technology and better equip students for both today’s and tomorrow’s workplace.

Jaime Casap, global education specialist at Google, stressed the need to focus on teaching mindsets, rather than skills. "Skills can become obsolete—there is a finite timeline when they can be used or applied," Casap argues, whereas an inquisitive approach that seeks to solve problems will always be necessary, no matter what issues humanity will need to grapple with in the future. The question is how we can build a culture and environment—and education models—that prepare students to meet any challenge as future digital leaders.

Read the full report: “The skills agenda: Preparing students for the future.”

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Retiring the Email Migration API

Posted by Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

Last summer, we launched the new Gmail API, giving developers more flexible, powerful, and higher-level access to programmatic email management, not to mention improved performance. Since then, it has been expanded to replace the Google Apps Admin SDKs Email Migration API (EMAPI v2). Going forward, we recommend developers integrate with the Gmail API.

EMAPI v2 will be turned down on November 1, 2015, so you should switch to the Gmail API soon. To aid you with this effort, weve put together a developer’s guide to help you migrate from EMAPI v2 to the Gmail API. Before you do that, here’s your final reminder to not forget about these deprecations including EMAPI v1, which are coming even sooner (April 20, 2015).

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6 tips to create innovate from the CEO of IDEO

Posted by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

Editors note: Today, we hear from Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and author of “Change by Design.” As a leader of the global design and innovation firm, with clients like IKEA, Joie De Vivre Hotels and NBC’s Today Show, Tim focuses on finding pathways to creativity. Watch an extended interview with Tim from our interactive event #Atmosphere15 here.

I remember the first time I walked into a bookstore and noticed the books facing forward with handwritten reviews dangling underneath. It made deciding which book to buy much easier compared to scanning rows of book spines. That’s creativity to me: looking beyond what’s conventional and finding a different and better way. For me, life’s much more enjoyable and rewarding when I keep wondering how things could be different from the way they are now. Here are some ways that I keep my mind open to creative breakthroughs.

1. Challenge assumptions. Ask why things happen the way they do and why the world works the way it does. Unless we’re curious, it’s very hard to come up with new ideas.


2. Think of the creative process as starting with a question rather than an answer. Rather than the standard creative assertion, “I’ve got an idea,” the key is to start with a really interesting question. Go home, go back to the office and allow yourself to wonder. When you have interesting questions, you’ll get to interesting solutions.


3. Reframe problems by asking different questions. If the obvious question is “How do I solve this thing that’s bugging me?” reframe it to ask “Why do I do that thing at all?” or “Is there a better way to approach that thing in the first place?” The key is to ask the right questions with enough room to inspire new ideas. If you ask too narrow a question, you get an obvious answer.
   
   For example, instead of asking “How do we make this chair more comfortable?” we can ask more broadly, “How do we sit in different ways in order to have a better conversation?” We might not even need the chair at all. The idea is to frame the question so that it gives you enough space to go to interesting places.


4. Show creative confidence. We all have a natural ability to spur creative ideas. The important next step is to find the courage to act on those ideas. People get hung up on the idea of failure, but failure is an essential mode for learning what works and what doesn’t.


5. Use a creative mindset, whatever your role. We live in a world where change is happening everywhere and nothing stays the same for long, so we need to bring creativity to everything we do. On a personal level, it’s rewarding to figure out how things could be different, and professionally, it keeps us competitive. It doesn’t matter what role you play in an organization — there’s always room for improvement in the way we do things.


6. Be observant. Most of us have powerful devices at our fingertips that allow us to easily and extensively observe the way people work and live. Take photos all the time, and share those pictures at work, because observing how people do things now is the start of figuring out how to do things differently.

To hear more from Tim, watch his full recorded session at our #Atmosphere event. And to see more about creating a culture of innovation, visit the Google Apps Insights page.

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Chrome Live How Chrome is shifting the device landscape

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome for Work

Today at Chrome Live, we showed how Chrome continues to make the way we work faster, simpler and more secure, while businesses like Netflix, Pinterest and Chico’s shared how Chrome for Work is bringing innovation to their workplaces.

We also announced new Chrome products and features that make it simpler to bring Chrome to work, including:

• Chromebook integration with Box for more ways to bring your files to the cloud: Now, you can seamlessly access your Box documents from a Chromebook, just as you would access your local documents. This means that with your Chromebook, you’ll have access to even more applications, no matter where you are.

• Bringing face-to-face meetings to larger rooms: Last year, we launched Chromebox for meetings so you can have face-to-face conversations with colleagues in remote offices and still feel like you’re in the same room. Today, we announced a new version of Chromebox for meetings that powers meeting rooms fitting up to twenty people. The hardware in the bundle includes a Chromebox powered by Dell, Asus, and HP, a pan tilt zoom camera, and more; just bring your own display. From huddle rooms to large conference rooms, you can now affordably bring video meetings to more office spaces.

• Improvements to Chrome management for Chrome-dedicated devices: A few weeks ago, we announced over a dozen Chrome partners in the digital signage space. We’ve also improved ongoing reporting to monitor the health of your kiosks and signage at all times. You’ll get alerts from Chrome management if a screen goes down and can remotely reboot the device to get it back online without dispatching a technician. You can also get live updates about system usage and capture screen grabs to see exactly what viewers see.

• Bringing Chrome management pricing flexibility to more places: We’re adding pricing flexibility to Chromebook management at a subscription fee of $50/year and announcing availability in seven new countries: Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, India, UK and France.

If you weren’t able to attend the live session, you can still watch the event on demand. Feel free to share your thoughts, impressions and questions using #chromelive15 on social media.

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Beacons the Internet of things and more Coffee with Timothy Jordan

Posted by Laurence Moroney, Developer Advocate

In this episode of Coffee With a Googler, Laurence meets with Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan to talk about all things Ubiquitous Computing at Google. Learn about the platforms and services that help developers reach their users wherever it makes sense.

We discuss Brillo, which extends the Android Platform to Internet of Things embedded devices, as well as Weave, which is a services layer that helps all those devices work together seamlessly.

We also chat about beacons and how they can give context to the world around you, making the user experience simpler. Traditionally, users need to tell you about their location, and other types of context. But with beacons, the environment can speak to you. When it comes to developing for beacons, Timothy introduces us to Eddystone, a protocol specification for BlueTooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons, the Proximity Beacon API that allows developers to register a beacon and associate data with it, and the Nearby Messages API which helps your app sight and retrieve data about nearby beacons.

Timothy and his team have produced a new Udacity series on ubiquitous computing that you can access for free! Take the course to learn more about ubiquitous computing, the design paradigms involved, and the technical specifics for extending to Android Wear, Google Cast, Android TV, and Android Auto.

Also, dont forget to join us for a ubiquitous computing summit on November 9th & 10th in San Francisco. Sign up here and well keep you updated.

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Very short review of TOP 3 tablets on the market

Yesterday I bought second tablet in my Android carrier - Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (N8000). Internet is full of different reviews about this device, so I wont be writing essay about it. What I want to do, is to write about 3 current high-end tablets you can find on the market and why non of them are worth to buy. This concerns: Galaxy Nexus 10, Galaxy Note 10.1 and Asus Transformer Infinity. I will mostly write short pros and cons of each.

Every of these three devices presents different approach of using a tablet:

1. Galaxy Nexus 10 ---> hand only
2. Galaxy Note 10.1 --> hand & active pen
3. Asus Transformer Infinity ---> hand & keyboard dock

Galaxy Nexus 10

The build quality of Nexus 10 is superb. Screen is actually the best on the market. Hardware (CPU, GPU) are top components as well. However, using N10 with only a hand makes this device nothing more then a overgrown phone. You can browse internet, zoom in or zoom out 100 times the same pictures, watch a movie (if you have some battery bank with you), chat with friends etc. You can do all these amazing things... Oh wait... no, you cant! There is no 3G connectivity. So if you are not close to some Wi-Fi hot-spot (you can make one yourself if you have enough mobile data-plan in your smartphone) you can only watch photos, read some e-book or listen to the music. Or you can browse the Internet on your tablet sitting home on the couch with your notebook next to you. I dont know whats so cool in browsing Internet on 10" screen, if you can do it on 15"4 screen as well, with full keyboard and mouse. Lets get back to that hot-spot. Why it sucks? Because now you need 2 battery banks. One for your tablet, and one for your mobile phone.

You might say there are many advanced active pens on the market you can buy and use with your Nexus 10. Sure, you can. Try to make a note having your hand lying on the screen. Its not possible to write anything (at least nothing readable) if there is no software protection against random hand touch (like Samsung has in Note 10.1). So forget about using pen with Nexus 10. Pure Android is not ready yet for active pens.

Pros:

1. Great screen (2560 x 1600)
2. Great hardware
3. Great design

Cons:

1. No 3G connectivity
2. Not ready for active pens, so using this device is limited just to entertainment.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

Now... lets be honest. Im not disappointed with this device. But Im also not that excited as I was when I bought my first tablet - Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101. So whats wrong about it? Its Samsung design, so it feels plastic. And no matter how great and innovatory this plastic will be, it still feels like plastic. Other tablets are plastic too, but when you hold Samsung you feel like holding a cheap plastic. Sorry, its they way I feel. But what is worse, its creaking here and there. Samsung, please! For that price you give us cheap, noisy plastic? Im not saying its creaking a lot. But it shouldnt be creaking at all. Another things is the screen. 1280 x 800 is embarrassing resolution for 101 tablet. This should not happen. Screen quality is just bad. And there is no Gorilla Glass. By the way - S-Pen feels cheap too.

When it comes to connectivity, its one of not many tablets on the market with 3G connection. So if you have a SIM card with at least 2 GB mobile data plan, its a perfect solution to have your tablet connected all the time.

The best thing about this tablet is not S-Pen. Its Samsung software. And trust me - Im a HTC fan so its not easy for me to say that I like anything about Samsung software. But when it comes to using a pen, this is the only tablet on the market with such advanced software for handwriting. There is also great multitasking - you can have active applications on the desktop and work without closing each other. It would take too long to write about all amazing things you can find using this tablet together with S-Pen. If youre looking for a tablet that you can use not only for fun - Note 10.1 its the only right choice.

Pros:

1. Great active pen (S-Pen)
2. Amazing software for handwriting and great multitasking features
3. 3G connectivity

Cons:

1. Plastic design
2. Low resolution (1280 x 800)
3. No Gorilla Glas protection
4. Cracking body

Asus Transformer Infinity

The last one from the TOP 3. Asus tablets are well known from their keyboard dock stations. What is so great about it? In my opinion - nothing. But lets start from the beginning. Screen in this model is somewhere in between Nexus 10 and Galaxy Note 10.1. It has 1920 x 1200 resolution. Not as good as Nexus 10, but decisively much better than Galaxy Note 10.1. It also has IPS+ panel instead of TFT (guess which one have TFT...?). Also there is 3G connectivity. Of course if you find TF700TG version. So far 3G variant seems to be a ghost version, almost like Nexus 10 in some countries. Build quality is very good, I like the design as well. Again, its between Nexus 10 and Samsung. Not that good as N10, but much better then Note 10.1.

When it comes to software I must say I pretty like it. GUI is not as expanded as HTC Sense or Samsung TouchWiz, but it gives you some more widgets and applications than pure Android (Galaxy Nexus 10).

Now the best part - keyboard. This is the approach I find the most ridiculous. And the useless touchpad is lovely too! Just one question - if you need to write fast on your portable device - why using limited Android with quasi-keyboard is better then using ultrabook with Windows (or Linux) Intel CPU, big SSD drive, HD graphic and 4 GB RAM? If you want to carry 101 tablet with external keyboard, you can get Asus or Samsung ultrabook for the same price. With much more features and power under the hood.

Of course you can buy an active pen. But like I mentioned before in Nexus 10 part, using an active pen without a special software is pointless. It just wont work as you could expect.

Pros:

1. Good screen (IPS+ 1920 x 1200)
2. Nice design
3. Good build quality

Cons:

1. Almost not possible to find model with 3G
2. Not ready for active pens, so using this device is limited just to entertainment (if you dont have keyboard dock)
3. If you actually have keyboard dock, think about functionality of such combo against e.g. HP Envy ultrabook.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is no perfect tablet on the market. At least not for me. Some of them are missing 3G, some of them are not yet ready for handwriting. And if there is a tablet with 3G and great handwriting software, it doesnt look as good as it could. Maybe its time for HTC to show some tablet? We havent seen from HTC anything new with 101 screen since a long time.

So what the best tablet should be and look like?

1. Galaxy Nexus 10 build quality and design
2. Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity (additionally variant with LTE instead of 3G)
3. Samsung handwriting software & S-Pen
4. IPS+ panel with 2560 x 1600 resolution, covered with Gorilla Glass
5. Top CPU, GPU and sufficient amount of RAM memory
6. MicoSD card slot

For such tablet I will pay every price.

At the end, here is some thought - do you think tablets have a chance to survive in a world where more and more ultrabooks and notebooks have touch screens or even rotating screens (like Dell XPS 12, Lenovo ThinkPad Twist) or dual-screen like Asus Taichi.

Do you have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) below this post!

For latest news follow Android Revolution HD on popular social platforms:

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The first ever Chrome Live Coming to a screen near you on April 22nd

Posted by Casey Le, Product Marketing Manager, Chrome for Work

Chrome was a big bet when it was introduced six years ago and has since grown to provide a simpler, speedier and safer web for more than 750 million users around the world. Today, Chrome is an integrated hardware and software solution for work that meets the challenges of and innovates upon traditional platforms.

Join us online April 22nd at 10:00am PDT at Chrome Live, our first-ever online event, to hear from Googlers, technical experts and our customers about how Chrome is meeting the needs of a more mobile, social and cloud-oriented workplace. At Chrome Live, you’ll:

• Have a front-row seat to two keynotes from:

• Amit Singh, President of Google for Work, who’ll share how Chrome for Work is part of the transformational agenda of many businesses today. He’ll also be announcing a number of new products coming to the Chrome for Work family.

• Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management for Chrome for Work, who’ll discuss how devices have revolutionized the way we work. He’ll also uncover a few pathways of our top-secret roadmap and may have a few surprises in store.

• Learn how the web, meeting technology and digital displays are being reimagined with Chrome for Work product managers Saswat Panigrahi and Vidya Nagarajan

• See live deployment and management demos by Chrome team experts

• Hear from IT leaders at Netflix, Pinterest and Chico’s about integrating devices with the cloud and enabling IT admins at top companies to streamline day-to-day operations

• Get a sneak peek at the team’s plans to continue innovating and addressing new needs in the market

To be a part of Chrome Live, all you need is a comfortable seat, an Internet connection and a computer, tablet or phone; pants are optional but recommended. You’ll be able to interact with Google experts and ask questions.

Register now to learn all this and more at the first Chrome Live event on Wednesday, April 22nd at 10:00am PDT. And even if you can’t attend on the scheduled dates, be sure to register to stay up to date on all things Chrome. Feel free to share your thoughts, impressions and questions using #chromelive15 on social media.

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Get Ready for the Chrome Dev Summit 2015

Posted by Paul Kinlan, Chrome Developer Relations

The Chrome Dev Summit is almost here! We’ll kick off live from Mountain View, California at 9:00AM PT this coming Tuesday, November 17th. To get the most out of the event, make sure to check out the speaker list and talk schedule on our site.

Can’t join us in person? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! You can tune into the summit live on developer.chrome.com/devsummit. We will stream the keynote and all sessions over the course of the event. If you want us to send you a reminder to tune into the livestream, sign up here. We’ll also be publishing all of the talks as videos on the Chrome Developers YouTube Channel.

We’re looking forward to seeing you in person or remotely on Tuesday. Don’t forget to join the social conversations at #ChromeDevSummit!

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Beating the odds the real power of education

Posted by Jaime Casap, Chief Education Evangelist, Google

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor’s Note: Today we hear from our Chief Education Evangelist, Jaime Casap, who spoke at First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2015 “Beating the Odds” Summit. The event welcomed more than 130 college-bound students from across the country and focused on sharing tools and strategies to help more students successfully transition to college and complete the next level of their education.

Last week I had the honor of sharing my story with over 130 college-bound students at First Lady Michelle Obama’s "Beating the Odds" Summit — part of her Reach Higher initiative. These students came from across the country and different backgrounds. They included urban, rural, foster, homeless, special needs and underrepresented youth, all of whom have overcome substantial barriers to make it to college.

In my daily job I get to work with a group of people focused on building technology and programs that can help support teachers, who help empower their students to be lifelong learners. I believe education has the power to rid poverty and change the destiny of a family in just one generation. Reach Higher has the same mission: to invest in our students and help them get the education they need to thrive.

This mission is also deeply personal for me. I was raised in Hell’s Kitchen, New York by a single mother who came to America from Argentina. On my first day of school, I didn’t speak English. I grew up fast and watched my elementary school friends turn into addicts and criminals. When I looked for a road out, I saw only dead ends, until I realized education was a road out. But it wasn’t easy: everything around me shrieked, “you won’t make it; you aren’t meant to succeed.”

I realize now that the negative voices are always there; you have to push them down. With the help of my teachers, I graduated from high school and committed to going to college. There were many times when I felt like I didn’t belong — at that time the college graduation rate for Latinos was around five percent — but I graduated with a double major, packed up my stuff and drove across the country to pursue a Master of Public Policy degree. The only way I did it was by convincing myself to prove the naysayers wrong.

Education didn’t just change my life, it changed my family, too. I now have three kids, and my eldest daughter graduated from college last month. I never had a conversation with her about college, she just assumed she was and should go to college. My 14-year-old wants to build a college curriculum for himself focused on game design. My kids don’t face the barriers I did; they see no obstacles in their way.

This is to say that I believe in what the First Lady is trying to accomplish with Reach Higher. Students must go beyond high school graduation — whether that’s a four-year college, community college or a technical/certification program. One reason this is essential is because today’s high-school-only graduates earn just 62 percent of what their college-graduate peers earn. We need to prepare all our students, especially our most vulnerable students, for their future and help them reach high.

Often we ask our students the wrong question: “What do you want to be when you grow up.” Instead, we should ask “What problem do you want to solve?” We should empower students to take ownership of their learning. As much as I want students to be college and career ready, I also want them to be curious lifelong learners ready to tackle the world’s problems.

For millions of students, “reaching higher” means beating the odds with a lot of hard work, a healthy disrespect for the impossible, and some luck. It means ignoring self-doubt and proving the haters wrong. It means being proud of the experiences that define you — they will be a competitive advantage some day. It means believing in education and believing in yourself, then sharing your story with the world.

See recorded coverage of the event.

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