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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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 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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Present to anyone from wherever you are

Posted by Fenil Shah, Software Engineer, Google Slides

Google Slides helps you share your big ideas with the world, but sometimes presenting these ideas can be challenging. In June, Slides added support for Chromecast and Airplay, which made it easier to project your slides on the big screen. Now there’s another new way to share your work: easy presenting to Hangouts video calls. Teammates, partners, clients and classmates can see your ideas, even if they’re on the other side of the planet.


As you get ready for the big meeting, all you need is your Android phone or tablet. With one tap of the present button, you’ll see the option to present to a Hangouts video call. Meetings that are scheduled on your calendar will automatically be listed, so you can be up and running in no time.

You’ll also get a handy look at whos on the call before you start presenting. Once you’re ready to rock, you can use your mobile device to advance slides, view speaker notes and stay on track with a built-in timer.

Presenting just got even easier with Google Slides on Android – available starting today and rolling out over the next few days.

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PiPad is a Do it yourself RaspBerry PI Linux tablet which you can basically make with plywood

Meet Michael Castor – a DIY enthusiast, who thinks that tablets are unnecessarily overpriced, dont provide a lot of customization options to the user, and actually "look about the same and accomplish roughly the same thing". So, he decided to create something unusual and different – his own homemade tablet.

Called the PiPad, Michael Castors homebrewed creation is one of a kind tablet prototype. The device is powered by the minimalistic Raspberry Pi, a $35, credit-card-sized, fully-functioning computer that is very popular among DIY fanatics. However, the Raspberry Pi SoC is not very powerful (it comes with a 700MHz ARM11 CPU and 512MB of RAM on board), so the PiPad doesnt offer stellar performance and cant rival the iPad or the Galaxy Note 10.1, for example. But, according to Castor, the device does everything he needs it to do. The PiPad runs Raspbmc – a custom Linux distribution for the Raspberry Pi. Although minimalistic, Raspbmc is quite multimedia-oriented and supports both 1080p video playback and HTML5. Thanks to Raspbmc, the PiPad can also access the Raspberry Pi Store, which has a small number of open-source apps and games.

According to Castor, it was very difficult to find a display for the PiPad, because it had to run at 5V, just like the Raspberry Pi SoC. Eventually, the enthusiast laid his hands on a 10-inch capacitive touchscreen, which met the important requirement. Due to the excessive thickness of the PiPad, Castor has managed to fit a large 10,000mAh external battery pack in his tablet. This battery provides roughly 6 hours of life and can be charged via a cell phone charger. The insides of the tablet also house a bunch of Raspberry Pi heat sinks, a Wi-Fi adapter, a Bluetooth dongle, several USB ports, a microSD card slot, a headphone amplifier and an audio jack.

But the most interesting thing about the PiPad is its enclosure. Michael Castor says that he wanted to use the homemade tablet during flights without attracting unnecessary attention from the TSA, so the PiPad had to look like it came out of a factory The sides of the PiPad are made of polished baltic birch plywood, while the back is actually a large sheet of scrap carbon fiber. Thanks to two hinges on one of the sides, the tablet can be opened just like a chess box, exposing the inner layout and providing easy access to the tablets hardware. The PiPad is significantly bulkier than most tablets – the device is 10.75 inches long, 7.5 inches wide, and 1 inch thick.

"I like simplistic, functional design. I don’t like extra crap that doesn’t do anything and I enjoy fun, hidden features. I also like for my projects to look as “sexy” as possible. I thought about hollowing out a book and putting it in there (like Penny’s book computer from Inspector Gadget) but decided to go with a stand-alone tablet form-factor." - said the PiPads creator.

Castor says that the whole project cost him about $350. He claims that he "could have bought an iPad or an Android tablet for that (or less) but what’s the fun in that?”. Of course, the PiPad is not for sale, but Michael Castor has provided a full step-by-step guide for people who want to create a similar gadget on their own. The guide can be found here.

Source-PhoneArena

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