Earlier this year we announced the start of the Dutch Chrome Web Store app competition.  It finished on August 28th and we have finished judging the entries.

With the recent announcement that the Chrome Web Store is open many more countries across Europe including the Netherlands, we would now like to announce the winners of each of the categories.

Productivity: watkosteentaxi created by Sander Dijkhuis and Kleis Krebbers is a useful little app that lets you know how much a taxi ride in the Netherlands should cost.

Entertainment and Games: Het RGB Spel (The RGB Game) by Q42 is a colour matching game.

Education: EHBO created by Jelle Prins, Wouter Vegter and Sander Hahn.  It is an educational app that shows you what to do in case of a medical emergency.

We would like to congratulate each of the winning entries.  Each winning entry will receive a Chromebook shortly and should go on to great success in the Chrome Web Store.

Thank you to everyone who entered.


We would like to also thank our judges: Henk Jurriens (Dutch GTUG), Lee Boonstra (eFocus) and Mike Lee (Appsterdam).

Correction: Updating the names of the Productivity winners.

Posted by Paul Kinlan, Chrome Developer Advocate

The primary goal Developer Relations team is to meet and work with developers and businesses and to foster relations within the tech community.  Over the past year the majority of my developer advocacy work has been based in and around London (as well as some other rather beautiful European cities).

We want to work where the developers are, especially those outside of London.  Starting this week we have a desk at the newly founded DoES Liverpool co-working and maker space based in the heart of Liverpool where I will be working a couple of times a week.

DoES Liverpool

This is just a small first step in our efforts to engage with more developers across the UK and will give us the chance to start working more closely with developers and businesses in the North of England.

We will be running “office hours” where you can come in and talk to us about your projects and how you are integrating with the Google Developer platforms and we will also run and speak at local events.

If you are a business or startup in the North of England and you want to talk about the Google Developer platforms then get in touch with me, if you are a tech event organiser get in touch with me and if you have an awesome app built on the web or with the Google Developer platform get in touch with me.

We are keen to hear your thoughts and suggestions as to how we can better serve the UK developer and tech scene.  A great way to get in contact is to leave a comment on G+.

Posted by Paul Kinlan, Chrome Developer Advocate

Developer Advocate Mano Marks recently stopped by in Europe for a whirlwind tour on the Geo APIs.

I started to write up a description of every event I attended in the last two weeks, but it became a book not a blog post, so I’ll keep it simple and list the events in order:

• Paris GTUG
• Prague meeting with lead Geo developers
• Barcamp Ostrava
• Moscow GTUG
• Google DevFest Saint Petersburg
• WhereCamp EU (Berlin)
• Berlin GTUG
• Hamburg JavaScript Meetup

Here’s a map:

View European Geo Roadshow 2011 in a larger map


I'm a little proud of that map, I added a beard to the pegman icons. I thought that cool. Anyway...

I’d say it was exciting, but we Googlers get made fun of for over using that word, so I’ll just say it was fantastic. I spent two weeks traveling Europe talking to developers about new stuff in Google Geo. And I found most people had not heard of all the cool stuff we have going on. In particular, I talked about:

• Google Fusion Tables
• The Places API
• Custom Street View
• Google Earth Builder

I saw amazing demos, from using barometric pressure in Xoom tablets to determine what floor someone is on, to photo sharing, customer loyalty cards, and tracking cows inside meat factories.  I also learned a lot in Russia and the Czech Republic about how people are eagerly anticipating the launch of Map Maker to help deal with data quality issues in those countries. These are all new parts of Google’s Geo platform that most developers hadn’t heard about. And most of those events were Google Technology User Groups or a Google DevFest!  So I met with hundreds of developers, and it only encourages me to come back for more. For the many of you I didn’t get to meet, I put all my presentations on-line in my new slides repository.

Here’s a few pictures from the events ...

Barcamp Ostrava:

Including one of our youngest GTUG members playing on the new Samsong Galaxy Tab:

Berlin GTUG members at the awesome c-base site:

Thanks for everyone who was so welcoming and helped me put this on. I’m eagerly anticipating a follow-up trip.

Posted by Michael Mahemoff, Google Developer Relations

This is a guest post from Michal Šrajer of Inmite, invited by Filip Hracek, Czech-based Developer Advocate .

150 enthusiasts with a small green robot in their pockets, who instead of sun tanning by the lake spend a sunny Saturday in a dark auditorium in order to pick up new skills and knowledge so that they can improve their mobile applications? Yes, that’s exactly what last Saturday looked like as the first Czech conference for Android developers, the Android Devcamp, was held in Prague.

The idea to hold such an event was already around for a long time, but only the Google Developer Day 2010 conference turned out to be the right impulse to actually launch organization efforts. There was a huge amount of interest at GDD 2010 in Android presentations as well as in the exhibition of Android phones, and from discussions with the participants it became more than obvious that many of them would appreciate an event focused on Android developers.

The conference was an excellent opportunity to meet many other developers who are just as enthusiastic about the little green robot as we are at Inmite. We were joined in the organization of the event by the well known Czech blogger and also organizer of many geeky events, Martin Hassman.

Organizing such an event was a big challenge for us and we were surprised by how many things must be arranged and decided. If you ever embark on a similar adventure, here are a few tips on what to keep in mind: selecting a suitable venue, arranging equipment (cameras, visualizer), coordinating with the event partners, preparing the conference microsite (ours is at http://www.adevcamp.cz/), selecting a registration system (of course we developed our own customized solution, but it was a ton of work), arranging catering, preparing the afterparty, and -- above all -- putting together an interesting program and inviting awesome speakers...

For the main set of presentations we invited the leading Czech and Slovak developers: Pavel Petřek from Inmite talked about his experience in the professional development of Android applications acquired during three years of active development, Tomáš Zvěřina took his listeners on a dive into the dark recesses of several unknown Android API’s and Martin Hejna demonstrated during the morning segment what developing in Android NDK looks like. Just before lunch, our colleagues from Vodafone (the conference’s main partner) made a brief presentation and introduced their big competition for Czech developers.

Lunch was followed by Juraj Michálek’s presentation on Air as well as by probably the most eagerly anticipated speech of the day: Martin Adámek’s talk about monetizing Android applications (Martin is one of the most qualified developers to speak on this topic, as his APNdroid application has already been downloaded by more than one million users worldwide). In order to make the program of the full-day conference as attractive as possible, we also decided to include two special segments in the afternoon program in addition to standard presentations:

Lightning talks - during which 6 different speakers made 6 ten-minute presentations, so in quick succession we heard about the automatization of Android builds, the QT framework, developing one’s own activity chooser, writing location based services, the ObjectForms framework as well as about foundations of Android GUI design.

App Contest - competition for the best Android application. Already before the conference developers had the opportunity to enter their applications into the competition. During the event, seven authors had the opportunity to present their applications to other developers in the audience and, in addition to presenting their work, they also always showed something interesting from their developer kitchen. The public then selected David Vávra’s Settle Up application as the very best one, and David was awarded an Android tablet by the Samsung company.

But there were also other interesting things happening at the conference in addition to the presentations. Our friends from the SvetAndroida.cz portal prepared the accompanying program, and they managed -- for example -- to get the Android controlled AR.Drone “quadricopter” (officially not yet supported by Android, but with a little bit of effort it is possible to get the drivers going :) for the event, as well as several attractive Android devices (including the new hot Samsung tablets).



And how did it all turn out? Over 150 developers hungry for new information met in the full auditorium, many interesting discussions were held during the breaks and the community of Czecho-Slovak Android developers was thus perfectly united. The whole event received very positive feedback that has already convinced us now that we will definitely consider organizing another event next year.

Posted by Michael Mahemoff, Google Developer Relations

This is a guest post from Naomi Gummer, from the Google UK Policy Team.




Are you free on 17th-18th June 2011? If so, come join us at LBi’s offices in Brick Lane, East London, for a two day brainstorming and open source hackathon that will bring older users together with the best student developers, Googlers, designers and other social innovators in crack teams to hack a better web that overcomes the barriers that stand in the way of older people accessing the web.

• Do you have a great website or app idea for older people that you’re keen to hack up?
• Are you a student developer who wants to put your skills to the test, and maybe get the chance of some support and cash from Google while you’re at it?
• Or would you just like to help out, whether you are a developer, designer, and older person or just interested in getting involved?

It will be an ideal opportunity to gain experience, show off your skills, meet great people and possibly even have your idea taken forward for further development.

Those who attend will work together in (up to 10) teams to develop solutions and at the end of the two days a winning team will be chosen by our panel to win a bunch of Google tech prizes.  

Participating students (and ideas) will be eligible to apply to be a part of Google’s summer Interactivism award programme. While the recruitment process is separate from the hack weekend itself, catching the eye of one of the Google team during the two days certainly won’t harm your chances.

Please register your interest and/or submit your idea HERE by 31st May 2011.

We will contact you by 3rd June to let you know whether you have been chosen to join us for Interactivism - Accessibility Hack Weekend on the 17th and 18th June 2011.

Posted by Michael Mahemoff, Google Developer Relations

The developer community in Poland has been growing rapidly, and there's been interest in creating a Polish GTUG, and this has now happened. The first GTUG event took place last week, an evening about HTML5 and the Chrome Web Store. This was followed up by a hackathon several days later. We're pleased to say there are now volunteers helping to get the GTUGs started in four cities: Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, and Wroclaw. If you'd like to take part, please head over to the GTUGPL Google Groupl and sign up.

The GTUG events were organised by local marketing manager Ola Kalinowska and the fledgling GTUG. Chrome Developer Advocate Michael Mahemoff visited Warsaw to participate in the events. He also gave a talk on HTML5 History at the Warsaw University of Technology, and visited the newWarsaw OpenCoffee meetup, and visited some local developers.

HTML5 and Chrome Web Store: Presentation Evening

Similar to events in other cities recently, we combined presentations on HTML5 and the Chrome Web Store with messages from the local developer community.

You'll find slides from Mike's HTML5 and Web Store talks here:
HTML5 slides
Chrome Web Store slides

Dan Franc, who has been instrumental in the Czech GTUG, visited Warsaw and explained the concept of GTUGs and how to take part.

Borys Musielak, founder of film website Filmaster, talked about their experiences developing mobile apps and issues remaining with mobile HTML5.

Michal Budzynski talked about the uplcoming HTML5 Game conference in Warsaw, OnGameStart.

HTML5 and Chrome Web Store: "Hakaton"

The theme for "Hakaton" was "Creative Science", although it was explained that the theme would be interepreted liberally! The objective was to have a live HTML5 app in the Web Store by the end of the day, and the accomplishments were excellent. Judging was not an easy task, given how many ready-for-use apps were developed in the space of just 7 hours hacking.

The winner was a Screen Reader extension, which uses the audio tag to read aloud the current text (backed by a text-to-speech server), and canvas to render an animated speaker as the text is read out. Congratulations Paweł Psztyć and Wojtek Kaliciński!



Second place was a fun nature simulation inspired by the Game Of Life. RGBCreatures lets you drop creatures and food into an ecosystem and see what happens. A great use of HTML5 canvas and audio by Jan Kolibabski, Tomasz Netczuk, and Adam Sawicki.



Third place was a demonstration of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle disguised as a contest and game. It was not only working and submitted to the store by the time demos took place, but also presented with a polished homepage and surrounding content. A polished effort from Jakub Kucharski, Paweł Szymański, Łukasz Pełszyński, and Bartek Sejwa.

There were many more great presentations on the day. You can see the full list of apps here. A special thanks to the BRAMA group at the Warsaw University of Technology for hosting the event and providing excellent technical support throughout the day.

Congratulations also Michal Budzynski, who won a free ticket to the GeeCon conference in Krakow for being the most helpful participant. Michel shared his HTML5 and graphics knowledge with members from other teams. Thanks to the GeeCon organisers for offering the ticket.

Posted by Michael Mahemoff, Chrome Developer Relations

This is a special guest post from Martin Hamilton, head of Internet Services at Loughborough University. Martin reports on the first Google Apps for Education UK User Group meeting, which Google's Claudio Cherubino took part in, and shares slide decks from the day.

In February 2011 I organized the first Google Apps for Education UK User Group meeting, held at Loughborough University. Find out more about it from http://guug11.lboro.ac.uk or check out #guug11 on Twitter. Many thanks to Claudio and the gang at Google Developer Relations for giving me the opportunity to say a few words here about it.

In my community (UK EDU) Google Apps is a pretty big deal right now - a lot of people are moving to Google as a way of giving their students and faculty a state of the art service for communication and collaboration, whilst also making significant cost savings by comparison with their old in-house systems. A recent survey I carried out of University IT Directors indicated that 50% were either already running Google Apps, or working on a project to put the service into place. So the message for developers is that this is a big potential market - with over 10 million Google Apps for Education users.

We recently collaborated with Google on a Case Study around our own experiences from “Loughborough goes Google”. I’ve pulled out a few highlights from this below:

• £250,000 saving on server hardware, cooling and power over refreshing the old in-house email system (five year stats)
• Enabling new services – notably 95% uptake of Calendar, 70% uptake for Docs
• Retention of the student’s digital identity on graduation, which would have been impossible to resource in-house (alumni get to keep their mail, docs, contacts, etc)
• Broader and deeper engagement between IT and the student body (students unanimously chose Google Apps)
• Feedback loop as ideas are fed back to Google and actioned

For our own implementation of Google Apps we made extensive use of Google’s APIs to manage our users. We also worked closely with the Google team developing the “multidomain” support for Google Apps, to create our Google for Alumni service.

We heard some similar stories at the guug11 event, and a whole lot more. Here are some personal highlights for me from the day...

Niall Sclater described the Open University’s approach to migrating nearly 200,000 students to Google Apps, and integration between Google and the widely used Moodle software.

Zoe Ross and Mark Allen talked about their work with Google Apps in schools. This is truly inspiring stuff. Just think: today’s four year olds who are happily using Google Docs on their school’s iPads (as at the primary school Mark teaches at) will be tomorrow’s undergraduates! I’m cautiously optimistic that the easy access to developer tools and APIs that Google provides (seen App Inventor for Android?) will result in more kids learning to code.

Tony Hirst and Martin Hawksey described the multifarious ways in which Google Apps can be used and abused for mashup purposes. Did you realise that you could treat Google Docs spreadsheets like a database and execute “SQL” on them? Or that you could import a table from a page of HTML as spreadsheet table cells in Google Docs?

Guug11 mashing up-google_apps

View more presentations from Tony Hirst

Although this wasn’t specifically an event for developers (we had people attending from a wide range of backgrounds and organizations) one of my aims was to raise awareness across the board of the extent to which Google Apps is now a platform in its own right. This is something that I suspect regular Google Apps users mostly only have a hazy awareness of, and even some developers may not fully appreciate.

So what do I mean by platform? For me, this is the combination of:

1. ATOM based RESTful APIs - e.g. check out the Google Sites API, very nice!
2. Apps Script - leverage your Javascript expertise to code against most of the Google Apps APIs, with a bunch of helper functions to make your life easier
3. Google Apps Marketplace - sell your tightly integrated apps (using single sign-on to the Google Apps domain and, for example, Gmail contextual gadgets) via the Google Apps equivalent of the Android Marketplace
4. App Engine for hosting your code at “Google scale”

I thought Google’s Claudio Cherubino did an excellent job of bringing all this together with his talk (delivered via Google Chat due to rail travel disruption!) on developing for the Google Apps Marketplace, and introducing the Apps Marketplace for Education, which had just launched. Here’s a short video on the Apps Marketplace for Education.

If this all sounds interesting, take a look at the guug11 website sometime to find out more about the event and catch the rest of the talks. You may also be interested in my blog post describing how the guug11 site was constructed.

Posted by Michael Mahemoff, Google Developer Relations