Thanks to everyone who has been a loyal subscriber of this blog over the past few years. After some discussion, we recognize that we're just not generating enough content on this blog to warrant your time, so we won't be posting here any longer. We encourage you to visit the Google Code blog for a timely dose of developer product and API news, events, trends and best practices all over the world.

Posted by Christine Songco Lau, SE Asia Developer Relations

Sripatum University in Bangkok

Students of Sripatum University gathered at the Google Day event

Linne Ha and Professor Singhirunnusorn at the Google Day

Google Program Manager Bill Luan presented Google Maps API and HTML5

Google Day

Googlers met with Dr. Pongkachorn and Bangkok BarCamp organizer John Berns

Google Day event organizers and volunteers post for group photo after the event

From March 9th through March 11th, 2010, Google organized a “Google Day” event at the Sripatum University in Bangkok, Thailand, as part of Google’s Word of Mouth project with the Software Engineering and Computer Science Departments of Sripatum University. Many students from these departments came to the event to help test Google’s speech apps in Thai. Prof. Benny Wasuwath Pongkachorn, Ph.D, and Lecturer Khomsum Singhirunnusorn of the Software Engineering Department also came to the event to provide assistance and guidance. John Berns, the organizer of Bangkok BarCamp community, also joined the event.

At the 3-day “Google Day” event, Linne Ha, International Program Manager of Google Research, working with a network of students and volunteers, conducted testing of local dialect for speech-to-text research. Bill Luan, Technical Program Manager of Developer Relations of Google, presented Google developer technology API trainings to the students and faculty staff at the university: “Introductioin of Google Maps API with business cases”, and “Introduction of HTML5 and the furrue of Web Apps”. During the event, Dr. Pongkachorn also conducted a Q&A session for the students to ask Bill Luan questions about Google technologies and Google corporate culture, while providing the translation between the students and the speaker.

After the event, Dean of Department of Informatics, Prof. Janjai Bhuripanyo, along with Dr. Pongkachorn, met with the Googlers and discussed the department curriculum plans for the future, and demonstrated the embedded application SDK tool developed by the department.

Google wishes to thank Sripatum University for the assistance and collaboration of this event. We look forward to further collaborations in the future in Thailand and in the Southeast Asia region.

Bill Luan

Technical Program Manager
Developer Relations,
Google

We've been thinking about the best way for the selection of attendees of developer events for more than three years. First-come-first-serve? Lottery? Neither seems to be completely fair; plus, we don't think these can select the most passionate and skillful developers and it's not fun for anyone either.

We were searching for some new way to:

• Be fair
• Select appropriate developers
• Entertain developers

Now we are excited to announce a much better way: DevQuiz.

Those who plan to participate in DevFest Japan 2010 are required to answer questions in DevQuiz. (Sorry, the quiz is only in Japanese) There are several questions; some are really easy ones and others are a bit tough but should not be difficult for developers. The top 400 high achievers will get invitations for DevFest 2010 Japan.

Here's a sample:

Please post your email address (registered for devfest 2010 japan) to this server with the following encryption:

• A -> X
• B -> Y
• C -> Z
• D -> A
• Z -> W
• @ -> @

Post your encrypted email address and keyword as "{{ secret_key}}" to http://devquiz.appspot.com/personalpost

Please do a POST in JSON format as below with Content-type=text/plain

{

"key": keyword

"pass": encrypted mail address

}

We plan to disclose the solutions to quizzes and announce the results at DevFest Japan.

This quiz program is purely experimental and if we get positive feedback, we can have quizzes as a streamlined process for selection of developers at future developer events.

Give DevQuiz a shot, and we hope to see you at this year's DevFest!

Posted by Naoki Ishihara, Developer Relation Japan Team

With the recent release of Android 2.0 and the growing number of available devices, we want to give developers a convenient way to test drive their apps on these new devices. We also want to make our Android advocates available to answer any questions you may have.

We are pleased to announce that we will host a series of all day Android developer labs over the next month in the following cities (dates in local time):

• Mountain View, CA - Nov 9
• New York, NY - Nov 16
• London, UK - Nov 17
• Tokyo, JP - Nov 18
• Taipei, TW - Nov 20

Due to limited space, developers who have already published an application in Android Market will be given priority. You can request a spot on a first-come, first-serve basis by going to this page. We will send a follow-up email with venue information and other registration details to those who have secured a spot.

Thank you for your continued excitement in Android. We look forward to meeting many of you in the coming weeks!

Posted by Eric Chu, Android Mobile Platform

Diversity at Google means having a workforce that reflects the diversity of our customers' perspectives, ideas and cultures -- one that thinks and acts inclusively, and fundamentally values people's similarities and differences.

As part of our ongoing commitment to encourage women to excel in computing and technology, 2007-2008 saw the institution of the Google India Women in Engineering Award, with the objective of recognizing and rewarding deserving women students in the field of Computer Science and Engineering. The initiative has been positively and enthusiastically received by both students and colleges, and is now an established entity in the student community.

With two successful editions behind us, we are pleased to return with the Google India Women in Engineering Award, 2010. This year, the award will be open for applications from September 15, 2009 to October 31, 2009, and is open to any woman student of Computer Science, in an under-graduate, post-graduate or doctoral program, that meets the application criteria.

Aspirants to the award will be assessed on their academic excellence, passion for Computer Science and demonstrated leadership; the winners will be announced in 2010 and will take home a sum of INR 1,00,000 each. We look forward to inviting the winners for a conclave at the Google India engineering office, comprising of technical discussion with Google engineers, workshops, break out sessions, panel discussions and the award ceremony.

The award has been instituted to recognize women students who have made a mark in the field of Computer Science and hope it inspires many more to take up studies in this field and pursue it as a career.

Posted by Jayashri Ramamurti, Human Resources Manager, India

Reposted from the Solutions for SE Asia blog.

CodeAndroid is the Android Developer group for Singapore, a grassroot developer initiative to promote Android development locally as well as provide network and resources for everyone to benefit from it. Android is an open source operating system for mobile and embedded devices that is developed by the Open Handset Alliance, with the vision to create an open platform for device manufacturers, telcos and developers to foster innovation and speed up the creation of software to meet mobile users' needs. Since its formation in February 2009, CodeAndroid has organized four meet ups and gathered over 50 developers and users for each session, for developers to share their Android experience.

We also welcome non-developers who are interested in learning more about the Android platform and want to pick up basic concepts for development. Please feel free to also attend and network if you are a marketer or business owner looking for people to help you build your Android applications.

Looking forward, CodeAndroid is looking to help other cities around the region to setup CodeAndroid meetups, so as to build an Asia Pacific network of Android developers, to share resources and contacts. Even if you are from outside Singapore, and want to make a contribution to the Android community, feel free to contact us at codeandroid.org@gmail.com!

Check out the Singapore Application Directory for the list of Singapore-developed Android applications. You can also find them in Android Market, accessible via your Android-powered phone like the recently launched HTC Hero.

To keep informed of CodeAndroid happenings, or you wish to contribute to the community, you can follow us via:

CodeAndroid Website: www.Codeandroid.org

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54219346370&ref=mf

Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/CodeAndroid

Twitter: www.twitter.com/codeandroid

Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/group/WeCodeAndroid

IRC Channel (come and chat with us!): #codeandroid on irc.freenode.net (server)

Alternatively you can also download the CodeAndroid widget on your Android phone: Click here on your Android phone to install or search for "CodeAndroid" in Android market.

Mark the date, the next meetup will be on the 26th of September, 2pm at Google Singapore office (we will post up the event post very soon). Stay tuned to our group fan page as we are bringing a web conference call with the folks of Wikitude!

Photos and the slides from our last meetup are below. We would love to see you at our next meetup.

Test Driven Development: Part 2

View more presentations from CodeAndroid.

Design for Responsiveness : Multi-Threading

View more documents from CodeAndroid.

Introduction to Canvas

View more presentations from CodeAndroid.

Why Code 'for' Android and Motodev Studio

View more documents from CodeAndroid.

Guest Post From Zi Yong Chua, CodeAndroid

In Japan, developers are quite excited about Wave, and we have been encouraging that excitement at Tokyo GTUG by holding multiple Wave-related events. First, we held a remote hack-a-thon from 25th-27th July, where developers could hack over the weekend wherever was comfortable for them.

On 27th evening, nearly 30 people gathered at Google Tokyo Office to watch Google Wave Engineer Seth Covitz give a tech talk and the hack-a-thon participants show off the results of their weekend. The best application of the night (awarded our "Grand Prix Prize"!) was MindMap, a collaborative brainstorming gadget, written by Mariko Gohda. Check out the screencast below:

Other gadget demos included a scheduling gadget by aodag, and a soccer formation visualization gadget by Nakona. The robots API also got love - Nakano.T created a bot to let Wave users play Shiritori, a word game played by saying a word that starts with the last syllable of the word given by the previous player, and Yasushi Ando wrote a robot that demonstrated using JRuby on Google App Engine.

We then held our monthly user group meeting on August 5th, where more than 100 Japanese developers showed up to hear about Google Wave. Atsushi Nakamura first gave a talk in Japanese about using the Google Wave UI and the various APIs (see pic below). Then, Googler Pamela Fox gave a talk in (slow) English that included a live coding walkthrough of the APIs, where she made a gadget that enabled bidding on her Akihibara-acquired furry cat ears, and a robot that emailed her every time a Wave was updated ("Maileybot").

Coming up, Tokyo GTUG will be hosting events about Maps, OpenSocial, Android, and Chrome/HTML 5. We encourage developers to give lightning talks at all of our monthly meetings, so please let us know if interested. Or, just come and listen and learn with us!

Posted by Takashi Matsuo, GTUG Tokyo