A guest post by the Engineering team at SignAll | Twitter handle | MediaPipe team
Please note that the information, uses, and applications expressed in the below post are solely those of our guest author, SignAll.
SignAll SDK: Sign language interface using MediaPipe is now available for developers
When Google published the first versions of its on-device hand tracking technology in MediaPipe, the work could serve as a basis for developers to build sign language recognition solutions into their own apps. Later updates to this hand tracking solution have further improved its accuracy where other technologies have fallen short (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Illustrating MediaPipe’s improvement over time: hand skeleton tracking output of an older version (2020.02.10) and the latest version (2020.12.16). This handshape is used in sign language frequently, but often missed because of the lack of representation in training datasets.Watch the full video
SignAll is a startup working on sign language translation technology. Its mission is to make sign language interpretation universally available, both through communication between Deaf and hearing parties, and between Deaf individuals and computers. The SignAll’s products, which are used nationwide in the US for both communications and education, employ a complex multi-camera setup and gloves with colored markers. While sign languages’ complexity goes far beyond handshapes (facial features, body, grammar, etc.), it is true that the accurate tracking of the hands has been a huge obstacle in the first layer of processing – computer vision. MediaPipe unlocked the possibility to offer SignAll’s solutions not only glove free, but also by using a single camera. SignAll has just announced the availability of the first SDK of its kind, so developers can now enable sign language input in their apps.
The company recently published an interactive educational app in the App Store, that lets the user practice signing with immediate feedback, this app also serves as a demonstration of the possibilities with the SDK.
SignAll with MediaPipe Hands
Our system uses several layers for sign recognition, and each one uses more and more abstract data. The low-level layer extracts crucial hand, body, and face data from 2D and 3D cameras. In our first implementation, this layer detects the colors of the gloves and creates 3D hand data. Replacing this with MediaPipe Hands (supplemented by the MediaPipe Pose and MediaPipe Face Mesh) has been a game changer for using our system without gloves or special lighting.
Figure 2. Demo of our SignAll SDK developed using MediaPipe
As mentioned earlier, we use multiple cameras with depth sensors which are calibrated in the real world. This allows for a more accurate 3D world space than that of a local camera or tensor spaces, but requires the use of hand landmark detection for each camera. The cameras are placed distinctly to each other in position and orientation so the hands are visible more frequently, as one hand might cover the other from one camera but not necessarily from the others.
Figure 3. Corrected 3D hand shape based on three cameras. Due to the unique orientation, the detection from the front camera is wrong, but the side camera can correct the result.
The next step is to filter and smooth the data to replicate the precise measurements offered by our colored glove markers. Although SignAll’s markers are different from the landmarks given by MediaPipe, we used our hand model to generate colored markers from landmarks. Therefore, the new mocap data is fully compatible with the previous one.
Although we are focused mainly on the hands, we also integrated MediaPipe Pose and MediaPipe Face Mesh. The pose landmarks provide accurate hand position information, even when touching or close to each other.
While the two versions of mocap are compatible, the nature of the artifacts is different: direct measure of each marker and simulated markers from a globally detected hand. Due to this discrepancy, we had to refine the parameters on higher levels. On the other hand, we could still use our huge sign database for the gloveless configuration. By replacing the low-level data and refining our higher-level data, we could test our system without gloves. Going gloveless can be a huge step for using our sign recognition technology easily worldwide.
Figure 4. Demonstration of compatible mocap from different low-level trackings. The right side is without gloves; the left side is with gloves. This compatibility enables the usage of SignAll’s meticulously labeled dataset of 300,000+ sign language videos to be used for the training of recognition models based on different low-level data. Watch the full video
The SignAll system using MediaPipe framework
After integrating MediaPipe Hands into our system, we also wanted to take advantage of the customization and scaling opportunities provided by the MediaPipe framework on multiple platforms. This allowed us to not only prototype our research state methods in Python, but also deliver our end-user solutions for Windows, iOS, Android, and even the Web. Thanks to the similarities between our module graph system and the calculator graph of MediaPipe, our existing processing units can be reused in this new framework with minor modifications. With that said, the extended platform set also comes with other challenges, like using only a single 2D camera in most cases instead of a calibrated multi-camera system.
The models, algorithms and techniques we have used were mostly developed to work on our mocap data interpreted in the 3D global world. The data extracted from a single-camera setup, of course, cannot be as detailed. That is the reason we had to make some adjustments to our implementations, fine-tune the algorithms and add some extra logic (e.g., dynamically adapting to the changes of space resulted by the hand-held camera use-case). Luckily, the MediaPipe framework enables us to implement the core processing units in C++, so we can still benefit from the runtime-optimized core solutions we previously developed.
Some higher-level models trained on 3D data also needed to be re-trained in order to perform better on the data originating from a single 2D source. The MediaPipe landmarks are defined by 3D coordinates, which makes it possible to reuse the existing training methods and concepts. On the other hand, the 2D information is more directly extracted and therefore more stable than the third coordinate, which was taken into consideration while designing the training modifications.
Luckily, it is not necessary to make an entirely new data recording for this purpose. We can still use our huge video database annotated in great detail. The preprocessed mocap data we can extract from our recordings and interpreted in the 3D world can be used to simulate hand, skeleton, or face landmark detections in any virtual camera view.
Among the data on virtual camera views, we also use traditional 2D recordings in sufficient proportion to cover the unique noise characteristics of the landmark detections. Thanks to having most of these types of data in advance, we can focus on the most exciting part - trying the latest techniques and training new models.
Summary
The advancement made possible by MediaPipe enabled SignAll to change its model. In addition to offering all-in-one products for sign language education and translation, SignAll is now starting to offer an SDK for developers. The capabilities of this SDK depend on the type of the camera or cameras being used and the available computational capacity. The possible functions enabled by using the SDK vary from launching video calls by signing the contact’s name (watch a demo here), adding addresses into navigation by signing (as a counterpart to speech input), or ordering food on a fast-food restaurant’s kiosk or drive-thru. With its mission to make sign language an alternative everywhere that voice can be used, SignAll is excited to see more and more apps implementing this feature.
We are eager to try future updates of MediaPipe, which could bring us closer to our ultimate goal of having our solutions available for everyone on any device. The most awaited update is the ability to build custom MediaPipe graphs and add our own calculators for web-based solutions aided by the WebAssembly technology, so websites will be able to use a new level of accessibility features for Deaf visitors.
Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager, Google Developer Student Clubs
Hey, student developers! If you’re passionate about programming and are ready to use your technology skills to help your community, then you should become a Google Developer Student Clubs Lead!
Application forms for the upcoming 2021-2022 academic year are NOW OPEN. Get started at goo.gle/gdsc-leads.
Want to know more? Learn more about the program below.
Google Developer Student Clubs are university based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies. With clubs hosted in 106 countries around the world, students from undergraduate and graduate programs with an interest in leading a community are welcome. Together, students learn the latest in Android App Development, Google Cloud Platform, Flutter, and so much more.
By joining a GDSC, students grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment and put theory to practice by building solutions for local businesses and their community.
As a Google Developer Student Club Lead you will have the chance to…
Google Developer Student Clubs are now in 106 countries with 1250+ groups. Find a club near you or learn how to start your own, here.
We encourage students to submit their forms as soon as possible. You can learn more about your region’s application deadline, here. Make sure to learn more about our program criteria.
From working to solve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to helping local communities make informed voting decisions, Google Developer Student Club leads are learning valuable coding skills while making a true difference. As a lead from a Club in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia put it,
“The secret to our club’s success was that we were able to cultivate a heart of service and a culture of open mentorship.”
We can’t wait to see what our next group of Google Developer Student Club leads will accomplish this year. Join the fun and get started, here.
*Google Developer Student Clubs are student-led independent organizations, and their presence does not indicate a relationship between Google and the students' universities.
Posted by Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Cloud
Since its initial launch in 2008 as the first product from Google Cloud, Google App Engine, our fully-managed serverless app-hosting platform, has been used by many developers worldwide. Since then, the product team has continued to innovate on the platform: introducing new services, extending quotas, supporting new languages, and adding a Flexible environment to support more runtimes, including the ability to serve containerized applications.
With many original App Engine services maturing to become their own standalone Cloud products along with users' desire for a more open cloud, the next generation App Engine launched in 2018 without those bundled proprietary services, but coupled with desired language support such as Python 3 and PHP 7 as well as introducing Node.js 8. As a result, users have more options, and their apps are more portable.
With the sunset of Python 2, Java 8, PHP 5, and Go 1.11, by their respective communities, Google Cloud has assured users by expressing continued long-term support of these legacy runtimes, including maintaining the Python 2 runtime. So while there is no requirement for users to migrate, developers themselves are expressing interest in updating their applications to the latest language releases.
Google Cloud has created a set of migration guides for users modernizing from Python 2 to 3, Java 8 to 11, PHP 5 to 7, and Go 1.11 to 1.12+ as well as a summary of what is available in both first and second generation runtimes. However, moving from bundled to unbundled services may not be intuitive to developers, so today we're introducing additional resources to help users in this endeavor: App Engine "migration modules" with hands-on "codelab" tutorials and code examples, starting with Python.
Each module represents a single modernization technique. Some are strongly recommended, others less so, and, at the other end of the spectrum, some are quite optional. We will guide you as far as which ones are more important. Similarly, there's no real order of modules to look at since it depends on which bundled services your apps use. Yes, some modules must be completed before others, but again, you'll be guided as far as "what's next."
More specifically, modules focus on the code changes that need to be implemented, not changes in new programming language releases as those are not within the domain of Google products. The purpose of these modules is to help reduce the friction developers may encounter when adapting their apps for the next-generation platform.
Central to the migration modules are the codelabs: free, online, self-paced, hands-on tutorials. The purpose of Google codelabs is to teach developers one new skill while giving them hands-on experience, and there are codelabs just for Google Cloud users. The migration codelabs are no exception, teaching developers one specific migration technique.
Developers following the tutorials will make the appropriate updates on a sample app, giving them the "muscle memory" needed to do the same (or similar) with their applications. Each codelab begins with an initial baseline app ("START"), leads users through the necessary steps, then concludes with an ending code repo ("FINISH") they can compare against their completed effort. Here are some of the initial modules being announced today:
webapp2
ndb
taskqueue
What should you expect from the migration codelabs? Let's preview a pair, starting with the web framework: below is the main driver for a simple webapp2-based "guestbook" app registering website visits as Datastore entities:
class MainHandler(webapp2.RequestHandler): 'main application (GET) handler' def get(self): store_visit(self.request.remote_addr, self.request.user_agent) visits = fetch_visits(LIMIT) tmpl = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'index.html') self.response.out.write(template.render(tmpl, {'visits': visits}))
A "visit" consists of a request's IP address and user agent. After visit registration, the app queries for the latest LIMIT visits to display to the end-user via the app's HTML template. The tutorial leads developers a migration to Flask, a web framework with broader support in the Python community. An Flask equivalent app will use decorated functions rather than webapp2's object model:
LIMIT
@app.route('/') def root(): 'main application (GET) handler' store_visit(request.remote_addr, request.user_agent) visits = fetch_visits(LIMIT) return render_template('index.html', visits=visits)
The framework codelab walks users through this and other required code changes in its sample app. Since Flask is more broadly used, this makes your apps more portable.
The second example pertains to Datastore access. Whether you're using App Engine's ndb or the Cloud NDB client libraries, the code to query the Datastore for the most recent limit visits may look like this:
limit
def fetch_visits(limit): 'get most recent visits' query = Visit.query() visits = query.order(-Visit.timestamp).fetch(limit) return (v.to_dict() for v in visits)
If you decide to switch to the Cloud Datastore client library, that code would be converted to:
def fetch_visits(limit): 'get most recent visits' query = DS_CLIENT.query(kind='Visit') query.order = ['-timestamp'] return query.fetch(limit=limit)
The query styles are similar but different. While the sample apps are just that, samples, giving you this kind of hands-on experience is useful when planning your own application upgrades. The goal of the migration modules is to help you separate moving to the next-generation service and making programming language updates so as to avoid doing both sets of changes simultaneously.
As mentioned above, some migrations are more optional than others. For example, moving away from the App Engine bundled ndb library to Cloud NDB is strongly recommended, but because Cloud NDB is available for both Python 2 and 3, it's not necessary for users to migrate further to Cloud Datastore nor Cloud Firestore unless they have specific reasons to do so. Moving to unbundled services is the primary step to giving users more flexibility, choices, and ultimately, makes their apps more portable.
For those who are interested in modernizing their apps, a complete table describing each module and links to corresponding codelabs and expected START and FINISH code samples can be found in the migration module repository. We are also working on video content based on these migration modules as well as producing similar content for Java, so stay tuned.
In addition to the migration modules, our team has also setup a separate repo to support community-sourced migration samples. We hope you find all these resources helpful in your quest to modernize your App Engine apps!
Recently young developers in Saudi Arabia from Google Developer Student Clubs, a program of university based community groups for students interested in Google technologies, came together to help local small businesses. As more companies across the globe rely on online sales, these students from Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University noticed that many of their favorite local stores did not have a presence on the web.
So to help these local shops compete, these up-and-coming developers went into the community and began running workshops to teach local store owners the basics of building a website. Inspired by Google’s fundamentals of digital marketing course, these learning sessions focused on giving small business owners basic front-end skills, while introducing them to easy to use coding tools.
Image of Chrome Devtools
The first goal of these student-run workshops was to teach local store owners the basics of building web interfaces. In particular, they focused on websites that made it easy for customers to make purchases. To do this, the students first taught store owners the basics of HTML, CSS, and JS code. Then, they showed them how to deploy Chrome DevTools, a collection of web developer tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser that allows programmers to inspect and edit HTML, CSS, and JS code to optimize user experience.
Next, the students challenged participants to put their knowledge to use by creating demos of their businesses' new websites. The young developers again used Chrome DevTools to highlight the best practices for testing the demo sites on different devices and screen sizes.
Image of demo created and maintained in workshop.
With the basics of HTML, CSS, JS code, and Chrome DevTools covered, the students also wanted to give the store owners tools to help maintain their new websites. To do this, they introduced the small businesses to three toolkits:
With these basic coding skills, access to intuitive toolkits, and completed website demos, the local businesses owners now had everything they needed to launch their sites to the public - all thanks to a few dedicated students.
All over the world, students are coming together to learn programming and make a difference in their community as members of local Google Developer Student Clubs. Learn more on how to get involved in projects like this one, here.
Posted by Biswajeet Mallik, Program Manager, Google Developers India.
Image from Cloud Community Days India
Earlier this year, ten Google Developer Groups in India came together to host Google Cloud Community Days India, a two day event helping developers study for their upcoming Cloud Certification exams. To address the rising demand for professional certifications, the virtual event hosted over 63,000 developers, covered four main exam areas, and welcomed nine speakers. This was the second edition to the event series which started in 2019 in India.
By providing expert learning materials and mentorship, the event uniquely prepared developers for the Associate Cloud Engineer, Professional Data Engineer, Professional Cloud Machine Learning Engineer, and Professional Cloud Architect exams. Learn more below.
The Cloud Community Days event focused on helping developers study for four milestone certifications, tailored to engineers at four different stages of their career. The goal: help Google Developer Group members obtain the right credentials to improve their job prospects.
The event broke participants into breakout sessions based on which exam they were preparing to take. Since the certifications targeted professionals of all skill levels, study groups ranged from early career associates to late career executives. The learning groups were organized around the following certifications:
This learning session was created to help early career developers complete the first stepping stone exam. In particular, learning materials and speakers were curated to guide participants who had no prior experience, or very little, working on the Google Cloud Platform.
Workshops were mainly dedicated to assisting programmers who were familiar with building different applications but wished to show employers that they could deploy them on Google Cloud Platform.
Watch more from: Day 1, here. And day 2, here.
The next group brought together were data practitioners with special interests in data visualization and decision making. Workshops and learning activities helped these developers hone their large scale data and data driven decision making abilities.
Improving these skills are essential for passing the Professional Data Engineers certification and growing a programmer’s early career.
For these sessions, the Google Developer Group Cloud community paired experienced programmers with a significant interest in ML to form their study groups. The main driver in these learning activities was to help seasoned developers gain a deeper understanding of how to utilize Google Cloud ML services.
With significant emphasis being placed on machine learning in the ecosystem right now, Google Developer Group community leaders felt this certification could help developers make the leap into new leadership roles.
Lastly, this event paired experienced Cloud executives and professionals working in leading capacities for their organizations. For these sessions, speakers and activities had a specific scope: help high level professions be at the forefront of Google Cloud Platforms innovative capabilities.
Specifically, the Professional Cloud Architect Certification was created to help senior software engineers better design, scale and develop highly secure and robust applications.
Day 1, here. And day 2, here.
Overall, the community put together these resources to help developers feel more confident in their abilities, obtain tangible credentials, and in turn increase access to better job opportunities. As two participants recalled the event,
“This was the first time I attended the Google Developer Group event! It is an awesome package for learning in one place. All the fun activities were engaging and the panelist discussion was also very insightful. I feel proud to be a part of this grand GDG event.”
With Google Developer Groups, find a space to learn alongside a group of curious developers, all coming together to advance their careers from withinside a caring community of peers.
Want to know more about what Cloud Community days were like? Then watch their live recording below.
Ready to find a community event near you? Then get started at gdg.community.dev
Posted by Charles Maxson, Developer Advocate
Google Workspace Add-ons offer developers a simplified, structured, and safe way of integrating your solutions right within the Google Workspace user experience, allowing you to bring the logic and data of your application right within the reach of billions of Google Workspace users. So whether your goal is to help users avoid switching context from their inbox to your application, or to easily bring in data from your solution to Google Sheets, developing your own Google Workspace Add-ons makes a lot of sense to keep users productive, engaged and focused.
While the concept of Add-ons for Google Workspace isn’t new per se, building add-ons for Google Workspace has come a long way since they were first introduced some years back. Originally designed to allow solution developers to extend our collaboration apps: Google Docs, Sheets, Forms and Slides, it’s now possible to create a single add-on project for Google Workspace that spans the entire suite, including Gmail, Drive and Calendar.
The original design created for our collaboration apps also required you to use HTML, CSS and Google Apps Script to ‘hand roll’ elements like the user interface and events, requiring a bit more do-it-yourself effort (aka code) for developers, resulting in more inconsistency across the add-on market. That has evolved as Google Workspace Add-ons adopted Card-based interfaces more recently, allowing developers to simplify and standardize add-on building by leveraging just their knowledge of Google Apps Script.
Today we are pleased to announce that building Google Workspace Add-ons has evolved once again, this time to offer developers an alternative to using Apps Script for building add-ons with the general availability of Alternate Runtimes for Google Workspace Add-ons. Announced via an early access program mid last year, the release of Alternate Runtimes is a major breakthrough for Google Workspace developers who want to use their own development stack: hosting, tools, languages, packages, processes, etc.
While Alternate Runtimes enables the same functionality that Apps Script does for building add-ons, the flexibility and the freedom to choose your dev environment plus the opportunity to decouple from Apps Script will likely yield greater developer productivity and performance gains for future projects. This commonly requested feature by Google Workspace solution developers has finally become a reality.
Technically, there’s a little more effort in using the Alternate Runtimes method, as Apps Script does mask much of the complexity from the developer, but it's essentially swapping in JSON for Apps Script in rendering the Cards service-based interfaces needed to drive Google Workspace Add-ons. Learn more about getting started with Alternate Runtimes here or try the five minute Quickstart for Alternate Runtimes to see it in action.
Also note, whether you are just getting started or you are an experienced add-on builder, we have recently released the GWAO Card Builder tool that allows you to visually design the user interfaces for your Google Workspace Add-ons projects. It is a must-have for add-on developers using either Apps Script or Alternate Runtimes, enabling you to prototype and design Card UIs super fast without hassle and errors of hand coding JSON or Apps Script on your own.
Google Workspace Card Builder Design Tool
Included with this launch of Alternate Runtimes for general availability is also the debut of the Google Workspace Add-ons Cloud API, which allows you to completely forgo using Apps Script for managing Google Workspace Add-on deployments using Alternate Runtimes. Unlike using Alternate Runtimes during the beta program where you still needed to create an Apps Script project to stub out your project endpoints via the manifest file, the Google Workspace Add-ons Cloud API allows you to create and manage your add-on deployment lifecycle with a series of command line instructions.
With the Google Workspace Add-ons Cloud API you can create a deployment, install or delete a deployment, get a list of deployments, manage permissions and more. These are straightforward to use from a CLI like gcloud, which will help simplify developing and deploying Google Workspace Add-ons built via Alternate Runtimes. For documentation on how to use the new Add-ons Cloud API, refer back to the Quickstart: Create an add-on in a different coding language example.
While Alternate Runtimes for Google Workspace Add-ons is officially generally available as of today, a number of Google Cloud partner teams have already been working with the technology via our early adopter program. One of those Google Cloud partners, Zzapps based out of the Netherlands, has already been creating solutions using Alternate Runtimes in their work building Add-ons for customers.
We asked Riël Notermans, owner of Zzapps (and Google Developer Expert), whose teams have been developing on Google Workspace for over a decade, to share his team’s key takeaways on Alternate Runtimes. He offered not only his insights, but added a few screenshots of one of their recent projects to illustrate as well. In Riël’s own words: “Now that we can use Alternate Runtimes for Add-ons, it changes how we approach projects from start to finish. Prototyping with GSAO makes it possible for us to quickly draft an add-on’s functionality, creating trust and clearness about what we will deliver. Alternate Runtimes makes it possible to tap into our existing applications with almost no effort. We only need to create a JSON response to push a card to interact with add-ons. Our developers are able to work in their own environment, keeping our own tools and development flow. Here’s an example below using a Node.js Express server project that we used to set email signatures, adding a few routes for the card but using our existing logic. The add-on is used to control the functionality.”
Routing Add-on requests to existing logic
“Being able to update your deployment for local development for live testing, without having to create new versions constantly, drastically improves the development experience.”
Introduces advantage of instant testing of add-ons
“Because the Add-on runtimes has built-in authorization and tokens, it is really easy to safely interact with the users data without building complex backend authentication.”
Maximizing use of existing UI with Add-ons
“In the end, we still offer our users solutions for a great experience with a Google Workspace Add-on, while our developers get to use the tools and processes that make them more productive, capable and accomplished”
Creating Add-ons with Alternate Runtimes allows flexible, fast UI design
For More Information
If you want to learn more about using Alternate Runtimes for building Google Workspace Add-ons, here are some essential links for Google Workspace Add-on resources to get you started:
Posted by Ting Huang, Software Engineer
Some time ago, we announced that the Google Contacts API was being deprecated in favor of the People API, and it is scheduled for sunset on June 15, 2021. To aid in the process of migrating from Contacts API, we are pleased to announce that we have added two sets of new endpoints for working with contacts via the People API.
First, we now have new write endpoints that allow developers to create, delete, and update multiple contacts at once. In addition, we also have new read endpoints that allow developers to search a user’s contacts using a prefix query. Both will greatly improve working with the People API, so let’s take a quick look at how you can leverage these new endpoints today.
Applications need to be authorized to access the API, so to get started you will need to create a project on the Google Developers Console with the People API enabled to get access to the service. If you are new to the Google APIs, you can follow the steps here to begin accessing People API.
Once you’re authorized, you can simply create new contacts like this (using the Google APIs Client Library for Java):
Person person = new Person(); person.setNames(ImmutableList.of(new Name().setGivenName("John").setFamilyName("Doe"))); ContactToCreate contactToCreate = new ContactToCreate(); contactToCreate.setContactPerson(person); BatchCreateContactsRequest request = new BatchCreateContactsRequest(); request.setContacts(ImmutableList.of(contactToCreate)).setReadMask("names"); BatchCreateContactsResponse response = peopleService.people().batchCreateContacts(request).execute();
The scope your app needs to authorize with is https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts. Full documentation on the people.batchCreateContacts method is available here.
people.batchCreateContacts
Similarly, you can update existing contacts like this:
String resourceName = "people/c12345"; // existing contact resource name Person contactToUpdate = peopleService .people() .get(resourceName) .setPersonFields("names,emailAddresses") .execute(); contactToUpdate.setNames( ImmutableList.of(new Name().setGivenName("John").setFamilyName("Doe"))); BatchUpdateContactsRequest request = new BatchUpdateContactsRequest(); ImmutableMap<String, Person> map = ImmutableMap.of(contactToUpdate.getResourceName(), contactToUpdate); request.setContacts(map).setUpdateMask("names") .setReadMask("names,emailAddresses"); BatchUpdateContactsResponse response = peopleService.people().batchUpdateContacts(request).execute();
Full documentation on the people.batchUpdateContacts method is available here.
Working with Search Endpoints
You can search through the authenticated user’s contacts like this:
SearchResponse response = peopleService.people().searchContacts() .setQuery("query") .setReadMask("names,emailAddresses") .execute();
The scope your app needs to authorize with is https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts or https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly. Full documentation on the people.searchContacts method is available here.
You can also search through the authenticated user’s “other contacts” like this:
SearchResponse response = peopleService.otherContacts().search() .setQuery("query") .setReadMask("names,emailAddresses") .execute();
The scope your app needs to authorize with is https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.other.readonly. Full documentation on the otherContacts.search method is available here.
Next Steps
We hope that these newly added features inspire you to create the next generation of cool web and mobile apps that delight your users and those in their circles of influence. To learn more about the People API, check out the official documentation here.
Posted by Jose Ugia and Steve Klebe
Steve Klebe forms partnerships that drive adoption of Google Pay. He's spent the last 9 years working for the Google Payments Business Development team, and possesses more than 40 years of experience with products and services related to payment processing, data security, and authentication.
Recently, Steve sat down for an interview with Jose Ugia, a Developer Relations Engineer on the Google Pay team.
Read the interview transcript for a deep overview of online payments.
Jose Ugia: Let’s get started with the basics. What is the typical sequence of events in processing an online credit-card payment?
Steve Klebe: This can happen in a few different ways, but let’s talk about the typical series of events:
The approval triggers a response chain. The network responds to the payment processor, the payment processor responds to the merchant, and the merchant responds to the consumer with something like, “Your payment has been accepted!”
This sequence of events happens in approximately 2 seconds, during which the transaction passes through multiple different systems in order to deliver a response to the consumer.
Jose Ugia: Most developers and businesses don’t think about these steps. When you think about chargebacks and fraud, this information is especially useful.
The next question is related to a concept that goes by many names in the industry. It's what we call a PSP or payment service provider, but others refer to it as a payment processor, payment provider, or payment gateway. What is this concept and why are there so many different terms for it?
Steve Klebe: Things evolve and sometimes different entities in the ecosystem create their own terms to differentiate themselves. It’s a big challenge in the payments industry; there are many terms for the same concepts.
The term PSP has an official meaning in the ecosystem, and it can represent companies that take on different roles in the payment sequence, which I outlined in the first question. However, we kept things simple for our merchant and developer partners. PSP defines the initial link between the merchant and the network, regardless of their roles. The role of the PSP is to make sure the merchant is legitimate and categorize the merchant as a retail store, restaurant, or something else.
The PSP is the entity through which the money flows, from the card issuer through the networks to the PSP. They provide consolidated reporting to the merchant and—most people don’t realize this—they also often hold the financial responsibility. If the merchant is fraudulent or goes out of business and there are lingering transactions, the PSP assumes financial responsibility for the merchants.
Jose: So, if I’m planning to accept payments online, do I need a PSP?
Steve Klebe: Yes, you absolutely need to have a PSP, but it doesn't matter to you as a merchant if the PSP is an official processor or a licensed agent of a processor.
Jose: Are there specific considerations that I have to account for as a merchant or developer when I choose a PSP to process credit-card payments?
Steve Klebe: Sometimes it’s tied to the shopping cart of your e-commerce platform, most of which embed one or more PSPs into their systems. Sometimes, the decision has been made for you. Other times, you have flexibility to choose whatever you want. Different PSPs have different expertise in different types of payments. For example, if you’re a merchant who focuses on a subscription model, there are certain PSPs who handle these types of payments better than others. If you’re going to sell globally, you need to pick a PSP with the maximum ability to support alternative payment methods from other countries. If you’re a restaurant and you need to do in-store and online payment processing, not all PSPs are equal in their ability to support different types of channels.
So, do some research, talk to peers in your industry to find out who they use and whether they’re satisfied, and make an intelligent choice. It can have fairly significant consequences if you need to do online ordering, but you picked a PSP who is competent at in-store purchases and doesn’t take e-commerce seriously.
Jose: Are you suggesting that I might need to integrate multiple PSPs to cover different scenarios?
Steve: Yes. Using multiple PSPs is not unusual. If you need to cover different scenarios, such as subscription payments, in-person payments, or online payments then this can be very common. If you need to change your PSP, it can affect you later. Your PSP choice becomes intertwined with your back-office operations and fulfillment. It’s not just an API; it becomes integrated into all aspects of the business supply chain, including customer servicing, revenue recognition, etc. and switching isn't easy.
Jose: I’ve seen some PSPs offering something called “hosted checkout”. How does that differ from a regular integration in my website or application?
Steve Klebe: There are typically two approaches: you integrate your PSP's API and you as the merchant typically control the checkout process directly with the consumer. In the case of Google Pay, you can add the Google Pay button to your checkout pages. That's typically used by medium-to-large merchants, while smaller merchants tend to gravitate towards this concept called a hosted order page, which has some limitations because the checkout occurs on a page that the PSP hosts and different PSPs have different hosted-order-page capabilities.
If you’re an API merchant, for your non-Google Pay transactions you have a responsibility to protect the card information of your customers. With a hosted order page, all the sensitive information is being hosted on a page from the PSP. The penalties for having card information stolen from your servers are very severe, so hosted order pages are popular, flexible, and customizable.
In Europe, hosted checkouts are popular because commerce is complicated with more than 20 countries, different currencies, and payment methods. A US merchant could survive with a much simpler array of payment options if the merchant plans to only sell within US borders.
We work with most major PSPs globally and have them implement Google Pay as a default option for hosted checkouts. Usually, this is enabled by default but the PSP gives the merchant a choice to opt out.
Jose: What are e-wallets, digital wallets, and other payment facilitators, and how do they differ from a PSP.
Steve Klebe: There are a lot of acronyms, and they can start blending together and sounding the same to someone new to the space. The metaphor for a digital wallet was originally developed to represent that whatever is in your physical wallet would ultimately be in your digital wallet. While PSPs facilitate online transactions, digital wallets are a form of payment. There are many benefits to offering a digital wallet like Google Pay. One of the most obvious being the ability for customers to checkout quickly, without needing to re-enter credit card and billing information for every single transaction .
In the case of Google Pay, you can store loyalty cards, boarding passes, payment cards, and receipts in your digital wallet and use it to transact in physical stores, online websites and applications alike. The metaphor has played out, but there are a lot of differences within the broad category of alternative payment methods and digital wallets.
Those differences are evolving. Today, we have Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Samsung Pay, WeChatPay, Alipay and others. In some cases, the app or the account is only a container for credentials. In other cases, it's the account of record for your money. For example, in Asia, you see the popularity of Alipay and WeChat Pay, which are actually like bank accounts. In India, the Google Pay for India app connects directly to the consumer’s bank account, and initiates the movement of money to the merchant’s bank account.
Jose: What is a tokenized card and how does it affect online transactions?
Steve Klebe: The word tokenization is a loaded word in our industry and it creates a bunch of confusion. Tokenization and encryption (which are sometimes confused) came about because of the growing popularity of cards, and the growing use and misuse of cards by people with good and bad intentions.
The concept of exchanging a card number with a token is applied by various parties at different stages of an online transaction:
Tokenization, at the network level, came about after the industry established a standard for protecting card data that’s now referred to as PCI, which is an industry consortium funded by the major card brands that established a single standard for security.
Similarly, to assist merchants with complying with PCI, most PSPs came up with a proprietary scheme to take the card number from the merchant and give the merchant a token or reference number. The PSP, within its secure environment, would hold the card and the merchant wouldn’t need to handle it anymore. This became a dominant approach after PCI took effect.
In addition, there are two types of tokens that are used at the network level:
Device-based tokens or DPAN
When you want to use an existing card on your phone as a payment method, the call gets made to the associated network, which then calls the bank that issued the card. A call then comes back to authenticate the consumer and the most common step is the consumer is asked to enter a one time passcode they received through text. After the bank confirms your identity, it sends a signal to the network and approves your card for digital payments. The network then takes the account number, converts it to a token, and returns it to your wallet provider who securely stores it on the phone.
E-commerce tokens
This is a brand new concept where a product like Google Pay, which helps to securely store millions of cards in its cloud, delivers them to the network for conversion to a token. The network validates the status of the card with the issuing bank, turns them into e-commerce tokens, and returns the tokens to Google. Now, when you shop on any device, Google can use one of these e-commerce tokens because the network and issuer authenticated them. Even if the underlying card changes completely or the expiration date gets updated, this all happens behind the scenes. This is not only convenient for customers, but it also helps protect their card and transaction information by keeping the actual credit card number unexposed and including a dynamic element that is different for every transaction.
Jose: What is the future of payments going to bring? What are you most excited about?
Steve Klebe: I would say, due to the changes our world is going through, we are rethinking how payments are changing. It’s hard to know what the ultimate impact will be, but it's been about mobile optimization during the last couple years. Every merchant and PSP realizes that they have to enhance their digital offerings, but it’s not going to be any one individual thing. I think it’s the entire holistic experience, whether it’s web, mobile, or in-store. All of a sudden, every merchant realizes that they need to be prepared to do payments contactlessly. Even if the consumer is standing in front of you, you have to be prepared to handle the payment without contact.
There is a clear divide between card present and card not present, and those areas are now blending together. The card industry doesn’t care whether the person is in front of you. If a payment is made digitally, there are alternative rules that apply to the merchant. Merchants need to be extremely cognizant of these rules and they need to do everything they can to optimize how they accept payments.
An exception would be where you can start shopping with a merchant on your desktop and complete transactions elsewhere while your goods remain in your shopping cart. Their systems have to be capable of multiplatform payments and that requires a fresh look at who your PSPs are because not all PSPs provide such capabilities.
Device-bound tokens are very 1990ish. The whole world is moving to the cloud. A device bound token needs to be reprovisioned every time I get a new phone, which is typically every 1-2 years, and that has to change. We live in a cloud-based world and people expect to authenticate themselves and start doing business, and payments have to work this way, too.
Jose: Thank you for the chat, Steve. It sounds like payments are changing a lot, adapting to the evolution of technology and we’re excited to see where these changes take us.
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Interested in learning more about Google Pay APIs or have questions? Follow us @GooglePayDevs and let us know in the comments or tweet using #AskGooglePayDev! For any other Google Pay-related requests and questions, or to start your Google Pay integration, visit Google Pay Business Console.
Posted by Toni Klopfenstein, Developer Advocate
As more developers onboard to the Smart Home Actions platform, we have gathered feedback about the certification process for launching an Action. Today, we are pleased to announce we have updated our Actions policy to enable developers to more quickly develop their Actions, and to help streamline the certification and launch process for developers. These updates will also help to provide a consistent, cohesive experience for smart device users.
Ensuring each device type meets quality benchmark metrics provides end users with reliable and timely responses from their smart devices.With these policy updates, minimum latency and reliability metrics have been added to each device type guide. To ensure consistent device control and timely updates to Home Graph, all cloud controlled smart devices need to maintain a persistent connection through a hub or the device itself, and cannot rely on mobile devices and tablets.
Along with these quality benchmarks, we have also updated our guides with required and recommended traits for each device. By implementing these within an Action, developers can ensure their end users can trigger devices in a consistent manner and access the full range of device capabilities. To assist you in ensuring your Action is compliant with the updated policy, the Test Suite testing tool will now more clearly flag any device type or trait issues.
Smart home users care deeply about the safety and security of the devices integrated into their homes, so we have also updated our requirements for secondary user verification. This verification step must be implemented for any Action that can set a device in an unprotected state, such as unlocking a door, regardless of whether you are building a Conversational Action or Smart Home Action. Once configured with a secondary verification method, developers can provide users a way to opt out of this flow. For any developer wishing to include an opt-out selection to their customers, we have provided a warning message template to ensure users understand the security implications for turning this feature off.
For devices that may pose heightened safety risks, such as cooking appliances, we require UL certificates or similar certification forms to be provided along with the Test Suite results before an Action can be released to production.
These policy updates also will affect the use of the Works With Hey Google badge. The badge will only be available for use on marketing materials for new Smart Home Direct Actions that have successfully integrated any device types referenced.
Any Conversational Actions currently using the badge will not be approved for use for any new marketing assets, including packaging/product refreshes. Any digital assets using the badge will need to be updated to remove the badge by the end of 2021.
With the roll-out today, there will be a 1 month grace period for developers to update new integrations to match the new policy requirements. For Actions currently deployed to production, compliance will be evaluated when the Action is recertified. Once integrations have been certified and launched to production, Actions will need to be recertified annually, or any time new devices or device functionality is added to the Action. Notifications for recertification will be shared with the developer account associated with your Action in the console.
This policy grace-period ends April 12, 2021.
Please review the updated policy, as well as our updated docs for launching your Smart Home Action. You can also check out our policy video for more information.
We want to hear from you, so continue sharing your feedback with us through the issue tracker, and engage with other smart home developers in the /r/GoogleAssistantDev community. Follow @ActionsOnGoogle on Twitter for more of our team's updates, and tweet using #AoGDevs to share what you’re working on. We can’t wait to see what you build!
Posted by Leslie Garcia-Amaya, Global Product Partnerships Lead, Google Assistant Ashwin Karuhatty, Head of Global Product Partnerships, Google Assistant
The interest and adoption of voice technology reached an important inflection point last year with the pandemic, as we immediately saw Google Assistant play a bigger role in helping people manage more of their time at home, from juggling family activities to controlling their smart home devices.
To help brands and developers stay ahead of these trends and identify potential opportunities to create impactful voice experiences for their users, we spun up a series of virtual events to stay engaged with the community when many in-person industry events were cancelled. For example, we introduced VOICE Talks last April in partnership with Modev as a monthly series of digital events that connected Google business, engineering and product leaders directly with the voice-tech ecosystem and developer community. VOICE Talks also provided a platform to companies, like Sony, Bamboo Learning, American Express, Verizon, Headspace, Vizio, iRobot, Nike, Dunkin, to share best practices on how they integrated voice technology into their products. You can watch past episodes here.
The ecosystem support and participation has been incredible with over 110,000 subscribers for VOICE Talks, over 40,000 hours of content consumed and active ongoing viewership on YouTube. In addition, we saw a huge demand for country/region-specific content in India, and started the VOICE Talks India series, which has also been received very well.
Thanks to all the positive feedback from the community, we’re looking to double down on those efforts this year. In addition to hosting more VOICE Talks events, we’re expanding our collaboration with industry-recognized influencers through podcasts, livestreams and more to continue growing the community, such as:
Additionally, we’re excited to announce that Google Assistant is the first corporate sponsor of Women In Voice, a global non-profit with a mission to amplify women and diverse people in the voice technology field that has grown to 20 chapters in 15 countries since they launched in 2018. This sponsorship builds on the momentum Women In Voice established with Google Assistant at CES 2020, where they collaborated on a “Women In Tech & Allies” event. Tune in to womeninvoice.org to stay up to date on upcoming events and collaborations between Google Assistant and Women In Voice.
There’s now more ways to hear from us, share your feedback and learn about the latest trends in the space.
Posted by Kenny Sulaimon, Product Manager, ML Kit Chengji Yan, Suril Shah, Buck Bourdon, Software Engineers, ML Kit, Shiyu Hu, Technical Lead, ML Kit Dong Chen, Technical Lead, ML Kit
At the end of 2020, we introduced the Entity Extraction API to our ML Kit SDK, making it even easier to detect and perform actions on text within mobile apps. Since then, we’ve been hard at work updating our existing APIs with new functionality and also fine tuning Selfie Segmentation with the help of our partners in the ML Kit early access program.
Today we are excited to officially add Selfie Segmentation to the ML Kit lineup, introduce a few enhancements we’ve made to our popular Pose Detection API and announce that ML Kit has graduated to general availability!
(ML Kit is now in General Availability)
We launched ML Kit back in 2018 in order to make it easy for developers on Android and iOS to use machine learning within their apps. Over the last two years we have rapidly expanded our set of APIs to help with both vision and natural language processing based use cases.
Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response, developer feedback and a ton of adoption across both Android and iOS, we are ready to drop the beta label and officially announce the general availability of ML Kit’s APIs. All of our APIs (except Selfie Segmentation, Pose Detection, and Entity Extraction) are now in general availability!
(Example of ML Kit Selfie Segmentation)
With the increased usage of selfie cameras and webcams in today's world, being able to quickly and easily add effects to camera experiences has become a necessity for many app developers.
ML Kit's Selfie Segmentation API allows developers to easily separate the background from users within a scene and focus on what matters. Adding cool effects to selfies or inserting your users into interesting background environments has never been easier. The model works on live and still images, and both half and full body subjects.
(Diagram of Selfie Segmentation API)
The Selfie Segmentation API takes an input image and produces an output mask. Each pixel of the mask is assigned a float number that has a range between [0.0, 1.0]. The closer the number is to 1.0, the higher the confidence that the pixel represents a person, and vice versa.
The API works with static images and live video use cases. During live video (stream_mode), the API will leverage output from previous frames to return smoother segmentation results.
We’ve also implemented a “RAW_SIZE_MASK” option to give developers more options for mask output. By default, the mask produced will be the same size as the input image. If the RAW_SIZE_MASK option is enabled, then the mask will be the size of the model output (256x256). This option makes it easier to apply customized rescaling logic or reduces latency if rescaling to the input image size is not needed for your use case.
(Example of updated Pose Detection API; colors represent the Z value)
Last month, we updated our state-of-the-art Pose Detection API with a new model and new features. A quick summary of the enhancements is listed below:
The Z Coordinate is an experimental feature that is calculated for every point (excluding the face). The estimate is provided using synthetic data, obtained via the GHUM model (articulated 3D human shape model).
It is measured in "image pixels" like the X and Y coordinates. The Z axis is perpendicular to the camera and passes between a subject's hips. The origin of the Z axis is approximately the center point between the hips (left/right and front/back relative to the camera). Negative Z values are towards the camera; positive values are away from it. The Z coordinate does not have an upper or lower bound.
For more information on the Pose Detection changes, please see our API documentation.
After the release of Pose Detection, we’ve received quite a bit of requests from developers to help with classifying specific poses within their apps. To help tackle this problem, we partnered with the MediaPipe team to release a pose classification tutorial and Google Colab. In the classification tutorial, we demonstrate how to build and run a custom pose classifier within the ML Kit Android sample app and also demo a simple push-up and squat rep counter using the classifier.
(Example of Pose classification and repetition counting with MLKit Pose)
For a deep dive into building your own pose classifier with different camera angles, environment conditions, body shapes etc, please see the pose classification tutorial.
For more general classification tips, please see our Pose Classification Options page on the ML Kit website.
It has been an exciting two years getting ML Kit to general availability and we couldn’t have gotten here without your help and feedback. As we continue to introduce new APIs such as Selfie Segmentation and Pose Detection, your feedback is more important than ever. Please continue to share your enhancement requests and questions with our development team or reach out through our community channels. Let’s build a smarter future together.
Posted by The Google Developers Team
Today we are celebrating International Women’s Day by highlighting a series of 21 tech trailblazers who are making significant strides in the developer community.
Many of the women we interviewed are directly involved with our educational outreach and inclusivity programs like Google Developer Groups and Women Techmakers while others are Google Developers Experts or Googlers who are doing amazing work around the globe.
While all of the women featured here have unique stories around their journey into tech, a commonality among all of them is the dedication to making the developer community more inclusive for all future generations of women to come.
We are honored to celebrate #IWD2021 with them.
Android and Kotlin GDE
Photo of Annyce Davis
Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.
I work as Director of Engineering at Meetup. I'm currently working on moving our native applications into the future. It's exciting to take a product that I've used for so many years and help transform it into a modern application that millions of users rely on each day.
Tell us about your path into tech.
I think my path was pretty traditional. I've been interested in tech from a young age. I went to a Science and Tech high school and ended up getting my degree in Computer Engineering. But when I started out my career it was a slow start.
My first job out of college was as a Help Desk Technician. I managed to do that for 6 months before I realized that it wasn't for me and I needed to be coding. That's when I moved into Web development. From there, I spent a few years developing web apps and working on APIs. Finally, I found my true passion, Android development. I loved how I could write code that powered the tiny device I carried around in my purse.
What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?
Grow your professional network early in your career. Spend time getting to know others in the industry. Establish your own "mentor" by reaching out and asking questions of others who are where you want to be. Having a network is invaluable. It exposes you to know opportunities and highlights areas for growth.
Developer Relations Engineer, Android
Photo of Florina Muntenescu
I’m an engineer in the Android Developer Relations team. I focus on architecture, Jetpack and Kotlin. I give talks, write blog posts and samples and provide feedback on our products.
Recently I worked on architecture guidance in Compose and on #AndroidDevChallenge
When I was 9 years old, my mom took me to computer classes (we didn’t have a computer at home back then) and I just loved it. That’s when I decided I want to “work with computers” when I grow up. I studied computer science in high school and university and in my last year of university, I got hooked on Android.
You have something to say—share it with the world! Share your passions and be yourself. People will respond and can tell if you really care about something.
Photo of Huyen Tue Dao
I am a senior Android developer working on the Trello Android app at Atlassian.
In high school, I dreamed of being a journalist. To graduate, we had to take one full credit of "technical classes." Since I wanted to be a journalist, I figured, "Hey, I'll probably be typing a lot. Let me take the typing class." Unfortunately, the typing class was just a half-credit so I needed one more class. Just because some of my friends were taking it, I ended up selecting "Introduction to Programming." That was the happiest happenstance. I fell immediately and deeply in love with programming. I kicked ass and afterward knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I majored in Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland and have never looked back.
It can be tough but always ask questions. Ask questions when you need clarification. Ask questions when you don't agree with something. At the start of my career, I was deathly afraid of asking questions; I didn't want to seem incapable, and I didn't want to be "bothersome." Doing this, I missed out on so many opportunities and made things a bit harder on myself. Asking questions because you need clarification just makes sense and is necessary. For sure, sometimes people are not patient, but it's more important for you to get the information you need so you can do your best work. Asking questions because you don't agree with something can be really hard and may not always bring you the results that you want, but one of the biggest skills we have to constantly nurture as developers is critical thinking and the ability to communicate that thinking. Now that I'm a senior developer, I think I am most inspired and energized when other developers ask me great questions, clarifying or critical. It's not easy. It's often scary. It's a skill. But practice it and develop confidence in your right to ask questions.
Firebase, Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform, and Web Technologies GDE
Photo of Diana Rodríguez Manrique
I’m transitioning between roles in developer advocacy. Currently working on many projects being one of them a diabetes monitoring tool with GPS tracking.
I started coding when I was 6 years old in a c64 and ever since then transitioned through different roles and languages being my strengths in infrastructure and Python. I’m a self taught developer with 20+ years experience
Keep moving! Keep going forward. We have paved the way for other women to move forward and we need you!!
Firebase GDE
Photo of Laura Morinigo
I am a Web Developer Advocate for Samsung Research UK, therefore I work for developers. My projects include helping developers and entrepreneurs make better decisions around tech, especially the web, by creating resources and demos, spreading the word about best practices, speaking at events, and contributing to a more diverse tech scene.
I started during my early years and learned how to code during high school. Later on, I decided to study Software Engineering which led me to start working as a developer. At the same time - I was also teaching and getting involved with the tech community, participating in events which guided me to public speaking and creating resources so others can learn from my experience. Thanks to this contribution I became a GDE on Firebase.
To my fellow women developers: Work on yourself, in discovering your inner worth and remove a lot of beliefs that society shows you. Surround yourself with people that support you during your journey, find your community, and once you get there, open the door to other women that need guidance.
Flutter GDE, Women Techmakers Ambassador, GDG Rome Co-Lead
Photo of Rihanna Kedir
Currently, I am working as a Software Engineer and I am so excited that a few months ago I joined the UN World Food Programme. Apart from that, I am GDE in web, Flutter and Dart, as well as a Women Techmakers ambassador and GDG organizer.
I ended up in the tech industry just out of curiosity. I always wanted to enroll in a scientific field. I grew up in Ethiopia and back in high-school I had very limited internet access and almost no information about Computer Science. As I graduated, I tried to enroll in the University, unfortunately, my Italian high school Diploma was not accepted in Ethiopian Universities back then.
My family was against me going abroad alone for studying. So I started working as an Accountant. Meanwhile, I took art and fashion design courses and started my own fashion business side by side. Once that I was economically independent I started to feel the urge to follow my dream, so I moved to Rome and started my computer science degree.
Always stay passionate and never stop learning. You should always learn technical skills but you should keep in mind that soft skills are also important. Never be discouraged but try to expand your horizons as much as you can. At the same time, you should never compare yourself with others; focus on your own progress. Think about how much you’ve accomplished and where you want to go next. Always believe in yourself and speak up whenever you need to.
Flutter GDE
Photo of Mais Alheraki
I currently work as a lead developer in a tech startup, building a medical appointments application in Saudi Arabia, called Mawidy, all made with Flutter and Firebase, it helps patients get remote consultations with our doctors through the platform in voice and video. We also use Flutter web to give clinics access to all details of their doctors and provide appointments and services through the app, either remotely or by physical bookings.
We have over 3000 successful appointments, and counting, since we started, and we helped over 2500 patients get free medical consultations during the pandemic.
I was still in elementary school when my passion with computers started, I always knew I wanted to be in tech. My father was a programmer, I learned the basics when I was 14 y.o. After high school, I undoubtedly chose to major in IT, during college, I learned web development alongside UI design and built several small websites. I got to know Flutter & Firebase in a study jam in January 2019 and built my senior year project with them. Then I chose to continue diving deeper into application development, both as a UI designer and a Flutter developer, I released 2 free Flutter apps as personal projects in 2019 and still maintaining them, and got a base of active users.
Meanwhile, I helped in building the Women Techmakers community in Saudi Arabia, as a lead, organizer and speaker. We have helped thousands of women in the MENA region and Saudi Arabia to be more visible, learn more and get broader opportunities.
In the middle of 2020, I found my first job in tech, as a UI/UX designer. After that, within 3 months I got my current job as a Flutter developer.
A tip I give to my fellow women developers is: have the courage to create your own opportunities, and never wait for it, build apps no matter how small they are, write tutorials, and teach what you learn.
Photo of Katarina Sheremet
I am a Google Developer Expert in Flutter and Dart, Women Techmakers Switzerland co-organizer, and Flutter Zürich Meetup co-organizer. I run my own company that is called FutureWare. I consult companies and Start-Ups about Flutter development, architecture, testing, and more. I also work on my own projects. One of the projects is Delern Flashcards. It is a mobile app that helps to learn anything, which is published on Google Play and App Store and has more than 3000 installs. I also organize events about technologies, gives talks, and writes articles about Flutter and Dart.
I started programming when I was 15 years old. My first programming language was Pascal. Since then, I fell in love with programming. I took part in the programming and algorithmic competitions and was also a prize-winner of regional competitions in Belarus.
Enjoy what you are doing and be curious. It is very important to have fun and enjoy development. Curiosity will help you to dig deep into details. Knowing details is required to become an expert in your area.
Google Cloud GDE
Photo of Adriana Fernanda Moya
Currently I work in a company that is listed for the NYS, called Globant, my role is Cloud Engineer and from my position I am dedicated to supporting a global entertainment company in cloud architecture and the implementation of large-scale growth strategies for its applications around the world.
I started my career as a software developer where I had many challenges, I suffered from the imposter syndrome, I was also always the only woman on the team. I was fortunate to have a great mentor, who always inspired me to study on my own and thanks to him I was able to meet technology communities in my city, it was a great time in which I had moments of all kinds. After some years of work as a developer I decided to make the decision to change my career path and orient it towards Cloud Computing, I was very excited to be able to translate architecture problems into new opportunities for large-scale improvement, so I did it and I do not regret it.
I would advise her not to be afraid to think big, every small step they take will lead them to their goal, do not feel intimidated but always think that they are strong and they are going to achieve it.
Google Cloud GDE, Women Techmakers Lead and Organizer for GDG Cloud MX
Photo of Luz Maria Maida Claure
I'm a Software Engineer and right now I'm focused on an Ecommerce project. I take care about the web performance and infrastructure implementation using different Google Cloud Products, also I integrate analytic metrics from GMP to ensure that this measure is displayed in a way that the final customer can understand through different visualization tools.
I decided for this career when I was 7 years old, the first time that I saw a computer was while I was watching a TV show named "Where in the world is Carmen San Diego", from there the interest for the technology grew inside me, so in the college I decide to take programming lessons, with doubts but also with a lot of energy and passion to learn, I discovered my passion for the web development and infrastructure.
After the University I face different challenges, like being part of the only two women working in a company or having the Impostor syndrome while I was doing my activities, at the end, I understand that diversity is important inside the teams and don't give up no matter the circumstances. So with that in mind, I participated as a volunteer in a Women Techmakers event happening in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I'm very grateful for that experience because that allowed me to teach other people some concepts about Computer Science, and I felt awesome to help other women in the same field.
This experience encouraged me to send my first conference proposal to a Tech Conference, this action opened the door to meet more people with the same interests and also to take a look outside my country, I applied and was selected to be part of a Google Partner in Mexico City.
Trust in yourself, for me is the most important thing! Even if you don't feel in that way or even in adverse circumstances, you need to be brave to create whatever you want and how far your imagination drives you, teach, share and don't forget to be happy.
Google Pay, Technical Engineering Manager
Photo of Archana Malhotra
I’m a technical Engineering Manager leading Google Pay Online Payments
Project. The current project I’m working on is to bring Offers to Autofill! It's about surfacing a user activated offer from the Google Pay app in Autofill. This helps the user identify and select the offer linked FOP (form of payment).
I was fascinated by computers at an early age, I started learning coding in elementary school and pursued my Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science.
Carve out time from the busy schedule to add value to yourself. Block time on the calendar to stop, think and review and identify what you want to polish, learn, and apply.
Google Pay, Product Solutions Engineer
Photo of Nalini Sewak
I work as a Product Solutions Engineer in Google Pay. My role is an interesting mix of external and internal engagements which I love! I work directly with our partners (say Doordash or Lyft) to help them integrate with our APIs. These partners allow their users to checkout using Google Pay on their platforms. I also collaborate internally with our business development, product and engineering teams to ensure we can test, launch and support new features and scale existing products and processes so more developers can easily integrate with Google. I'm currently analyzing data to determine where developers drop off in our integration path to improve our offering.
I had a pretty cursory interest in tech during my high school years in India, and wasn’t certain it would be my path. My sister thought it would be a great fit for my skills and really encouraged me to pursue tech. Turns out she was right! I really enjoyed a user research course which motivated me to focus on user journeys in products, I was hooked! I immigrated to the US to get my MS in CS at Santa Cruz. It was incredibly fulfilling to do research and TA for amazing professors and I really thrived amongst the redwood forests. Go Slugs!
Dont be afraid to ask questions or seem stupid, it makes you get stuck longer. Ask the questions, learn from it and you will be better faster! Create a network of people who support you that you can seek advice from, find mentors and sponsors in your career and you will progress more quickly. And be sure to extend the same advice or support to others who need it. Use your voice to bring your opinion into product roadmaps and strategy. After all, tech products need to be just as useful to women; nothing about us without us. We can drive systemic change and once we have critical mass in tech, it can be a green field for the next generation of women.
To stay updated on Google Pay technical updates, and news follow @GooglePayDevs on Twitter.
Google Workspace Product GDE, GDG Coast Lebanon and Women Techmakers Lebanon
Photo of Rayan AL Zahab
I am the founder and CEO of BambooGeeks, a startup with the aim to make the MENA region a tech talent hub by training fresh tech talents and startups on market relevant technologies (ML, AppScript,..) and methodologies (Design thinking, agile, devops,..) with a focus on communication skills and the power of the tech community.
I am also a Google Workspace GDE, the first female GDE in the MENA and have been one of the most active GDEs worldwide since 2019.
I am a Women Techmakers ambassador and Google for Startups Accelerator MENA lead mentor and trainer.
Building and creating has always been a passion of mine. Inspired by my father, I wanted to be an electrical engineer, but then grew an interest in computers and decided to go for software engineering as it was more suitable for a woman for my family.
I started working since my second year university and was always fond of the tech ecosystem based on open source and community, made sure to participate in every event and hackathon no matter how far from my city it was.
I started my career in Lebanon in data entry and QA as an intern, then became an application developer and worked for several companies including Delteck and UNICEF innovation Lab before moving to Dubai to join McKinsey & Company as a senior digital consultant. At McKinsey, I was an Agile trainer and product management adviser where we worked with government entities and banks across the Gulf.
In early 2020 I decided to take a leap of faith and start BambooGeeks only a month before the pandemic! Considering we provide in person bootcamps and trainings, we had to pivot. We restructured all our training and materials to be completely online and launched.
In less than a year we have trained over 200 startups on design thinking from all MENA and 800+ individuals on Employability skills, Agile Development and Design thinking with a target audience of DSC leads, GDG members and Women Techmakers Ambassadors.
Early in my career I have been told to be realistic and lower my ambitions because being a hijabi woman in Tech imposes limits on what I can achieve in the field. They said look around it isn't possible, you will never find a successful hijabi woman in tech.
And it was true, there wasn't anyone who looked like me, and it was true I got rejected for countless jobs because I'm a woman and a hijabi, and was asked to remove my hijab for other jobs.
But, I never looked at it as a barrier! With every rejection I was grateful for my hijab and for being a women, they acted as my personal "sexism and religious discrimination" sensor which protected me from working in a culture that doesn't fit my values.
There is no ceiling for your dreams! Dream as big as you wish, and you have the right to maintain all your values!
And When you don't find the role model to look up to, be that model for future generations.
In addition, Being a women in tech comes with many challenges, fortunately for us today it also comes with few extra opportunities, Tech companies understood the need of women in the industry and are creating programs and initiatives to support you, such as the Women Techmakers from Google, the TechWomen exchange program from the state friends and many others.
Seek these opportunities! Leverage the community.
Google Workspace GDE
Photo of Cleo Espiritu
I'm a Technical Product Manager at Plenty of Fish for the Platform and Payment squads, where we design and build the infrastructure, libraries and backend services that keep our apps running smoothly for our members. Recently we've launched our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) services which expanded our capabilities and significantly reduced our development time to engage and communicate with members through multiple channels.
Going into high school, I randomly chose a computer programming course despite knowing nothing about it at the time. That led to me learning HTML to make websites on my own, as well as a summer research job with the Computing Science department at the University of Alberta. I decided to keep at it, got my degree in Computer Science, started as a developer and was fortunate enough to have the opportunities to experience different roles in software development, such as UI designer and Product Manager.
Learn to recognize your strengths and build your confidence around it. Also learn to recognize your weaknesses and gaps, and see those as opportunities to grow and learn.
Photo of Alice Keeler
Along with teaching geometry, I create innovative solutions for teacher workflows that save them significant time and/or allow teachers to use workspace more effectively with their students.
I got into tech because as an educator, I am always excited to find new ways to make learning more awesome! Messing around with new tools that can, increase engagement, spark curiosity, foster collaboration, or increase efficiency is always something that I dive into. Over time I found the joy of coding those tools myself, to make them even better.
Don’t be afraid to fail often! Failing and making mistakes is where the learning magic happens.
Design Advocate
Photo of Louise Macfadyen
I recently joined the Material Design team as a Design Advocate, so a lot of my work involves connecting with the design community and helping designers and developers create beautiful experiences using Material.
I’m currently recording a video series called Material Made which highlights the three winners of the Material Design awards. We just wrapped up an episode which will feature Epsy, who won the award for Material Motion. Their app aims to better the lives of those living with epilepsy, and the episode highlights how they guide users through critical tasks to better their quality of life, like logging triggers, taking medication, and reducing the feeling of isolation. We talk about how they use motion stylistically as a component of their brand expression, while also providing users with a great, meaningful experience.
Each episode dives into the way the experience was brought to life with Material Design, and we also speak to the designers who worked on the projects to hear more about their process. There will be three episodes in total, and they’ll be coming out this year - stay tuned and check out the Material Design YouTube channel here.
I graduated with a degree in English, so I thought I’d go into publishing or journalism. But this was 2012 and none of those jobs existed any more, so I ended up teaching myself how to code Wordpress sites.
I started freelancing for small galleries and studios and eventually realized that I was more drawn to the design side. I sort of pieced together a design education from a number of sources, and made a portfolio. I eventually got my foot in the door at a small shop, and everything went from there.
Working at Google was a long time aspiration, as the initial launch of Material Design guidance showed that orgs were opening the door for people like me, with non-traditional backgrounds, to benefit from their design systems and research. It’s what makes me excited to connect with other designers and developers to support them and give them a voice that previously they hadn’t had.
For a long time, I think careers have been perceived in a linear way, as a slow climbing of the stairs up to seniority. My career hasn’t been like that, and I feel like largely the nature of the “career” is changing.
There’s less of a sense of climbing towards that north star. Instead I associate much more with this feeling of being in a forest, observing the abundance around me, tending to my skills and interests and seeing where that path leads. I find it’s important to always have an open mindset. And wear sensible shoes 👟
Lead, Material Design Advocacy
Photo of Yasmine Evjen
I lead the Material Design Advocacy team at Google. We’re a team of designers and developers helping others build beautiful, human-centered experiences with Material Design.
Material is a design system, created by Google and backed by open-source code, that helps teams build high-quality digital experiences. My team helps designers and developers build with our guidelines, code components, and tools through education, resources, and hands-on partner engagements. Some days are spent writing blog posts, creating a talk, or filming for our YouTube channel. Other days are spent creating resources, such as interactive examples and tools to help make it easier to build beautiful UI on Android, the Web, or Flutter. We also work directly with external partners and internal teams across Google to help them implement and gain actionable feedback on how we can improve. And we get paid to tweet.
When I was in college I took a Flash class because I needed to complete a computer science course prerequisite, and my instructor said, “You’re really good at this, have you considered this as a career?” I did some research and learned about web development, which led to me pursuing a career as a front-end web developer, and later evolved into designing apps as a UX designer.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Android, and as an app designer, Material Design has always been a dream of mine to work on. My Google journey started with a podcast which focused on Google and Android. We talked about new products and technology coming out of Google and what we could do with it. Starting the podcast gave me an opportunity to communicate and connect with the community and be able to use my design expertise - that's what landed me in my role as a Design Advocate which later evolved into managing a team of developers and designers advocates.
Material Design is there to help both designers and developers to build beautiful digital experiences, and I look forward to continuing the exploration with my team to learn how we can bridge the gap between design and development.
Don’t allow yourself to be limited or solely defined by a job title. Design, development, and other roles in tech are so entwined where you don’t have to be one specific thing in order to be successful. Starting off as a front-end developer, and evolving into a UX designer led me to the question: What exactly is my path? A developer or a designer? While keeping my path open to possibilities, my path has led me to a unique position where I can manage both developers and designers. If you’re leading a team like Material Design Advocacy - both are needed. If I could tell developers one thing, it would be - don't be afraid to get into the design details, and for designers the same - don’t be afraid to code. The more we can work together and demystify our roles, the better experiences we can create because we’ll be less focused on what our role is and more focused on delivering something beautiful.
Women Techmakers Ambassador
Photo of Lea Truc
I lead Women Meet Tech, a STEM program funded and endorsed by the U.S. Consulate General - Ho Chi Minh City around tech and women empowerment. I’m also a Women Techmaker ambassador with technical knowledge in front-end development, co-leading Google Flutter community in Sydney and a former mentor at Women Developer Academy by Google Developers.
Amidst COVID-19 pandemic, I have builded a pilot GP-Patient Support platform to provide easier access to medical reference info for patients while assisting social-distancing in clinical visits in Australia.
I’m very glad that my works have inspired young professionals in multiple tech seminars, hackathons and international collaborations in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the US and Vietnam.
A college professor in Boston turned tech advocate. I once was told I would never be successful if pursuing my path in tech. I proved that wrong. That’s why I want to inspire others to have the courage to overcome social pressures, fears, obstacles to pursue their own path. I want to empower many other women and minorities through technology and education. I’m a strong believer that a person’s capability is not based on the gender one was born with.
'What I cannot create, I do not understand.' - Richard P. Feynman.
Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Just try, fail a lot, and be persistent. That’s how you can understand things at the core. That’s how you can grow.
ML GDE, GDG Seattle Lead, Women Techmakers Seattle
Photo of Margaret Maynard-Reid
I’m an ML research engineer and avid artist - check out my artwork made with traditional, digital and AI tools. One community project that I’m currently working on is to help launch the ML GDE (Google Developer Experts) YouTube channel with my fellow ML GDEs. Be sure to subscribe to our channel which will be launched soon with unique content created by ML GDEs worldwide.
Most of my career has actually been in the tech world. Starting from a business background with an MBA, my journey goes from managing software development releases, to Android application development, to ML research and engineering, to becoming an artist. Instead of a linear path, I have shifted my career a few times in pursuit of my various passions.
My one tip for developers in general is - it’s never too late to learn anything! Put your mind into it and you can become an expert at it one day. Read a book, take an online class, learn from your colleagues and friends. Sharing your knowledge is also a great way to learn: give a talk, write a blog post or contribute to an open-source project. Never be afraid of being a beginner, keep learning, and you may discover a talent you never realize that you have.
Machine Learning GDE
Photo of Bianca Ximenes
I am a Product Manager in Artificial Intelligence at Gupy, the biggest HRTech in Brazil.
Right now, the project that excites me the most is the integration of a Deep Learning model for Named Entity Recognition (NER) to our Machine Learning stack, which will allow us to help companies write higher quality job descriptions focused on the candidate, and help candidates upskill by suggesting related content to the expertise they have and positions they want to achieve.
I started out in Economics, where I got a solid formation in Mathematics, Statistics and analytical thinking. I loved all things Economics, but felt that job opportunities didn't really demand a lot of my skills, and as a person I wasn't as valued in companies where I worked, compared to my friends who were in Computer Science.
I started working in small startups and the idea of Agile, continuous improvement, and development projects really resonated with me. I liked having a finger in every pie, because I am quite curious and like understanding (and explaining) how things work. So I decided to do an MSc in Computer Science to acquire some technical skill and understanding. After that, I worked managing projects that ranged from mobile development to augmented reality, until I finally realized I really liked making Products more than Projects, and since I had an extensive background building products and managing startups, I became a Google Developer Expert in Product Strategy. A little while later, I started my PhD in Computer Science, also working for a startup where I saw up close the challenges and excitement of AI projects in real life, as well as the dilemmas of building AI applications that made decisions for thousands of people.
Working with Machine Learning allowed me to use the mathematical and statistical foundation I had, and I started researching Ethical Machine Learning, eventually migrating to the Google Developer Expert program in Machine Learning and joining Gupy and a specialized Product Manager focused on AI - something I want to do for life. That way, I was able to bring together all of my career passions: Product, AI, research, and being an active part of the developer community.
In Tech, no-one's path is like any other. We have more liberty to change and innovate, and everything can have an impact really quickly. So always be mindful of what you're doing or your responsibility, and try as best you can not to compare what you do and your path with others'. Tech is everywhere, we do so many different and exciting things! Find a way to deliver value that works for real people and make it your own. Be proud of your history (:
Machine Learning and Google Cloud GDE
Photo of Sharmistha Chatterjee
I work as a Senior Manager of Data Sciences in Publicis Sapient. I am currently working on different algorithms for Ethical AI solutions, one of which is Federated learning.
Starting from my school days, I have always been curious about Programming Languages like Basic and Logo, and used to try out new kinds of stuff. In those days (25 years back) the computer was just getting introduced in very few schools. Even during my high school and college days, I tried to build my own projects like A User Interface for a Retail System, an Interactive Quiz Simulator, and so on. I remember the days when there were no python libraries and instead I had to code libraries using C/C++ for my thesis.
The curiosity to solve unsolved problems, and the desire to wait and see new results coming up, have always kept me going and motivated to transfer this characteristic to other women. Hence blogging (my own platform techairesearch.com), and giving talks in meetups or conferences energizes me and helps me to learn and evolve in the process.
Always ask why and be bold to question, and showcase your talent by giving talks, participating in hackathons, open-source projects.
I think it's time to give back to the community by mentoring more young women who can get more visibility and become leaders in STEM. As women's representation in STEM is lacking, this is a great avenue to encourage young talented women to showcase their skills in different technologies (Android, Web, Flutter, AI, Cloud, etc) and become experts and gain visibility in the tech community. Once they become more active in open source contributions, giving talks, and blogging, other career paths for progression would automatically open, which would enable them to become recognized leaders in their domain. Since Google is already providing an avenue to young women to seek mentorship and become experts, it's time that women feel highly encouraged and come forward and make the best use of it.
Interested in becoming a part of the Google developer community? Here’s more information on the programs we’ve shared above:
The Google Developer Groups program gives developers the opportunity to meet local developers with similar interests in technology. A virtual or in-person GDG meetup event includes talks on a wide range of technical topics where you can learn new skills through hands-on workshops. The community prides itself on being an inclusive environment where everyone and anyone interested in tech - from beginner developers to experienced professionals - all are welcome to join.
Join a Google Developer Group chapter near you here.
Apply to become a Google Developer Group organizer here.
Follow Google Developer Groups on Twitter here.
Subscribe to the Google Developer Groups YouTube channel here.
Founded in 2014, Google’s Women Techmakers is dedicated to helping all women thrive in tech through community, visibility and resources. With a member base of over 100,000 women developers, we’re working with communities across the globe to build a world where all women can thrive in tech. Our community consists of over 1000 Women Techmakers Ambassadors across over 100 countries. These Ambassadors are the north star of our movement. They are leaders committed to their communities, using Women Techmaker resources to build space and visibility so that all women could thrive in tech.
Become a Women Techmakers Member here.
Follow Women Techmakers on Twitter here.
The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies and tech communities by speaking at events, publishing content, and building innovative apps. Experts actively contribute to and support the developer and startup ecosystems around the world, helping them build and launch highly innovative apps. More than 800 Experts represent 18+ Google technologies around the world!
Learn more about the Google Developers Experts program and its eligibility criteria here.
Follow Google Developers Experts on Twitter here and LinkedIn here.
