MAGNUS HYTTSTEN: Hi, and welcome to this video, where
we will show you all the new, exciting stuff in Google Play
Services 4.3.
If you're new to Google Play Services,
you have come to the right place because Google Play Services
rocks.
For you as a developer, this is great news
because you can get your hands of all the latest
blazing, hot stuff we develop here at Google.
And incorporate into your apps.
Let's look at the highlights of this version.
First of all, we'll show you a brand new Address API,
then we'll go through some exciting new features
of the Google Play Games services.
We'll also cover the Google Analytics and Google Tag
Manager APIs, which are also brand new to the Google Play
Services family.
And we'll round it off this time by showing you
new stuff in the Google Drive Android API.
Let's get started.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Ladies and gentlemen, that's right, we've got a new API.
Let's welcome the Address API with a round of applause.
MALE SPEAKER 1: Get back to work.
MAGNUS HYTTSTEN: Yes sir.
How many of you have tried to buy something
on the internet from your smartphone
and then come to the part where you
need to fill out the delivery address.
Argh, nightmare experience.
Big fingers on small keys.
But of course, if you want to ship to your current location,
then you can use the location API
to fill out the address, which makes things easier.
MALE SPEAKER 2: But what if you're at work
and want to ship it to your home?
MAGNUS HYTTSTEN: That's exactly when
the Address API comes to the rescue.
With the API, your app can present a user interface,
which displays all addresses registered by the user.
The user can then select an address,
such as John Smith in the example on the picture,
and voila.
The address will be made available to the awesome bike
store app to complete the purchase.
There is no more messing around with thumbs and small keys.
Isn't that great?
Shopping on your smartphone just became a walk in the park,
thanks to Google Play Services.
Now over to Google Play Game services,
mobile gaming is bigger than ever
and we're continuing to pack new features into this API.
With this release we've introduced Game Gifts,
which allows player to send virtual in-game requests
to anyone in their Google+ Circles or through player
search.
A player can now send a Wish Request
to ask another player for an in-game benefit or item.
And another player can send a Gift Request
to give an item, or benefit, or something,
making both players happy in the end.
This feature complements the multi-player functionality
released earlier and will enhance the social engagement
between players in your games.
An example of using gifts is to request more lives
from your friend, in case the last round of playing
did not go so well.
Psst.
This little video used the LiquidFun Physics Engine.
You should so much check it out.
So great stuff from the Google Play Services,
be sure to use them all in your game.
Let's now move over to the Google Analytics and Google Tag
Manager APIs.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And ladies and gentlemen, that's right, these are all new APIs.
Let's welcome the Google Analytics and Google Tag
Manager APIs with a round of applause.
MALE SPEAKER 1: Get back to work.
MAGNUS HYTTSTEN: Yes, sir.
So these APIs have actually existed as standalone APIs,
but have now been fully integrated into the Google Play
Services API family.
This is great, since this reduces the memory footprint
of your app, and these APIs become accessible side by side,
with all the other ones, ready for you
to use to create that shiny app.
So let's look at what these APIs contain.
We'll start off with the Google Tag Manager, which
lets you use tags in your apps instead of hard-coding values.
These tags are then substituted for values
that you have stored in the Tag Manager at run time.
This can, for example, be used to manage background colors
of your app, game settings, and localization settings.
Since the values of the tags are stored in the Tag Manager,
this eliminates the need to push your entire app
from Google Play again.
You can simply change the value of the tag in the Google Tag
Manager.
That brings us over to the Google Analytics API.
And if you haven't used Google Analytics before,
I strongly encourage you to take it for test ride.
Google Analytics allows you to get detailed statistics
on how your app is being used by your users.
For example what functionality of your app
is being used the most or which activity triggers
the users to convert from an advertisements app
to a paid one.
So that stuff can be pretty, pretty good
to know to get your users happy, but also
to get your next month's paycheck.
So be sure to check the Google Analytics API out
because it can really provide lots of valuable information
to you.
Which brings us to do Google Drive Android API.
As you may know, Google Drive Android API
was officially released in the last version of Google Play
services, and it's often a flying start
with a number of API enhancements.
First off is pinning.
You can now pin files that should
be kept up to date locally.
This ensures that the app can work with these files,
even when the user is offline.
Then we have app folders which allows your app
to create files which are no longer visible to the user.
For example, to store temporary files in a photo editor,
this is the same function as the application data
folder in the Google Drive API that have existed for a while.
With this version, we also have Change Notifications,
which makes it possible to register a call back,
and receive a notification when a file or folder is changed.
This means that you no longer need
to query drive continuously to check if the data has changed,
just put the Change Notification on it
and the API will call you when it happens.
And then we've also made a number of enhancements
to metadata information, which is something
you can never get enough of.
Well, to satisfy that craving, you may have for metadata,
you should be happy to hear that we've
added a bunch of new fields in this version.
So that's it for this release of Google Play Services,
but stay tuned because we've got lots more coming up.
Now it's your turn.
So go out there and create great apps,
and don't forget to tell us all about it.
[BIKE BELL]