LAURENCE MORONEY: Welcome to the Googleplex.
This is an incredible place with lots of great stuff being
worked on every single day.
Before I worked here, I always wondered
what it'd be like to come to the Googleplex,
meet up with a Googler, have coffee with them
and just chat about what they do, how they do it,
and why they do.
And today, we're going to do exactly that.
Welcome to "Coffee with a Googler."
I'm Laurence Moroney.
And today, I'm really honored to speak with Timothy Jordan.
And Timothy works with ubiquitous computing
here at Google.
And it's a really interesting turn
of phrase-- ubiquitous computing.
Could you tell us, really, what does that mean?
What's it all about?
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So it's more complex
sounding than it actually is, right?
Ubiquitous computing is kind of the combination of wearables,
and living room, and Auto, internet of things.
However, I like the term "ubiquitous computing"
because we're trying to help developers be successful
not just on individual platforms but across all platforms.
That is to say, maybe implement a wearable strategy
with their app but also have it available on the phones
so that the user can use their app wherever
it makes sense for them.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Mhm.
Now, the term "ubiquitous" seems to suggest that the computing
platform is spreading to whole new interesting areas
beyond the phone, beyond the watch, and maybe Glass.
What kind of things are you seeing compute happening?
TIMOTHY JORDAN: The different form factors.
You mentioned watch, TV, Google Cast, Android TV.
There's also Android Auto, and we just
recently released Beacons, which we should talk about.
And internet of things more generally
is just on the other side of the horizon.
And this is Brillo and Weave, which
we talked about at Google I/O, which
enables embedded devices and all kinds of things.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah, I'm looking forward to my fridge
being able to compute.
[LAUGHTER]
Tell me when the milk goes sour.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yeah.
You know, I mean, that's-- those kinds of examples have been
the conversation that the industry has used to drive
forward like general thought, and like protocols,
interoperability, though there are sort of more practical
needs that users have today.
It's simple stuff like I want to be
able to go running without taking my phone.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: And I'd like to have that run tracked,
and I'd like to be able to listen to music.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yep.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: And you can do that today with Android Wear,
right?
And that's something that you ask a user,
and like, yes, absolutely I want that.
And those are things that we should first address.
The milk thing, you know, it's hit
or miss whether people actually care
about getting additional information around it.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I just changed to black coffee
because my milk keeps going off.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: [CHUCKLES] I'm sorry.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And you mentioned beacons.
I keep going to bacon because of the fridge,
but you mentioned beacons earlier on.
Tell me like what's the thing with beacons?
I mean, what's what makes it so interesting and special?
TIMOTHY JORDAN: It's a really good question right?
Because we've been talking about beacons
as an industry for years, and it's
this simple idea of there's a thing
that has information associated with it.
However, the conversation seems to be
around retail or conferences almost exclusively.
But it turns out beacons have a vast number of applications
centered around the one idea-- beacon are about context.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Right?
It's the idea that you could make the user experience better
by making it more efficient and yet
have the same value by being able to short circuit
the context.
Traditionally, users have to tell you where they're at
or what they're doing to be able to get
the information they need.
But with beacons, you can get that information
from the environment and then just take the user directly
to their value.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now you've explained
a little bit in some of your videos
about like a bus stop scenario.
Could you tell us a bit more about that?
How does that work?
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yeah, you can imagine the user gets
to their bus stop.
Now a bus app today might mean that they
have to load up the app and say OK, I'm at this bus stop.
Even if it has location, it's like is the one
across the street or this one?
LAURENCE MORONEY: Really sensitive location, too.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Right?
And they have probably only a few routes
that they travel per day, but the app
doesn't know that unless they actually
tell it these are the routes that I care about.
Well, with beacons, the app could sense
which bus stop they're at.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Right?
The signal attenuation will give them very fine information
on the location, but then the buses they get on
could also have beacons.
Beacons don't have to stay in place.
And that adds additional context.
So now when they get to their bus stop,
there's a notification waiting for them telling them
that that route is late, that they can take the express.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Ah cool.
Or maybe the express is running late so it's better
to take the local.
Who knows?
Yeah.
So, OK, cool.
So now when it comes to developing for beacons,
there must be so much diversity.
And how do we make sure that there's a great user
experience across them all?
TIMOTHY JORDAN: There's a few things to pay attention to.
First off is the beacon format.
Now, this is what we released.
It's called Eddystone.
This is an open flexible format that's extensible.
And it's really important for manufacturers
to know about it so they can build
in that compatibility in their beacons,
which they've already done, right?
There's a lot of hardware beacons out there today
that have Eddystone built in.
And it's important for app developers
to know about so that when they acquire beacons and deploy them
that they can make sure that they're
compatible with Eddystone.
Then there's the Proximity Beacon API,
and this is where developers can register their beacons
and associate data.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: This beacon means this thing.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: And you can even attach JSON, right?
Like it's pretty flexible the data
that you can associate with that beacon.
And then finally, there's the Nearby API,
and this is what you use in your app
to be able to cite and get data for those beacons.
And it's a subscription thing.
The developer can just say, hey, I'm
interested in these kinds of beacons,
and then when one of those beacons is nearby,
Nearby will inform the app, giving them the data that's
associated with it.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
Now so there's a lot for a developer to learn here,
and I believe you've recently launched a course--
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: --for developers
to learn about ubiquitous computing.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: For all about ubiquitous computing.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So all about ubiquitous.
I like that phrase.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: This is on Udacity,
and it teaches developers some information
about ubiquitous computing in general, right?
The big ideas that we've been talking about, but also
design paradigms and technical specifics
on Android Wear, Google Cast, Android TV, and Android Auto.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So it's a great place
if you're already an Android developer
and you understand building for the phone,
and you want to get into building
for some of these other platforms as well.
It's a great place to start.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And like developers
can just go and access the materials, all the videos, all
that kind of thing for free.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's right.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
So it's like-- it's not like it's
going to be an expensive thing.
If you've got time, go learn.
And this is a great new frontier for developers, right?
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yeah, and Udacity
is a great place for anybody around the globe
to start engaging with this material
but also we're having an event this fall in San Francisco.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yep, I heard about this.
Tell us about it.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So we really want
to have a conversation with developers and with our friends
across industry, across companies
about ubiquitous computing, about wearables, living
room, Auto, about internet of things, right?
Because a big component of this is
making that service available anywhere that it makes sense,
right?
So we really want to talk about interoperability,
we might want to talk about platforms and standards.
And so we're gathering that conversation together here
in San Francisco.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool I look forward to it.
So thank you, Timothy.
This has been great.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Thank you.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So thanks everybody
for watching this episode of "Coffee with a Googler,"
and I hope you learned a little bit,
or I hope you learned a lot about ubiquitous computing.
And Timothy, it's been fabulous having you as a guest.
Take a look in the link underneath.
We'll have a link to the conference or to the summit
that Timothy had actually mentioned,
so that you can register for that.
And we'll also put a link down there to the Udacity course
so you can go-- you can sign on, and you can take a look
at learning how to do ubiquitous computing
and develop for the ubiquitous computing
platform for yourself.
If you've any questions for me or if you've
any questions for Timothy, please leave them
in the comments below.
And if you want to watch any more of the great videos
that we have on the Google Developers channel,
please go ahead and subscribe.