Newsletter - September 2021

Android / Google Play

• Android 12 Beta 5  is available now. Get your apps ready, as the official release is coming soon.
• See  app experiences developers have built with YouTube to optimize for foldable devices. 
• Discover  the underlying features of high performing apps and how to attain app excellence through stability, quick loading, fast rendering, and more.
• Learn  tips from top developers about how battle passes can boost engagement and monetization in your game.
• Check out  Android Study Jams North America hosted by the Developer Communities across the U.S. and Canada through December 31, 2021. 

Firebase / Google Cloud

• Announcing  version 9 of the Firebase SDK is now generally available.
• Read  about Crashlytics improvements for game developers with improved NDK Reliability, higher quality NDK Stack Traces, easier NDK Integration, and more.
• Access  the newest datasets, see best practices, and review the latest trends in Google Cloud.
• Register  for the Virtual API Jam Fundamentals workshop on October 13 to start learning how to use API programs on the Apigee API Management Platform.
• Sign up  by October 27 for the Virtual API Jam on API Management course to use Apigee’s advanced features to support cases like policy reuse, global policy management, and intelligence routing.

ML / AI

• Try  TensorFlow Similarity (in beta), a python package designed to make it easy and fast to train similarity models using TensorFlow.
• Improve  model performance with TensorFlow Lite’s XNNPACK backend with new support for quantized inference.
• See  what you can do with ML in the browser, from self-driving cars to VTubers, at the next TensorFlow.js Show & Tell livestreaming October 1 at 9 AM PST.
• Learn  how Waze uses TFX and Vertex AI to simplify their ML stack and scale production-ready pipelines.
• Use  TFLite Model Maker and the Task Library to fine-tune and deploy audio classification models to your app with a few lines of code.

Google Maps Platform

• Build  upon Google Maps Platform with the OpenAPI 3 specification, published on GitHub.
• Explore  the Google Maps Platform APIs with a public Postman collection.
• Hear  Head of Developer Relations for Google Maps Platform, Mike Pegg, answer developers' live questions in the latest episode of Between the Brackets .
• See  how to enable the latest cloud-based maps styling features in this Geocasts video.
• Understand  the possibilities unlocked by WebGL-powered maps features with Alex Muramoto's explanation of the new available demos.

Open Source and Misc

• Bring  multithreaded applications written in other languages to WebAssembly and run code on multiple cores to significantly reduce execution time.
• Unlock  better performance and stability on Chromebooks for your Unity Android game or app by building for x86 in Unity 2020 and 2021. 
• Optimize  your Android game for Chromebooks by watching this talk from the Google for Games Developer Summit.
• Read  about a more personalized approach to control a drone using gesture recognition with MediaPipe.
• Visit  g.co/kickstart to boost your coding skills, practice problems, and register for this global online coding competition with rounds throughout the year.

Developer Community / BIPOC Partner Highlights

• Join  the Exchange with Google Developers pilot with #DevFest community organizers facilitating mentoring sessions and mentors sharing their knowledge. Pilot runs October 15 through November 15, 2021.
• See  the top 10 finalists in this year’s #DeveloperStudentClubs Solution Challenge share their best tips for student developers.
• Get  to know the winners of the #IndieGamesFestival and the class of talented game creators from the #IndieGamesAccelerator.
• Read about how Google Developer Group NYC has partnered with a local non profit to help them shift to a digital first world using Google Cloud technology.
• Meet  Yara, the Developer Student Club lead from Egypt, who became a machine learning expert within a year and one of the first women in her club to pass the TensorFlow certification  exam.
• Discover  a new campaign by Women Techmakers to hear stories, journeys, and tips from Black women and what it means to be Black in tech.
• Watch  on demand #ICYM the Google Cloud Accelerator Canada: Demo Day 2021. #BuildWhatsNext