This Week’s Links

Fragmented Podcast – Ep #135: You Can’t Learn Everything
In this episode of Fragmented, Donn’s (@donnfelker) on a roll again this week and talks about his experience having developed Android for a while. In the early days of Android development, app developers felt like they had a decent grasp of everything they needed to know to pump out decent apps. But with the time, and the latest updates, that has become a tricky thing. This is a good problem to have for the ecosystem but it can make it seem very daunting for developers, both new and old.

Android and Google Play Security Rewards Programs surpass $3M in payouts
Google’s Android and Play security reward programs help them work with top researchers from around the world to improve Android ecosystem security every day. In the ASR program’s third year, we received over 470 qualifying vulnerability reports from researchers. To date, the ASR program has rewarded researchers with over $3M, paying out roughly $1M per year.

New Experimental Features for Daydream
Since Google first launched Daydream, developers have responded by creating virtual reality (VR) experiences that are entertaining, educational and useful. This week, Google announced a new set of experimental features for developers to use on the Lenovo Mirage Solo—Google’s standalone Daydream headset—to continue to push the platform forward.

ML for Android Developers – Part 3​
Machine Learning is making a splash right now, and Android folks are producing some excellent guides to creating and training models. In this series, learn some of the problems and pain points when attempting to incorporate a pre-trained TensorFlow Lite model in to an Android app.

Introducing Google Pay in Square Online Payments APIs and Square Invoices​
This week, the Square team announced that Square online payments APIs and Square Invoices now support Google Pay. This new integration allows developers and sellers to enable a fast and frictionless checkout experience on their websites or online stores for millions of buyers who have adopted Google Pay.

MDM – Taking Android mPOS Threats under Control
lThe increasing adoption of Android mPOS systems has many benefits. The most recognized among them are cost savings, mobility, remote access and convenient feature updates. However, benefits of Android mPOS systems have a number of security concerns that call for effective POS device management. Read more about how to manage these security concerns in this article.

Jobs

(these are pulled from www.androidjobs.io)

Senior Android Developer at Blinkist (Berlin, Germany)
Staff Android Engineer at Lookout (Boston, MA)
Android Engineer at The Nerdery (Minneapolis/Chicago/Kansas City/Phoenix​)
Android Engineer / Senior Android Engineer at American Express (New York/Phoenix)
Senior Android Engineer at Stash Invest (New York City)
Android Developer at MyPinPad (Remote)
Android Developer at Big Nerd Ranch (Remote)
Senior Android Engineer, Traveler Apps at Homeaway (Austin, TX)
Senior Android Engineer at Instacart (San Francisco, CA)
Senior Android Engineer at Instacart (Remote)
Senior Android Engineer at Meetup (New York, NY)
Software Engineer, Mobile Applications (Android/iOS) at Googe (New York, NY)

Need to hire an Android professional? Post a job here

Create a Stocks Application for Android Featuring Push Notifications
In this post learn how to build a stock market application with some fundamental requirements, such as accuracy, updating in realtime and notifications. Learn how to achieve this using Kotlin, Pusher Beams, and Pusher Channels.
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Android Turns 10: Google’s Fierce iPhone r\Rival had a Stumbling Start
Google’s mobile operating system come a long way since Larry Page and Sergey Brin introduced the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. Read more about Android’s history in this post.

Google’s Mobile Web Dominance Raises Competition Eyebrows
Back in 2015, Google wooed disgruntled publishers with a digital tool called Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, to boost traffic to their mobile websites. That charm offensive is now backfiring. European and American tech, media and publishing companies, are now complaining the Google-backed technology, which loads article pages in the blink of an eye is cementing the search giant’s dominance on the mobile web.

Video

Caster.io: Android Vector Drawables Fundamentals: Inline Complex XML Resources
In this lesson, take a look at a feature of the Android build tools which enables us to define and XML resource inline within another XML resource. While this is not specific to Vector Drawable it can make life much easier by allowing us to keep all of the resources which comprise a VectorDrawable in a single XML file. It is possible to bloat our APK if we overuse this technique.

Caster.io: Android Vector Drawables Fundamentals: Gradients
In this lesson, look at gradients which are a relatively new addition to VectorDrawable but are powerful nonetheless. You will cover the tree types of gradient: linear, radial, and sweep, and also how to get very fine control over the gradients by defining custom steps.

Open Source

AppListManager
AppListManager is an easy to use Android library, which minimizes developing time when working on application or activity lists. Developers no longer have to worry about asynchronous tasks, memory leaks and intent receivers. This library provides a simple way to receive application and activity lists as they change.

Awesome-Android-Persistence
A curated list of Android persistence libraries about SQLite, ORM, Mobile Database, SharedPreferences, etc.