This Week’s Links
Kotlin Momentum for Android and Beyond
As the KotlinConf2018 kicked off this week, Google highlights his support for Kotlin as a first-class programming language for Android development, and the important improvements Google has delivered over the last 12 months.
Four Tips for Building Great Transactional Experiences for the Google Assistant
Building Actions for the Google Assistant is just one step in delivering a great experience for users.It is important for many developers to get compensated for their hard work by enabling quick, hands-free transactional experiences through the Google Assistant. In this post look at best practices to consider when adding transactions to Actions.
Dude, Where’s my Button?
After encountering a rather strange problem when tidying up an existing layout where a button started behaving oddly, this post explains how it was fixed up, and how the initial behavior was somewhat baffling at first.
Intro to Machine Learning on Android (Part 2): Building an app to recognize handwritten digits with TensorFlow Lite
With the launch of mobile machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow Lite, it’s never been easier for mobile developers to develop new and exciting features into their apps. In this post, learn how to create a simple Android app that recognizes handwritten digits with TensorFlow Lite.
Using Kotlin Coroutines in Your Android App
In this codelab tutorial, learn how to use Kotlin Coroutines in an Android app — a new way of managing background threads that can simplify code by reducing the need for callbacks. Coroutines are a Kotlin feature that convert async callbacks for long-running tasks such as database or network access into sequential code.
Cheap Android Phones and Poor Quality Control Leads to Malware Surprise
The abundance and variety of low cost Android phones is one of the reasons that Android has become so popular around the world. Unfortunately, low priced phones could also mean less operating revenue and thus possibly a lower quality control. Such is the case with a cheap Android phone that costs $110 and has a remote access trojan (RAT) preinstalled. Read more about it in this post.
ConnectableObservable: So Hot Right Now
ConnectableObservable does not care when you subscribe to it; instead, it only begins its work when connect() is called. Find out more about how ConnectObservable works in this post.
Opinion: Poor User Experience is the Enemy of Customer Loyalty
It used to be when people bought a product they would use it until it wore out. If it had worked well, they went back to the same manufacturer. Today, the separation of product and service means that purchase decisions are much more frequent and that ongoing loyalty is based much more on the user experience. Read more about how this impacts how people purchase your app in this post.
TomTom Launches Free Mobile Maps SDKs to Developers
TomTom has announced that it will be offering maps and traffic tiles on its mobile software developer kit (SDK) for free. As businesses adopting mobile to increase their sales, maps that feature office locations to customers have become a custom across all industries. With the free maps tiles from TomTom, which has global coverage, will assist start-ups all over the world in presenting their image as ‘professional’ to interested investors and customers.
Video
Caster.io: Creating and Configuring your Actions on Google project
In this lesson, you will learn how to create your first Actions on Google action project, how to configure, customize, add more languages and also distribute it.
Caster.io: Creation your First Google Assistant Action with the Trivia template
The Actions on Google allows you to create actions by using templates. You will learn how to create your first Action on Google with the trivia template by editing a copy of the sample sheet that Google provides and deploy it to your action. At the end of the lesson, you will have a fully working action, that you can test using the assistant simulator
Open Source
Intra
Intra is an experimental tool that allows you to test new DNS-over-HTTPS services that encrypt domain name lookups and prevent manipulation by your network. It currently supports services from Cloudflare and Google, and additional options may be added over time.
FBToast
With FBToast, developers can create customizable toast messages. Use FBToast.LENGTH_SHORT or FBToast.LENGTH_LONG for toast display duration, or use Gravity.BOTTOM, Gravity.TOP, Gravity.LEFT or Gravity.RIGHT for toast position on screen.