CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-07 19:16:04 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Dagger 1.0

"On one older device that we measured, switching to Dagger shaved seconds from our app’s start up time."

http://corner.squareup.com/2013/05/dagger-1.0.html

2013-05-07 02:53:10 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The open sourcing efforts by +Square, Inc. has been really calm lately. But you know what they say about the calm...

#googleio2013  

2013-05-07 02:52:20 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

OkHttp 1.0

"At Square, we want it all: advanced features that work right on every device. We also want to ship new tech without waiting for new Android releases."

http://corner.squareup.com/2013/05/announcing-okhttp.html

2013-05-01 21:50:02 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Lunch at the Square Canada office!

2013-03-16 00:47:42 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 17 +1s)

On top of the World @ Big White, BC.

2013-02-22 16:47:26 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Bacon waffles for breakfast at Square this morning!

2013-02-12 19:37:13 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

My new startup. Mobile chat with GIFs and YouTube videos. iPhone only for now (sorry!) but Android coming soon.

http://tryrelay.com 

2013-02-12 01:15:16 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-02-11 18:22:59 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

We just increased Square Waterloo office's productivity by at least 10% by acquiring our espresso machine.

The little happinesses in life!

2013-02-10 17:10:51 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Some winter pictures around our house

2013-02-07 14:14:31 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

AnDevCon!

I'm speaking at AnDevCon in May. But I'm more excited to be going as an attendee. These are the sessions I'm most excited about:

* Bluetooth LE by +Dario Laverde.
* Multimedia APIs by +Doug Stevenson.
* OpenGL ES by +Robert Green.
* Save the Battery by +Moe Tanabian.
* Leveraging Open Source by +Jake Wharton.

My own class is a deep dive on Android HTTP. It'll cover debugging, testing, and several optimizations.

The conference is $1,500 at the door. But if you register before March 8 and use WILSON as your promo code, that drops to $900. If you'd like to attend an Android conference this year, now's a very good time to ask your boss!

2013-02-05 14:10:18 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

An Open Source Tool Box

Writing polished Android apps is difficult. At Square, we've promoted lots of code from internal-only to open source. Some parts of the process:

Scope
Our best projects address one problem only, and address it completely.

API
We make lots of little touches & tweaks. For example, with Android FEST we changed the package name to be consistent the Guava and Joda Time extensions.

Name
We like clever names like Otto and Tape.

Today +Jake Wharton promoted JavaWriter to Square's open source tool box. It's a humble tool for generating code. No templates and no ASTs!

See Square's open source projects on GitHub:
http://github.com/square/

Photo courtesy toolstop: http://www.flickr.com/photos/toolstop/4420180838/

2013-02-01 19:48:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

ProtoParser - A basic parser for .proto schema declarations.

Protocol buffers allow you to define an API that both your clients and servers can not only agree on, but compile against. While the protoc generated code is usually enough, sometimes additional infrastructure is needed.

ProtoParser is a library which parses the schema into a simple object model. Using these objects you can generate things like additional helper code or documentation.

This library is actually useful even if you don't want to use protocol buffers directly. At Square we have projects where the schema is used to dictate JSON formats. This library generates the POJOs and helper code which both clients and server can compile against ensuring they never disagree on formats.

This library started as the brain child of +Jesse Wilson and +Alex Chow.

2013-01-31 22:35:48 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Today I made my first contribution ever to an open source project!

https://github.com/square/okhttp/pull/94/files

Thanks +Jesse Wilson for all the help!

2013-01-31 04:18:02 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

My wife is on the board of directors of our sons' baseball league. One of their big money makers is their snack shack, where they sell burgers, nachos, Gatorade, etc. This has been a cash business, but tonight she convinced the board to adopt Square so they can accept credit cards. They are going to buy a couple of iPad Minis to use as registers, as the inventory management aspects of Square are also very valuable to them, and these features are only available on the iPad version of Square. All in all it should be pretty exciting to see how an infusion of technology will affect a simple little business like a little league snack shack.

2013-01-24 17:07:12 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2 Programmers 1 Spec

SPDY is a neat protocol that lets you share a single socket for multiple HTTP requests. I know of two Java implementations of the latest spec, spdy/3. It's amazing how completely different these codebases are:

1450 lines of code across 7 files.
This implementation uses blocking I/O with InputStreams and OutputStreams.

vs.

6000 lines of code across 82 files.
This implementation uses non-blocking I/O with Selector and ByteBuffers. It also supports spdy/2.

2013-01-23 17:14:39 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I have an Otto success story that people here may be interested in. 

TapChat[1] creates a persistent websocket while the app is visible, managed by a service bound to the foreground activity. Previously, I was attempting to juggle a bunch of different events and state just to load an initial UI:

  * Activity lifecycle
  * Fragment lifecycle
  * Service lifecycle (onServiceConnected)
  * Service socket state (disconnected, connecting, connected)
  * Service sync state (loading, loaded)

All these things can happen in any order, and this quickly turned into a complete nightmare of race conditions. With the latest release I rewrote all the event handling using Otto. I now only need to subscribe to a single ServiceLoadedEvent in my fragment or activity and don't have to worry about anything else.

For chat events (message received, etc) Iwas p... more »

2013-01-18 22:02:03 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

LinkedIn is making fun of me... 

2013-01-17 21:09:34 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Just tagged and released FEST Android 1.0.0, a set of FEST extensions designed for testing Android!

Writing tests is not the most glamorous part of developing an Android application but it is an invaluable one. Using libaries like JUnit and FEST provide a great starting point for writing tests. This library is an extension of FEST which aims to make it even easier to test Android.

Using FEST Android allows you to quickly and declaratively test properties on various classes.

    assertThat(layout).isVisible()
        .hasOrientation(VERTICAL)
        .hasChildCount(4)
        .hasShowDividers(SHOW_DIVIDERS_MIDDLE);

Assertions are provided for almost every Android class you'd ever want to test inside your instrumentation tests. If you find an assertion for a class or method missing, please send a pull request!
"But Ja... more »

2013-01-14 01:53:02 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Mais umas fotos de San Francisco

2013-01-13 21:53:55 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

http://sobadsogood.com/2012/04/29/25-words-that-simply-dont-exist-in-english/

2013-01-13 00:48:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Nice walk around San Francisco today

2012-11-09 16:17:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Photo Sphere collection

An amazing collection of Photo Spheres captured using Nexus 4 by my Google colleagues +Evan Rapoport, +Sascha Haeberling, +Sacha Arnoud, +Lockey McGrath.

(Make sure to drag the photos around!)

2012-11-09 14:55:42 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Great japanese dinner at Japango in Toronto!

2012-11-06 16:24:31 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

For iPhone users out there, the two minute video in this article is worth the watch. http://updates.gizmodo.com/post/34656322615/google-voice-search-vs-siri-whos-the-best

2012-10-28 02:35:45 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Stanford vs WSU

2012-10-23 05:08:09 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Best decorations I've seen! Life size! 

2012-10-05 19:23:02 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

Yay! :-)

2012-09-28 16:02:46 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2012-09-16 23:44:24 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Hey, I just launched the Kickstarter campaign for the Cobra Wallet! Trying to raise enough money for mass-producing it, so hope you can back it, like it, +1 it, tweet it, etc!

2012-08-16 18:30:23 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Amazing afternoon for a boat ride in Toronto

2012-07-09 01:14:38 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Many of you may already know that July 9th is my last day at Google. After nearly 7 years, Google decided to shut down its Atlanta engineering efforts. I start my next job on July 16th (but was asked not to say who I'll be working for until then).

For the techie people: my last year at Google, many of us in Atlanta worked on a project that was ultimately cancelled, concurrent with the office shutdown. However, on this 4th of July, I'm happy to say that one of the things I'll be celebrating is that we were able to liberate portions of our last year of work as a new open source project. 

It's called "Collide" (collaborative IDE), and is a web-based collaborative code editor. What we pushed out is extremely stripped down right now, but the most interesting tech stuff around collaborative editing is all there. Long term, we hope it will serve as a catalyst for... more »

2012-06-29 16:48:36 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Its looking good

2012-05-25 15:40:43 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

I am amazed by the new G+ for Android. I keep playing with my stream just to see the UX effects. WOW is all I can say.

Great job G+ team.

+Ben Eidelson +Ujjwal Singh and everyone else.

2012-04-27 07:26:36 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Hacking away...

2012-04-05 18:14:55 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

I am looking at some sample Android source code built in C# using MonoDroid. I am very biased but it feels a lot nicer than using Java!

I will definitely try it out!

2012-04-04 23:34:05 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 12 +1s)

I am very happy to see this finally happening

http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/04/google-and-paramount-strike-a-deal-500-movies-coming-soon-to-youtube-google-play/

2012-03-28 20:44:52 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

We announced our self-driving car project in 2010 (http://goo.gl/dI6qA) with a clear goal: make driving safer, more enjoyable and more efficient.

There’s much left to design and test, but we’ve now safely completed more than 200,000 miles of computer-led driving, gathering great experiences and an overwhelming number of enthusiastic supporters.

We wanted to share one of our favorite moments from some special research we conducted. Watch this video of Steve, who joined us for a drive on a carefully programmed route to experience being behind the wheel in a whole new way. We organized this test as a technical experiment outside of our core research efforts, but we think it’s also a promising look at what this kind of technology may one day deliver for society if rigorous technical and safety standards can be met.

A version of this video with audio captions is availablehere:... more »

2012-03-19 17:27:29 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

First week as an ex-Googler!

Visiting Toronto

2012-03-19 17:27:28 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2012-03-12 01:49:32 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 5 +1s)

Hungry?


more food art here
http://frigginlaser.com/2012/01/22/is-it-food-or-art/

2012-03-10 15:06:13 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Finally figured out what a picture of a mysterious island that I had bookmarked actually was. Google's image search (or reverse search) solved the day! Aogashima island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aogashima) has only 205 people (kinda like my previous office, but it's an island)! Here's the picture I used to find what it was... https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/382789_261528167226213_100001070941260_714270_1491373055_n.jpg

2012-03-06 21:18:06 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Today, we launched a new version of Google+ app for iOS that fixes some of the top issues users have been reporting. The new version has:

- Support for landscape mode
- Clickable links in Messenger
- Bug fixes and performance improvements throughout the app

You can download the latest version here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google/id447119634?mt=8

Remember to shake to send feedback! Learn more here: Google+ Update: Shake and Send (Sexy) Feedback from your iPhone

#googleplusupdate

2012-03-06 21:14:40 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 2 +1s)

Welcome to the official Google+ page for Google Play - a new place to experience Android apps and games, books, movies, and music, available anywhere you go. Google Play is home to 450,000 Android apps and games. It lets you store up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new songs. It houses the world’s largest selection of eBooks and gives you access to thousands of your favorite movies for rent, including new releases and HD titles.

With Google Play your entertainment is stored in the cloud and can easily go with you when you're connected or offline. No wires, no hassle. It’s how you buy and experience digital entertainment on your Android device and any web browser on any computer.

Circle us to connect with fans and get the latest and greatest in apps and entertainment. Hear directly from the artists, authors, and creators you love and get the updates on specialdea... more »

2012-02-22 16:18:46 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Hangout with the Gmail Mobile team in 1 hour
Hey everyone, we will be having another Gmail hangout in 1 hour -- that’s 9:30am Pacific, 17:30 GMT, or check your time zone here: http://goo.gl/wzLoN

In this hangout, we want to hear more about how you use Gmail on the go. For a chance to join the chat with the team, tell us in the comments what mobile devices you use to access Gmail, and what you like or dislike. Note that you will need to be available to join us in 1 hour for the hangout, and you will need a working microphone and webcam so you can be part of the discussion.

If you don’t get an invite, don’t worry -- you can still tune in to watch.

2012-02-11 15:19:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

A few weeks ago, we hosted the first Ship Wars Programming Competition in our Waterloo office. The brainchild of a Google engineer, Ship Wars drew more than 40 local engineers to Google to program their computer spacecrafts and battle them out in our own virtual Star Wars-like competition. For more on what's going on with our friendly neighbors to the north, follow +Google Canada.

2012-01-25 22:18:35 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Best source for Starcraft 2 replays available on the web! :-)

2012-01-25 15:19:47 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

The Ship wars competition was a lot of fun last night at Google Waterloo.

2012-01-13 19:00:12 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Great way to start the weekend:

All you can eat lobster for lunch @ Google Waterloo!

2012-01-13 17:20:09 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

January 13, 2012