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Google Cloud certification demonstrates proficiency using the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The best Google Cloud courses prepare you for these exams so you can add the certification to your resume quickly and on your first try. The Google Cloud Platform is a suite of tools hosted on the cloud that businesses can use to enhance their own services. These include cloud storage, security, user profiles, machine learning, database management, IoT, and more. With Google Cloud certification, IT professionals will open doors in their careers and potentially command a higher salary. See also:  What is Google Cloud certification and should I get it? Gaining certification is simple. Google offers a total of seven certificates. Each represents an understanding of specific tools offered by the platform as they apply to respective careers. Before sitting any of these exams, it’s important that professionals gain sufficient knowledge of the technologies they are being tested on. This will ensure a passing grade and avoid resits. Below, you will find some of the best Google Cloud certification courses that will prepare you for these exams. Editor’s note: We’ll be adding to this list over time as more Google Cloud courses become available. The best Google Cloud courses The Complete Google Cloud Mastery Bundle With seven different certifications and a huge roster of different skills and tools, it can be tough to know where to start with your Google Cloud certification. That’s what makes this Complete Google Cloud Mastery Bundle such a great option. It provides eight separate learning kits which include specific training relating to each of the exams, as well as a separate exam preparation “boot camp.” The course would normally cost $1,392, but Android Authority readers can get the full bundle for just $39. This really is one of the best Google Cloud courses you can find right now, at an excellent price. Why you should buy Includes an exam preparation boot camp Amazing value Information for every type of professional Why you should pass Some information may not be relevant for certain professionals Exam Bootcamp is for 2019 $33 .15 The Complete Google Cloud Mastery Bundle Use offer code: MERRYSAVE15 Save $1358 .85 Buy it Now The Complete Google Cloud Mastery Bundle Buy it Now Save $1358 .85 $33 .15 Use offer code: MERRYSAVE15 The Complete 2020 Cloud Foundation Certification Bundle Credit: Adam Sinicki / Android Authority We’ve previously discussed the benefits of Google Cloud Platform certification versus Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, but ultimately the best option is to get them all. If you’re unsure of where to start, then this introductory course that teaches the basics of all three is perfect. You’ll get lifetime access to four separate courses containing 160 lessons. By the end, you’ll be ready to sit multiple exams (including CompTIA Cloud+). Why you should buy Perfect for a well-rounded knowledge Prepares you for multiple exams A large amount of content Why you should pass Not necessary if you only want Google Cloud certification $49 .99 The Complete 2020 Cloud Foundation Certification Bundle Save $1130 .01 Buy it Now The Complete 2020 Cloud Foundation Certification Bundle Buy it Now Save $1130 .01 $49 .99 The Google Cloud Certifications Practice Tests + Courses Bundle Credit: Adam Sinicki / Android Authority This is another extremely comprehensive option that includes training for all seven tests as well as practice questions. Practice tests are a great thing to look for when choosing Google Cloud courses, as they can build confidence and ensure you are ready. This course also represents fantastic value at just $29.99 (down from $639). Why you should buy Preparation for all seven exams Includes practice questions Why you should pass May have more content than you need $49 .99 The Complete 2020 Cloud Foundation Certification Bundle Save $1130 .01 Buy it Now The Complete 2020 Cloud Foundation Certification Bundle Buy it Now Save $1130 .01 $49 .99 GCP: Complete Google Data Engineer and Cloud Architect Guide This course provides access to 166 lectures and 22 hours of content, all squarely aimed at the Data Engineer and Cloud Architect certifications. This focus makes the course a great choice for anyone that knows these are their areas of interest. It also gives you a large amount of highly focussed content, which will prepare you for either the Google Data Engineer or Cloud Architect certification exams. Once again, Android Authority readers can get a large discount. The course is usually valued at $199, but if you act now, you can get the whole thing for just $15. Why you should buy A large amount of focussed content Data science and cloud technologies are up-and-coming areas Specific exam preparation Why you should pass Only relevant for the two mentioned certificates $9 .00 GCP: Complete Google Data Engineer and Cloud Architect Guide Use offer code: SPRINGSAVE40 Save $190 .00 Buy it Now GCP: Complete Google Data Engineer and Cloud Architect Guide Buy it Now Save $190 .00 $9 .00 Use offer code: SPRINGSAVE40  

With AWS Free Tier, even the smallest businesses and developers can benefit from powerful cloud infrastructure. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud platform that provides businesses with a wide range of powerful online tools. These include tools to increase security, backup data, handle machine learning tasks, synchronize accounts across numerous devices, and much more. In short, companies use AWS to provide services that they could not otherwise. See also: What is AWS certification? But here’s the good news: many of these services are free thanks to the “AWS free tier.” In many cases, these services come with severe restrictions and/or time limits. But in some instances, services are genuinely free on a permanent basis. The tricky part? Discerning one from the other. So, don’t assume that you can’t afford AWS products! Read on to find out just what you are eligible for and how to start using the services without incurring unexpected bills. What does AWS Free Tier offer? AWS Free Tier gives you access to over 85 products from Amazon. There is variation in how long they remain free and whether any restrictions are imposed. Credit: Adam Sinicki / Android Authority For example, you can get up to 5GB of storage completely free, or 250 hours of Amazon SageMaker (for building, managing, and deploying machine learning models). Or how about 30 days of GuardDuty for intelligent threat detection? Amazon Comprehend offers powerful natural language processing up to 5 million characters per month, fully free for the first 12 months. Meanwhile, services such as Amazon DynamoDB, a powerful and scalable NoSQL database, are available in the free tier with up to 25GB of storage and no time limit. Amazon Chime, on the other hand, is a video conferencing service that is permanently free with unlimited usage. You can find a full list of the AWS Free Tier products at aws.amazon.com. Sounds great, right? Well, it is. But you also need to be careful as there are many clauses, caveats, and exceptions that are easy to miss. See also: The best AWS courses for professionals The issue revolves around the restrictions and caps. For example, should you exceed the character restrictions using Amazon Comprehend, you will no longer be eligible for the AWS Free Tier. That means you need to carefully monitor usage to avoid an unexpected charge. In some cases, this can be extremely confusing as the metrics used to cap usage are varied and sometimes seemingly contradictory. What happens when the free period runs out? So, let’s say that you’ve discovered an amazing free AWS product that lets you scale your business or add additional services. What happens when the free period runs out? As you might expect, once the Free Tier period expires, you simply switch to a paid plan. However, there is one very important catch to understand: AWS Free Tier Eligibility applies across the entire account. That is to say that if you exceed usage/time restrictions on just one of the products offered, this will end the Free Tier for your entire account. So, if you are using multiple Free Trials and one of them expires, the next month’s bill could be rather large. While it’s possible to receive an alert when you begin to exceed your Free Tier allowance on certain products, these alerts are generally delayed by 24 hours – so it may be too late. The fact that there’s no option to simply freeze the service at this point, suggests that Amazon might be hoping that will be the case… Who is eligible for AWS Free Tier? Think that AWS could benefit your business? Fortunately, the AWS Free Tier comes into effect the moment you create an account. If you have never used an AWS product before, you are automatically eligible for Free Tier. That will be applied by default. However, if you have used AWS in the past, eligibility depends on the previous usage. As long as none of the products you have trialed have exceeded the limitations of the Free Tier, and your account is under one year old, then you should still be able to make use of free trials. Unsure of your standing? You can check manually by heading to the Billing and Cost Management console. If your account is still eligible for AWS Free Tier, you will see the following message: Credit: Adam Sinicki / Android Authority Conclusions On paper, AWS Free Tier is an amazing resource for businesses that want to leverage the power of the cloud to scale up. Unfortunately, the pricing system is anything but transparent. This is often cited as one of the major drawbacks of AWS when compared to competing packages such as Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform. If you’re a developer just toying around with these services, it might be safer to choose one of those options. Both of them offer some form of a free trial. See also: AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud – Which certification is best for professionals? Hopefully, this is something that Amazon will remedy if the competition applies enough pressure. For now, if you decide to take advantage of AWS Free Tier, just make sure to read the fine print!

Credit: Adam Sinicki / Android Authority If you want your game or app to stand out in the Google Play Store, having incredible graphics is one of the surest strategies. In fact, many users download games purely for their graphical fidelity – especially if their handset is new and they want to see what it can do! See also: The beginner’s guide to Android game development: Everything you need to know Finding tricks to eek the most performance possible out of a device can therefore be very useful. Fortunately, Google and its partners provide many tools for the job, including Android GPU Inspector. What is AGI? Android GPU Inspector (AGI) is a graphics profiling tool that lets developers see precisely what’s going on inside their devices when running applications. More specifically, it exposes a large amount of information regarding GPU performance. Because AGI is now in open Beta, that means developers are free to start playing around with it. As long as they have the right hardware that is! Android GPU Inspector will currently work only with Google Pixel 4 (and XL) and requires Android 11 (no emulators either). Of course, the list is limited in beta now, but eventually, all devices should be supported. Check back here for updates, or make a note of the official list of Supported Devices. See also: How to make a game in Unity: it starts with a simple 3D maze game Once you learn to read the many counters that Android GPU Inspector provides, you’ll be able to identify and solve performance issues. You can see whether your application is GPU or CPU bound, whether the bottleneck is linked with excessive geometry or overly large textures, and much more. You can then use that information to optimize your apps for greater performance. BothVulkan and OpenGL ES applications are supported. How to use Android GPU Inspector Getting started with Android GPU Inspector is straightforward. Head over to GPUInspector.dev and download the latest version for your given operating system. You’ll need the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) installed. It will act as the conduit between the Android device and the desktop PC running AGI. ADB comes with the Android SDK, so if you’re a developer you should already be familiar with it. Otherwise, check our guide to the Android SDK for beginners! Make sure that the application is debuggable (using the debuggable attribute in the Android Manifest). Connect the device (with ADB debugging enabled) and launch AGI. When AGI boots up, you’ll be prompted to add the ADB path. This should be in your Android SDK folder, under Platform Tools. Once you’ve done that, click on “Capture a new trace.” You’ll be brought to the capture menu option, where you can select your device and the application you want to trace. AGI comes with a minimal Vulkan application that you can use as a test. Under “Type” choose “System Profile.” Under “Start and Duration” choose “Manual” and “2” respectively. Under “Trace Options” click “Configure” to access a window where you can select all of the profiling data you want to expose. Finally, choose where you want the capture file to be stored under “Output”. With that done, click “OK” and let AGI do its thing. After a couple of seconds, the process will terminate. Once that’s done, click on “Open Trace” to see all the juicy data for yourself! If you’re anything like me, you may find all of this information to be a little overwhelming! Fortunately, you can find a full breakdown of what each of the counters means right here.

Writing to files is one of the most important things you will learn in any new programming language. This allows you to save user data for future reference, to manipulate large data sets, or to build useful tools like word processors and spreadsheets. Let’s find out how to write to a file in Python! How to write to a file in Python – .txt files The simplest way to write to a file in Python is to create a new text file. This will allow you to store any string to retrieve later. To do this, you first open the file, then add the content you want, and then close the file to finish. my_file = open("NewFile.txt", "w+") my_File.write("Hello World!") my_file.close() In this example, we have opened a new file, written the words “Hello World!” and then closed the file. The “w+” tells Python that we are writing to a new file. If the file already exists, then that file is overwritten. If the file doesn’t already exist, then it will be created. But what if you want to append (add) to a file that already exists? In this case, you simply swap the “w+” for an “a+”. You can learn more useful tricks in a previous article: How to create a file in Python and more! This will show you how to delete and move files too! To display the contents of the file, just use the following two lines: my_file = open("NewFile.txt", "r") file_contents == my_file.read() How to write to other types of file But what if you have another type of file you want to work with, other than a text file? What if you want to create a new spreadsheet file? Or a new Word document? In many cases, you simply need to learn the formatting used by a particular file-type and then emulate this. For example, CSV files are used to store spreadsheets. The name “CSV” actually refers to the way this formatting works: “Comma-Separated Values.” In short, each line represents a row in a database and contains a series of values separated by commas. Each comma represents the start of a new column or cell! You can, therefore, save a bunch of data using the exact same method you used to create your text file, but ensure to insert commas and new-lines in the right place. If you then save the file as “.CSV” then it will open in Excel when you click on it! The same goes for many other types of file. For example, you could create a HTML file this way by using triangular tags to define headers, bold text, and other basic formatting! Many developers will create their own formats for storing data specific to their creations. Now you know how to write to a file in Python regardless of the type of file! Learn more about CSV files in Python here: How to open CSV files in Python: store and retrieve large data sets How to write to a file in Python with modules Of course, some files are going to contain more complex formatting than others. For example, if you want to write a .Doc file in Python, you’ll come unstuck! Open a Word document in a text editor and you’ll see that Microsoft uses a lot of confusing formatting and annotation to define the layout and add additional information. This is where modules come in! First, install the module you want via pip. You can do this by using the following command: pip install python doc-x If you are running from a command line in Windows, try: python –m pip install doc-x Now in your Python code you can do the following: import docx my_doc = docx.Document() my_doc.add_paragraph("Hello World!") my_doc.save("D:/NewHelloDoc.docx") This will write “Hello World!” to a document and then close it! You can also do some other, more complex formatting: my_doc.add_heading("Header 1", 0) my_doc.add_heading("Header 2", 1) my_doc.add_heading("Header 3", 2) my_doc.add_picture("D:/MyPicture.jpg", width=docx.shared.Inches(5), height=docx.shared.Inches(7)) Regardless of the type of file you want to work with, you’ll almost always find a module that can handle it for you. These are usually free to use and come with documentation you can route through! That’s just another of the amazing things about coding in Python! And that is how to write to a file in Python! If you’re enjoying learning Python, then why not take your education to the next level? We’ve compiled a list of the best online Python courses where you can find some amazing discounts. Check it out!

Google Cloud certification demonstrates an individual’s proficiency using Google Cloud technologies. It shows that a service provider or prospective employee can maintain and implement Google Cloud services and products into a company’s workflow. These skills are highly sought after and may lead to improved job prospects and salary. To learn more about Google Cloud certification, keep reading! What is Google Cloud? Google Cloud, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), is a cloud platform or “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS). As such, GCP offers a broad range of services and products that businesses can use to improve the products and services they provide to clients and end-users. See also: What is Google Cloud? Google Cloud services are hosted on servers that are available 24/7 and that can scale to meet the demands of the customer. These services fall into a number of categories: Cloud storage and backup Database management Developer tools Internet of Things (IoT) Machine learning Analytics For example, a company might use a Google Cloud server in order to handle voice recognition or to store a user’s credentials to be accessed across multiple devices. Cloud CND is “fast, reliable web and video content delivery with global scale and reach.” Compute Engine is “computing infrastructure in predefined or custom machine sizes.” The list goes on. Any of these services can help to extend a company’s reach, but implementation can be complex and it requires significant technical understanding. This is why a company may wish to hire a professional with Google Cloud certification. Is Google Cloud certification right for you? If you are an IT professional, you may be considering Google Cloud certification. But is it right for you? While certifications can be a great way to make a resume more attractive to employees and clients, they are less important than experience and qualifications. Remember: a company can always provide Google Cloud training after making a hire! Think of it as the “icing on the cake” that may help you to stand out against the competition. What’s more, Google Cloud certification will only be useful to those companies that plan on using these technologies (or that can be convinced that they should!). That also means the hiring company must choose Google Cloud over the competing cloud platforms: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Google Cloud has less market share than either of these options, so you may want to consider those certifications instead. See also: AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud – Which certification is best for professionals? That being said, Google Cloud has specific use-cases where it is clearly the best choice. In particular, Google Cloud comes out on top for machine learning thanks to its powerful Tensor Flow platform. More and more companies are turning to machine learning to solve a wide range of challenges, so this may be a useful move to “futureproof” your career. GCP also has some impressively large clients to its name: Snap, Spotify, Best Buy, Gartner, and Coca-Cola. The best option is to seek out as many certifications as you can, to appeal to the broadest range of employers, while demonstrating a wide knowledge-base and aptitude for learning. What you need to know Strengthening the case for Google Cloud certification is its relatively low price. Certification only costs $125 for an “Associate” certificate and $200 for a “Professional” certificate. There is only one Associate-level certificate at the time of writing, which is the Associate Cloud Engineer. This basic certification covers the knowledge necessary for the day-to-day maintenance of existing GCP implementations. Professional certificates, meanwhile, cover the skills necessary to design and implement new solutions. There are a total of 7 certifications: Associate Cloud Engineer Professional Cloud Architect Professional Data Engineer Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Professional Cloud Network Engineer Professional Cloud Security Engineer Professional Collaboration Engineer Exams are not graded, rather examinees will be awarded a simple “pass” or “fail.” Each exam is two hours long and must be taken at a Kryterion testing center. There are over 1,000 testing centers located across 120 different countries. Once complete, certification is valid for two years. Preparing for Google Cloud certification Before attempting an exam, it is highly recommended that you spend some time educating yourself with regards to the platform. A great way to do this is with online courses, which make it easy to learn from the comfort of your home. Many of these provide specific exam preparation. Android Authority has partnered with many leading course providers to offer huge discounts to our readers. You can get the GCP: Complete Google Data Engineer and Cloud Architect Guide for just $9, rather than the usual $199! Or how about the even more comprehensive Google Cloud Mastery Bundle for just $39, down from $1,400! It’s also recommended that you try the practice exams and exam guides provided by Google. Think you’re ready? Then register for your certification here. Good luck!

Credit: Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority For Android devs, September was marked by one very big development: the release of Android 11! The new operating system is now officially here, so time is up for developers to ensure their apps and projects are ready. In other big news, we learned that Nvidia would be buying the processor architecture company Arm. Find out more about that and other news, along with a bunch of new tutorials and features for devs below. News and features from Android Authority Android 11 review: The devil is in the details – Our full coverage of the new Android launch. Nvidia to buy Arm for $40 billion from SoftBank – Nvidia confirmed this month that it would be acquiring Arm — the processor architecture company that makes the chips in most modern smartphones (not to mention IoT devices and much more). This deal, estimated to be worth $40 billion, represents a big shakeup in the mobile tech industry. How to use classes in Java – This post explains how to create and use classes in Java. This fundamental skill is a requirement for any Java-based Android development. Understanding variables in Java – Even more fundamental than classes, but there’s more to variables in Java than you might assume! How to create an array in Java – An array is a variable that can store multiple values. Learn about the different types and what you can do with them. NullPointerException in Java – Explaining the billion-dollar mistake – Learn more about this infamous exception, so that you can avoid it in your own code. What is Azure certification – While not specifically Android-dev related, Azure certification can help you land a job as a developer or IT professional, and better understand how to integrate cloud services into your apps and projects. What is AWS certification – AWS is the largest cloud platform right now with a huge 33% market share. AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud – But which cloud platform to learn? This article will explain the differences. How to use loops in Java – The key to making iterative changes, game loops, sorting files, and more. Try catch Java: Exception handling explained – This post teaches you how to catch problems and what to do with them! How to use if statements in Java – The key to understanding how to code – Once you understand variables and if statements, the sky is the limit! How to use a web API from your Android app – More ways to outsource powerful features for your apps! The latest from Android Developers Blog Turning it up to 11: Android 11 for developers – Got to love the pun! Yes, the big news in September was, of course, the release of Android 11. We’ve discussed the features developers need to be aware of at length already, including enhanced 5G support, conversation notifications, one-time permissions, and more. This is no longer a drill! See also: How to make sure your app is ready for Android 11 Lockscreen and authentication improvements in Android 11 – This post explains the concept of the tiered authentication model used in Android 11, the different classes of biometrics, and the new BiometricPrompt APIs and features. Introducing Android 11 on Android TV – Android 11 has also been officially launched for Android TV! The update brings privacy and performance updates, as well as several new features such as a “low latency mode” and extended gamepad support. Improve Your Game with Texture Compression Format Targeting – Developers can now use Google Play Asset Delivery to include textures, using multiple texture compression formats. Android GPU Inspector Open Beta – With Android 11 available on Pixel, the Android GPU Inspector (AGI) is now in open Beta. This will allow developers to find the causes of slow-down in their apps and games more easily. Prefer Storing Data with Jetpack DataStore – Jetpack DataStore is a new storage solution that replaces SharedPreferences, now available in alpha. Other news and features from around the web On the Unity side of things, September also gave us the launch of Unity 2020.2 beta, along with the option to offload project builds with Unity Build Server. Gary Sims explained the Nvidia/Arm deal as only he can. We also got the Microsoft Surface Duo launch. Devs interested in creating experiences for the new hardware can find instructions here. And that about wraps it up for September. Let us know if we missed something below and how you’re enjoying development for Android 11!

Google has officially announced that its Project Fi will be rebranded to ‘Google Fi’. They have also expanded Fi’s support to multiple phones like Samsung, Moto, LG, iPhone and OnePlus. The service for iPhone will be in beta for the time being. Even though Google admits that the process for iPhone will require “a few extra steps to get set up”, there will be a new Google Fi iOS app to help customers get comfortable with the process. What is Google Fi? Google Fi is a “mobile virtual network operator” and is recognized for its unique approach compared to most other network carriers. It does not operate on its own network, but piggybacks on those of T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular, handing a customer's phone to whichever offers the strongest connection at any given time. Fi also offers simplified data plans, easy international use, and a slew of other perks. It has no long-term contracts- a customer has to pay on a month to month basis. The data costs the same internationally as it does at home, in most countries. There's just a single payment "plan," which starts at $20 for access to a line, plus an additional $10 for every gigabyte consumed. If a user has only one line and uses more than 6GB, they only pay a maximum of $80 for that month. The Catch with Fi for iPhones Fi operates as a virtual network operator, and only a few phones including Google Pixels and those that are explicitly “designed for Fi” will be able to dynamically switch between those carriers’ networks. Android phones and iPhones that are that aren't built specifically for Google Fi will miss out on this functionality. In addition, since the iPhone will receive support in beta, there can be a less-than-smooth experience for customers who choose to use Fi on their iPhones. Important secondary features like visual voicemail, calls and texts over Wi-Fi, automated spam detection, and international tethering will be left out because of the beta support. The Fi website cautions that iPhone users will have to do a bit of tweaking to get their texting feature to work properly. The iMessage service  will function "out of the box," APN settings will need to be modified to enable MMS. That being said, the real catch with Google Fi has always been its simplicity and affordability, both of which will remain irrespective of the device a customer chooses to use. Google Fi still has some catching up to do with other carriers when it comes to features like including support for the RCS Universal Profile for texting and number sharing for things like LTE smartwatches. This announcement of extending Fi’s support for multiple devices does signal Google’s efforts to broaden its user base and boost device support. Head over to Google’s official Blog for more information on this announcement. A year later, Google Project Zero still finds Safari vulnerable to DOM fuzzing using publicly available tools to write exploits BuzzFeed Report: Google’s sexual misconduct policy “does not apply retroactively to claims already compelled to arbitration” #GoogleWalkout demanded a ‘truly equitable culture for everyone’; Pichai shares a “comprehensive” plan for employees to safely report sexual harassment

Google has released the Android Things client library for making it easy for Android Things users to utilize Google Cloud IoT core. Last month, Google announced the developer preview release of Android Things, solidifying the chances of it becoming the official IoT platform for Google. Google IoT core is a complete managed service on the Google Cloud Platform. The client library will help the system to collect, process, analyze, and visualize IoT data in real time. It will provide powerful computer vision, audio processing, and machine learning applications, all on devices. It will also work with Cloud IoT Core, to push data into GCP for further analysis. The Android Things client library will also provide means for developers to easily connect to the IoT Core MQTT bridge, authenticate the device, publish device telemetry and state, subscribe to configuration changes, and handle errors and network outages. The client library completely handles the networking, threading, and message handling enabling Android Things developers to get started with just a few lines of code. Authentication and Security Android Things library provides a hardware-backed Android Keystore that ensures cryptographic key material is protected. The client library supports both RSA and ECC keys and implements the generation of JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) for authentication with Cloud IoT Core. Device provisioning and Error handling IoT devices generally operate in poor wireless conditions in the real world. The Android things client library will provide support for handling errors, and for caching and retransmitting events later. The library's queue is configurable and replaceable for developers requiring custom offline behavior. Developers are provided with detailed control over which events to save and the order in which they are sent when back online. Wayne Piekarski, Developer Advocate for IoT notes that “The Cloud IoT Core client library is part of our overall vision for device provisioning and authentication with Android Things.” A more detailed report of notable features can be read on the Google developer blog. The library is also available as open source on GitHub for developers who want to build it themselves. Google has also provided a sample that shows how to implement a sensor hub on Android Things, collecting sensor data from connected sensors and publishing them to a Google Cloud IoT Pub/Sub topic. Getting Started with Android Things Top 5 Google I/O 2018 conference Day 1 Highlights: Android P, Android Things, ARCore, ML kit and Lighthouse Google updates biometric authentication for Android P, introduces BiometricPrompt API

What’s every mobile developer’s worst nightmare? The mere idea that their app has fallen into obscurity and it doesn’t have a single user engagement or installs! If you are a mobile developer and you are reading this, you might be well aware of this thought, in imagination as well as in reality sometime or the other. We all know that traditional analytics methods adopted and made popular by Google don’t really have a great impact on mobile apps. They are not helpful in finding out the exact reasons why your app might have failed to register a high number of installs or user engagements. So the real question to alleviate your fear is: what are the data pointers necessary to figure out a way to filter out the noise and make your app stand out among the clutter? The answer is not merely a name change, but a change in approach and it’s called mobile analytics. For starters, some reasons users typcially don’t interact with your app are: The UX is not tempting enough The app is slow The app doesn’t live up to what it promised The target audience segment is wrong Your app is really bad Barring the last pointer, the other four can have real life solutions that can salvage your app, if applied in time.  Here we are putting more focus on the phrase “In Time”. That’s where real time mobile analytics come in. Because in case of mobile apps, every minute counts, literally. Mobile analytics works on the ways and types of data collected. In order to understand why your app is not an instant hit, you will have to keep a track of: Geographical data of app installs: This will help you to identify your geographical strongholds i.e.,  from where you have got the most response. You can then analyze other geographies or similar locations that you can target in order to make your ad campaigns effective. Demographics of the users who engage with your app: This data will be particularly helpful in identifying the age group and the type of users who are engaging in in-app purchases. Thus, helping you to reach your overall goal. Which Sources provide loyal users and generate more revenue: Knowing the right media outlet to promote your ad is imperative to its success. This will enable you to target the correct media sources for maximum revenue and in creating more loyal fanbase. What are the reasons for the users to quit: This will identify the reason behind the app not getting popular. Analyzing this data will enable you to learn about potential flaws in the UX or in the app performance or any security issues which might be prompting the users to quit your app suddenly. So how do you enable real time mobile analytics? There are a few platforms which provide ready-to-deploy real time mobile analytics. Fair warning, you might end up feeling like you used a black box where you feed data and the result comes out without knowing why you came up with those results. However there are other solutions being provided by IBM cloud, AWS Pinpoint, among others which will enable the developers to be a part of the overall analytics process and also play with the parameters to see predictions of app usage and conversion. The real challenge however lies in bringing all these analytics into your mobile device. For example, if you have seeing sudden uninstalls of your app and what you have right now is your mobile device, then you should be able to access the cloud and upload that data and analyze that on your mobile to get insights on what should be done. Like whether there is an urgent UX issue that needs fixing or there is a sudden bug in the application, or there might be a sudden security threat that potentially can compromise user data. To perform these mobile analytics natively and real time, we would most definitely need better computation capabilities and battery power. Whether the tech giants like Google, AMD, Microsoft will come up with a possible solution to this mobile computation problem with a much longer battery life, is something that time can only tell. Packt teams up with Humble Bundle to bring developers a selection of mobile development bundles Five reasons why Xamarin will change mobile development Hybrid Mobile apps: What you need to know