Google+ platform launch roundup
Whew! What a week! Google+ sign-in has been an exciting launch so far and we’re just getting started! If you’re new to the Google+ platform launch, you can learn more from the Google+ developers blog, Introducing Google+ Sign-in : simple and secure, minus the social spam. Reflecting on the week, here are a couple highlights and things worth mentioning.
Photohunt
The Google+ developer relations team put together an exciting example showing web, iOS, and Android working together through Google+ sign-in. The Java server implementation of Photohunt is ready for you to try out and is a great way to learn how to create great experiences with Google+. This demo shows App Engine integration and a comprehensive look at all of the new Google+ platform features.
Platform Insights
Google+ sign-in activity
Track the number of sign-ins into your apps. This is really awesome for understanding how sign-in is performing for your apps.
New Android App
As you may have noticed, there is a new Settings app for Android that makes it easy for you to see which apps have access to your data and manage them.
Launch Partners
The launch partners did an awesome job delivering impressive integrations on a very short schedule. You can read the official announcements on Google+ Case Studies page.
- Ban.jo has an excellent experience. Read more about it in the Banjo press release about Google+.
- Beautylish wrote a great post, Beautylish <3’s Google+!, about their thoughts on the new updates.
- Fitbit has done some great work to make signing up easier if you already have a Google+ account.
- Open Table is bringing rich content directly to the stream using interactive posts. Read more about it on their blog post: Google+ Sign-In Now on OpenTable: Simple + Secure — and No Social Spam!
- Fancy has made it easier to create accounts and discover things you like.
- Flixter’s integration now lets you sign up with Google+. Learn more here, Flixter: Introducing Google+ sign-in.
- USA Today and The Guardian are making great use of over-the-air installs to make it seamless to get their companion apps on your mobile device. I strongly recommend you try out the OTA install experience on their sites if you haven’t already by visiting their sites and signing up with Google+. The Guardian developer blog posted a great article about their perspective after developing with Google+ sign-in: The Guardian: Introducing Google+ sign-in.
- Tunein and Shazam have been doing some great mobile integrations taking advantage of various new features.
Again, the launch partners did exceptional work getting great products out for the launch.
GDLs
After a long quiet spell, I’m thrilled that Google+ is back on Google Developers Live. Check out the first show where Joanna and Jonathan introduce the new Google+ features.
Key resources
- Discussions related to Google+ developer topics are encouraged! We participate in the Google+ developers community which is also a great way to find other developers working with Google+ and engage with our awesome GDEs Allen “Prisoner” Firstenberg, Abraham Williams, and Gerwin Sturm. Moritz Tolxdorff also has done some great work on Hangouts.
- The authoritative documentation and resources for Google+ developers are on the Google+ developers page.
- The Google+ GitHub page has the latest sample applications. Any subsequent sample releases will go there.
- The downloads page on the Google+ developer site has the latest client libraries, if the library there is different from the one in a shipping sample, the library from the downloads page will be newer. Again, the client libraries on the downloads page are updated before the libraries in the samples.
- The team follows the Google-plus tag on Stack Overflow, please tag any questions on there appropriately.