Shakespeare on Living It

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

–William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
English playwright and poet

 

With everything, there’s a line.

On one side of the line is a greater chance to make good things happen (better results, better relationships, more responsibility). This is where you’ll find all those people you admire.

On the other side, there’s less of a chance.

And with each line, there’s a choice. You want to cross the line or you don’t. You want the better chance at making good things happen (meaningful things) or you settle with the lesser chance.

Your choice.

It seems simple but…

Then there’ll be those times. Those times when in the short run it’ll seem like you can’t cross the line (no matter what you do).

___________________________

New ways to discover great apps on Android Market

We’ve seen tremendous growth in Android Market lately. With over 200,000 apps supporting over 300 Android devices, we’ve had 4.5 billion applications installed to date. But with so many apps available, how do you find the ones you really want? Whether you’re looking for the most popular apps, hot new apps, or just the very best apps available, we want to help make sure that you find what you’re looking for.

Today, we’re excited to announce 5 new features for Android Market focused on helping you find apps you’ll love.

  • New top app charts – We’ve revamped our top app charts to be fresher and country-specific, so you get the most current, relevant results. We’ve also added top new free, top new paid, and top grossing lists, all right on the Android Market home page.   
  • Editors’ Choice – These are some of the very best apps available for Android, as chosen by the Android Market staff. They span everything from games to productivity and beyond.   
  • Top Developers – We’re also recognizing those developers creating the highest quality, most popular, and most notable apps available on Android Market. They’ll get a special icon on our Android Market website, appearing wherever the developer name is shown, starting today for an initial set of over 150 developers.
  • Better related apps – On the left side of an app page, you’ll now see two groups of related apps: apps frequently browsed by people who viewed this app, and apps that people tend to install alongside this app. For example, people who view ScoreMobile, my favorite sports score app, often also view other sports score apps, while those who install ScoreMobile tend to also install apps for specific sports leagues or teams. We’ll also show you related apps once you decide to install an app.
  • Trending apps – Finally, we’ve added a new section to the Android Market homepageshowing trending apps – those apps that are quickly growing in daily installs. Look here to stay ahead of the curve and find new apps as they get hot.

We hope you find these features helpful as you explore the many greats apps available on Android Market. These new features are available now on http://market.android.com, and will be coming soon to Android Market on phones and tablets.

Tasks API: Getting organized…

Google Tasks helps many of us to remember all those things that keep us busy. Towards the end of last year we asked our users what they wanted to see improved with Google Tasks and an overwhelming request was for the ability to access tasks from anywhere — be it on the move, on the desktop, or through their favorite Web apps.

Today, we’re checking off a big to-do from our list and are inviting you to try out the new Google Tasks API. Using the Google Tasks API, developers can — for the very first time — create rich applications which integrate directly with Google Tasks.

The Google Tasks API provides developers with a powerful set of API endpoints for retrieving and modifying Google Tasks content and metadata. It offers a simple, RESTful interface and supports all basic operations required to query, manage and sync a user’s tasks and task lists. The API uses JSON for data representation and works with multiple authentication mechanisms including OAuth 2.0.

Plain HTTP using JSON Using Google API Client Library for Java 
POST /tasks/v1/lists/
/tasks
Content-Type: application/json
...
{ title: "Publish blog post" }
 
Task task = new Task();
task.setTitle("Publish
    blog post");
client.tasks.insert(
    "list-ID",
    task).execute();

Client libraries are provided for several major programming environments and should help you get up and running quickly.

The API is available in Labs and can be activated for your project through the API Console. Get started today by trying the Tasks API yourself using the API Explorer and taking a look at the documentation.


If you want to see the API in action check out the Google Tasks Chrome Extension. If you are at Google I/O we invite you to come along and hear the Google Tasks team talk about the new API today.

We thank the early adopters that have worked with us and built their own Google Tasks integrations over the last weeks. We’d like to highlight a few of them:

  • Producteev is a task management platform that lets teams and individuals access their to-dos from a lot of different locations (web, mobile, email, calendars…). You will now have all your Producteev’s tasks available in Google Tasks and vice versa!
  • Mavenlink‘s project collaboration suite allows you to communicate, share files, track time, invoice, and make or receive payments in one place. With its Google Tasks integration, your Mavenlink project tasks & Google Tasks always stay in sync.
  • Manymoon is the top installed social task and project management app in the Google Apps Marketplace and makes it simple to get work done online with co-workers, partners, and customers. Manymoon’s users can now create and view tasks with Gmail and Google Calendar through Google Tasks.
  • Zoho offers a suite of online business, collaboration and productivity applications for small businesses. So far they have integrated Zoho CRM & Zoho Projects with the Tasks API.