Android Market Action

Almost instantly after I joined Google, it became obvious to me that the number-one area where Android developers wanted to see action and progress was in Android Market; your concerns in this area vastly outweighed whatever issues might be bothering you about the handsets and the framework and the programming tools. In recent months there has been a steady, quiet, incremental flow of improvements and upgrades. They add up. This is by way of a glance back at developments since the arrival of Froyo last summer.

First, we introduced error reporting to Market, so developers can see if their apps are locking up or crashing; and if so, exactly where.

Second, we upgraded the Market publisher site to include user comments, so you can read what people are saying about you, or at least what they’re saying in a language you understand.

Third, we added the licensing server, which, when used properly, tilts the economics of Android apps toward you, the developer, and against the pirates.

Fourth, we cranked up the number of countries people can buy and sell apps in: as of now, you can sell them in 29 countries and buy them in 32.

Fifth, we rolled in a “recent changes” feature, a place for developers to put their release notes. Android Market has a zero-friction process for app update, and the really great apps have followed the “release early, release often” philosophy. As a developer, I like having a place to write down what’s behind an app release, and as a person who downloads lots of apps, I like to know what the goodies are in each new update.

Sixth, Market now has a “draft upload” feature; this removes a lot of the tension and strain from the app-update process. Get your screenshots and feature graphics and text and APK all squared away with as much editing as you need to, then update them all with one click.

You’ll notice that I didn’t say “Sixth and last”, because this is a team on a roll and I expect lots more goodness from them; if you care about the larger Android ecosystem, or are already a developer, or are thinking of becoming one, stay tuned to this channel.

Search your geo data using spatial queries from Fusion Tables!

I’m Kathryn Hurley, a Developer Programs Engineer for Fusion Tables, and I have to say, I really dig Fusion Tables. The power it gives you to visualize your data is amazing! Plus, the team is working hard to add new features that give even more power to you, the developer.

It is my pleasure to announce that Fusion Tables now offers spatial queries! Using spatial queries, developers can (1) find all features that are located within (or overlap with) a given distance from a location (2) find all features that are located within (or overlap with) a given bounding box, and (3) find a given number of features closest to a location.

To demonstrate some of the new syntax, let’s go through a potential use case of spatial queries: creating a store locator map. For this demo, I set up a table in Fusion Tables, 297050, containing the locations of a fictitious pizza restaurant chain in the San Francisco bay area. The table contains the name, location, and whether or not that location delivers.

Now let’s say we want to display all the restaurants that fall within a bounding box. To do so, use the syntax: 

SELECT * FROM 297050 WHERE ST_INTERSECTS(Address, RECTANGLE(LATLNG(37.2, -122.3), LATLNG(37.6, -121.9)))

The map to the left shows this query in action using the FusionTablesLayer. The example shows all rows in the pizza table that fall within the bounding box specified with a lower-left coordinate of 37.2, -122.3 and a upper-right coordinate of 37.6, -121.9.

This is the code for the FusionTablesLayer: 

map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map_canvas'), {
   center: new google.maps.LatLng(37.4, -122.1),
   zoom: 10,
   mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
});
tableid = 297050;
layer = new google.maps.FusionTablesLayer(tableid, {
   query: "SELECT Address FROM " + tableid + " WHERE ST_INTERSECTS(Address, RECTANGLE(LATLNG(37.3, -122.3), LATLNG(37.6, -121.9)))",
   map: map   
});

We can also find the 10 features closest to a particular coordinate, such as the latitude, longitude coordinate of your house or a major city center. To find the 10 nearest features to Mountain View, CA at coordinate 37.4,-122.1., we use the syntax: 

SELECT * FROM 297050 ORDER BY ST_DISTANCE(Address, LATLNG(37.4, -122.1)) LIMIT 10

These 2 examples demonstrate how to create a store locator-like map, but the possibilities are endless! You could create an application that finds the most popular bike trail routes in your area or enable crowd sourcing to identify roads that might need more street lamps.

To learn more about the full spatial query offering in Fusion Tables, please see the Fusion Tables documentation. You can also join the Fusion Tables User Group to receive announcements about new features or post questions you might have about Fusion Tables. Or follow us on Twitter: @GoogleFT. And, most importantly, have fun creating awesome apps!

Posted by Kathryn Hurley, Google Geo Developer Relations

GeoInformatics, Geography and Informatics

The past years, the work I have done in the field of GIS is getting closer and closer to the roots I have in software development. Is it just my own experience or is the world around us changing?

When I starting my professional career it was with a hydraulic engineering company. I worked with the software department and developed applications to support flood early warning and flood damage assessment. After some years I started creating these applications using ESRI’s Arc/INFO (is it was spelled at the time), ArcView, and ArcIMS.

I remember a Saturday evening when a colleague and I were enjoying lasagna while working through lengthy pieces of SQL trying to figure out why the web application we developed did not return the desired result for the selected location. One of us was coding the thoughts the other came up with combined with his own ideas and interpretation. The problem had been bugging our development team for a while and as the deadline came closer we resorted to this extreme measure.

By midnight the problem was solved and we sat down with a beer and reflected on how the approach we took proved successful and whether or not that could be turned into more practical use. It appeared that the concept of ‘paired programming’ we practiced was one of the elements of a software development methodology call eXtreme Programming (XP, not to be confused with that recent addition to the existing family of operating systems).

That experience made me realize that developing a GIS application successfully depends on well-known software development principles just as much as any other non-GIS software projects. The fact that we started off with products that deliver a lot of functionality out-of-the-box does not change this.

It may even complicate things. Whatever development methodology is applied (RAD, DSDM, XP, Waterfall, RUP), an application goes through the process of design, coding, testing in different cycles of different lengths. But the final step to success always is user acceptance. When starting from a commercial-off-the-shelf product that is being customized, there will always be discussions when anomalies are found as to whether this is part of the customization and thus within responsibility of the developer or is part of the off-the-shelf product and thus within responsibility of the manufacturer.

The fact that this discussion takes place at the end of the project when budget is running out and both developer and client want the product to be finished, but working, adds to the complexity. An idea may be to introduce a second type of acceptance test, this time aimed at the developer! Whatever off-the-shelf product, data or document is supplied to the developer is subjected to an intake test and anomalies are noted and either accepted to exist or lead to modification of the supplied item.

And guess what? Formal acceptance of items delivered to the software team at the starting point of the project or during the project, was one of the things we introduced at this hydraulic engineering company when we started thinking about Software Quality Assurance; nothing new, but still refreshing in a way.

So after some years my interest in software development has been revitalized and I now again read about subjects as software process improvement and test process improvement and how these may contribute to the success of our GIS projects and thus to the success of our clients. And the success of our clients is our primary concern.

Appeared in GeoInformatics Magazine (http://www.geoinformatics.com) in June 2002