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Firebase Summit announcement highlights local emulator UI enhancements and redesigned performance monitor
Also adding new APIs and improving BigQuery integration
Like all conferences this year, Firebase Summit 2020 is kicking off today with an entirely virtual experience. There are technical sessions and demos, codelabs, live Q&A events, and of course, a keynote. If you rely on Firebase, you'll probably be happy to hear about some of the new tools and improvements that will make your development time a bit more efficient.
Microsoft manages to stop mysterious 'FCM Messages' notifications that were bombarding Teams users
Could be due to a vulnerability in Google's push notification servers
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Just a few days ago, Hangouts users saw a number of mysterious "FCM Messages" test notifications, and now Microsoft Teams is exhibiting the same issue. The two incidents are likely linked, as they're connected to a recently published vulnerability in Google's push notification service Firebase Cloud Messaging (hence "FCM Messages"). Ultimately, the messages appear to be harmless (if annoying) for users, so you don't need to worry about the safety of your account or phone.
Hangouts users shouldn't panic about mysterious 'FCM' notifications
The mass messages are likely tied to recent reporting on Firebase exploits
Google Hangouts might not be as popular as it once was, but there are still plenty of people hanging on to it. A good number of Hangouts users across the globe received some strange notifications yesterday, which may be linked to a vulnerability in Google's Firebase platform.
Google Analytics for Android now displays App+Web and Firebase properties (APK Download)
The first update following the Android app's redesign
A major update for the Analytics Android app was released last month, complete with Google's updated Material Theme and other interface changes. Now another update has been released, allowing you to finally access App+Web and Firebase properties on the go, in addition to data from regular websites.
For many developers, apps aren't just about the platform they run on, but also integration with cloud services that transport notifications, data, crash reports, ads, and more. The breadth of services and features offered by Firebase ensured many developers would consider it a must-have in their apps, even if only for Crashlytics. With the fourth annual Firebase Summit in Madrid, several new announcements expand the product line even further with products and services that can make development even easier and more effective.
Google recently introduced one-tap access to Google Assistant from its mobile search engine webpage, presumably because being able to trigger it from the home screen or a physical button from every single device ever is a good thing. And if the device you held didn't have the assistant, the link would take you to a page where you could download it. Well, that link seems to have been broken.
A big new set of services began rolling out to Firebase users today. Google's mainstream service for push messaging and other app services just announced an assortment of new capabilities. The big addition in this update is a new in-app messaging feature that enables quick announcements and offers to users, and can be tied to certain user behaviors. There are also big revisions to the management console and statistics tracking views, upgrades to the Crashlytics services, a new history view for Remote Config, and more.
Machine learning has been one of Google's main focuses for years now. To help other companies and app developers take advantage of the technology, Google today announced an API called 'ML Kit.' It allows apps to use machine learning for text recognition, face detection, scanning barcodes, and even detecting landmarks (similar to Google Lens).
Google announced today that its URL shortening service, goo.gl, will be shutting down starting in April. Existing links will still function, but on April 13, users who haven't used the site (or have only used it anonymously) will no longer be able to create short links. Users who have already created goo.gl links will still be able to do so from the accounts they've previously used up until one year from today—March 30, 2019.
Google's Firebase team has been hard at work lately. Earlier this month, Firebase added a whole new storage product called Cloud Firestore, but that was just the beginning. Several major additions and improvements were just announced during the keynote at the second annual Firebase Dev Summit taking place in Amsterdam.
Ever since Google acquired Firebase in 2014, it has grown to be a formidable platform for mobile and web app developers. Earlier this year, Google used its I/O 2017 app to feature some of the advantages provided by the Firebase Realtime Database and Cloud Functions for Firebase. Now Firebase is launching a new product called Cloud Firestore, a fully-managed NoSQL document database, and it boasts a pretty compelling set of features for developers.
Google I/O, otherwise known as Android Christmas, is about a month and a half away, but it's never too early to start getting excited about it. Even if you didn't get the opportunity to purchase a ticket or you did but can't go, the sessions are streamed live and then published on YouTube so everyone can watch them and catch up on all the new things in Android.
Koushik Dutta, a.k.a Koush, is one of Android's most popular developers. From the custom recovery ClockworkMod to ROM Manager, to Allcast, to Vysor, his apps are downloaded almost religiously amongst power users, developers, and tinkerers. In the last few hours, he's made a new app available in beta, named Inkwire.
Google is pretty well known for building a fast and (usually) reliable infrastructure that can stand up to just about anything short a certain Nexus launch. This is why it came as no surprise when the tech giant announced its own cloud hosting service during I/O 2012, giving developers a path to tap into some of that power. Since the launch, Google has attempted to make its Cloud Platform product as appealing as possible, but the response has been fairly tepid. Yesterday, Google announced the acquisition of a little known company named Firebase, and it might be enough to really get developers on board.