March Meetup

Droidcon Special!

Tuesday March 24th 2015

McKibbin’s 1426 Bishop St, Montréal, (QC)

Our meetup this month will be at McKibbins. With DroidCon Montreal coming up very soon, we have a packed line up!

• 17h30: Socializing, announcements.
• 18h00: NoSQL & Offline Mobile Apps by William Hoang
• 18h30; Pause
• 18:45 – Intro to spannable by Mike Wallace
• 19:00 – A Touchy System – Pre Droidcon talk *by *
• 19:20 – Why you should come to the VR Talk at Droidcon Montreal **
• 19:40 – Lollipop Superpowers by Marcos Damasceno and Michael Smith
• 20:00 – Networking

Welcome & Announcments

We’ve got more events lined up in view of DroidCon! (PALAIS DES CONGRÈS
/APRIL 9-10TH 2015)

• April 8th: Special Android Arduino talk by Jenny Tong , Developer Advocate for Firebase & Google Cloud Platform.
• TBD: Pre-DroidCon Hackathon, sponsored by Desjardins.

NoSQL & Offline Mobile Apps

by William Hoang

What happens when your Android mobile device does not have a network connection? That device will have no content, no experience and the amazing application that you spent so much effort to build just simply will not work.

This talk would be around the implementation story of creating offline and online applications on Android Mobile.

The journey begins with NoSQL database modeling and what we can do with a NoSQL technology for mobile. The session will go through how to create data object model relations, design for performance in difficult areas with no signal, and how to develop a local Android NoSQL datebase that syncs to the cloud.

We will go over code on how to have your mobile application function offline without relying on the network. You will gain knowledge in NoSQL databases technologies and walk away with insights on how to create offline type of applications that to sync to the cloud.

Couchbase Mobile is a thin client library that would help developers with their mobile projects in creating a local data layer for offline user experience and will provide fast sync capabilities when there is available network connectivity.

Intro to spannable

by Mike Wallace

In this talk you will have an introduction to what will be presented at Droidcon Montreal about Spannables http://www.droidcon.ca/speakers/36.

A Touchy System

by Phillippe Breault and Éric Tremblay

Philippe and Éric will talk about a very delicate subject: The Android Touch System. This talk will set up the bases for what Philippe Breault will present at Droidcon Montreal http://www.droidcon.ca/speakers/16

Why you should come to the VR Talk at Droidcon Montreal

by François Légaré and Laurence de Villers

The subject says it all! Mobile VR is coming very strong, Google last year introduced the Cardboard, Samsung has its own VR Device and HTC and Valve are entering the game with something that looks stunning. Come to this talk and get a taste of what they will present at Droidcon Montreal. http://www.droidcon.ca/speakers/47

Lollipop Superpowers – Pre Droidcon Talk

Marcos Damasceno and Michael Smith

Lollipop is around for a good time already but many things that were introduced are not being used very much, like Animation Transitions, Recycler View and more. We will be doing an introduction of what is coming at Droidcon Montreal from Marcos and Michael http://www.droidcon.ca/speakers/48 http://www.droidcon.ca/speakers/31

Bios

William Hoang:
William is a Developer Advocate on the Mobile Engineering/Developer Experience team at Couchbase. His love for coffee and code has transcended him into the world of mobile while appreciating the offline in-person experiences.

Prior, William worked on the Developer Relations team over at Twitter, BlackBerry, and Microsoft while also having been a Software Embedded GPS engineer at Research In Motion.

William graduated from McGill University in Electrical Software Engineering

• Twitter: www.twitter.com/sweetiewill
• LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/in/williamhoang/

Mike Wallace:
Mike is a senior software architect with over 20 years of professional software development experience. Five of those years relating specifically to Android. During those years, he has developed a passion for Android and a rich knowledge of its APIs and inner workings.

Philippe Breault:
Philippe is a software engineer from Mirego that has been passionate about android for the past 5 years. He spends a lot of time trying to find better ways to develop great apps, sometimes blogs at www.developerphil.com

Eric Tremblay:
Eric is a software developer at Mirego, where he started working on Android apps in 2012. He has contributed to many interesting projects and developed a passion for optimizing application development through choosing the correct tools and approaches.

François Légaré:
François is one of the mobile gurus at Bell Canada. He jumped in the Android bandwagon in 2009 when segmentation was just a mere theoretical concept on Android OS. He’s also co-organizer of the GDG Android Montreal.

Laurence de Villers:
Laurence de Villers is a young rising star in the mobility business and currently works at Bell, she can produce a app faster than you can think of a title for it.

Marcos Damasceno:
Marcos is an Android Craftsman at Mirego. He’s working with Android since 2010 and he already had the opportunity to speak at big conferences like The Developer’s Conference, DevFest Sao Paulo and now most recently at Droidcon New York.

Michael Smith:
Lead Mobile Engineer at Frank & Oak, also currently working on the new API that will feed the mobile, web and POS clients as the online and physical worlds collide in retail. He’s a passionate about E-Commerce and the overall mobile shopping experience. (edited)

February Meetup

Notman House, 51 Sherbrooke West, Montréal, (QC)

The Meetup this month will be held at Notman House, one of the most popular locations in Montreal for tech community events 🙂

We’ll have a talk on mobile security by Mohamad Elserngrawy and a talk on drawables and UI by Marcos Paulo Damasceno.

Wednesday February 25th 2015

• 18h00: Socializing
• 18h15: Welcome, announcements, present your startup, etc.
• 18h30: CaptureMe: Attacking the User Credential in Mobile Banking Applications
• 19h30: The Magic World of Drawables
• 20h30: Wrap-up, food and drink with the gang at a TBD location.

Welcome & Announcements

Short agenda

• Coming soon in March and April
• Potential CouchBase Mobile session or workshop, date TBD
• Firebase Developer Advocate visit, tentative date: 8th of April.
• Application “Full-Stack” Workshop, date and details TBD
• Call for speakers
• Women TechMaker event
• March Meetup
• April Meetup

CaptureMe: Attacking the User Credential in Mobile Banking Applications

Mohamad Elserngrawy

The topic abstract: I will present a new screenshot attack CaptureMe to expose the user credential (Card ID and password) from mobile banking applications on Android platform.

Words about me: I’m a Researcher and Software Engineer has 8 years of experiences in software design and development. In the last 3 years I focused my research on mobile platform security especially with Android platform.

The Magic World of Drawables

Marcos Paulo Damasceno

Talk description: A very useful and powerful feature of android that developers sometimes ignore or use it wrong. The small details of your app is what make it amazing, in this presentation we will talk about how Shapes, Layer-Lists and more can make your UI jump to another level and amaze your users. All that without being a rockstar designer!

Bio: Marcos is an Android Craftsman at Mirego, one of Canada’s fastest-growing companies.

He loves simple and beautiful UX and UI and has his attention always focused to small details and what makes mobile apps great. A passionate about Start Ups, Marcos already attended to many start up weekends and hackathons in Sao Paulo, San Francisco and Montreal and currently serves as a mentor for some successful brazilian apps.

He has been playing around with mobile since 2010, worked in many significant android apps for the brazilian market in the backend and mobile stack. Marcos already had the opportunity to speak at big conferences in Brazil like The Developer’s Conference and DevFest Sao Paulo.

Marcos moved to Montreal in 2013, where he led the development of a big consumer’s product android tablet app currently used by Sony US and now do great stuff with an amazing team at Mirego.

You can follow Marcos at:

• Google Plus +marcospaulosd
• Twitter @marcospaulosd

January Follow-up

GDG Montreal Android January Follow-up

Hello everyone,

We’ve had a blast this last Wednesday at the January Meetup, and we wanted to send out a little follow up email on some subjects we touched upon

Speakers

I’d like to say a quick thank you to everyone who volunteered to give a talk over the next couple of month, we’ll be contacting you this week to try and schedule the February and March lineups, and give you a chance to prepare.

If you are interested in giving a talk, please reach out to Etienne or one of the other organizers and we’ll add you to the upcoming lineup.

Workshops

I personally received a lot of positive feedback during the Meetup for the idea of organizing App Design Workshops, and to explore some mobile-friendly Client-Server Architecture setups.

We’ll be polling you in the coming weeks to pick between our different subjects, and different timing options (Evening sessions, or week-end afternoon sessions? TBD…)

Android Jobs

Radialpoint has reached out about a Full Stack Mobile Developper position. You can find out more about them here. (Worth a look, they do interesting things)

We also had Aurore visiting from Nurun, another interesting company, who are currently looking for senior Android developper. See the posting here. Find out more about Nurun here.

Upcoming local events

We have a lot of very exciting events coming up, let us know if you want to see your event in a future posting:

Applets Mobile Challenge 2015

• École de technologie supérieure
• 1100 rue Notre-Dame, Montréal
• Du 6 février 2015 à 17h00 au 7 février 2015 19h00
• Open to all college and university students
• Admission is free
• Website
• Eventbrite

McHacks 2015

• February 21 – 22
• Who’s invited? If you’re an undergraduate from any university, from any country, you’re welcome!
• Admission is free
• Website

DroidCon Montreal 2015

• April 9-10th 2015
• Organized by Mirego
• Palais des Congrès
• Website
• Want to volunteer?

Upcoming outside events

Want to organize a carpool to attend outside conferences? Would like to discover a new city with the gang? Here’s some promising outside events on our radar:

BIG ANDROID MEAT & GREET 2014

• Alexandria, VA – April 4
• Madison Auditorium • United States Patent & Trademark Office • 600 Dulany Street
• Website

January Meetup

McKibbin’s 1426 Bishop St, Montréal, (QC)

The Meetup this month will take place at the top floor of McKibbin’s, a nice venue with decent acoustics i.e. Where we can hear ourselves talk 😉

• 18h00: Socializing
• 18h15: Welcome, announcements, present your startup, etc.
• 18h45: Managing a task scheduling queue by John Brohan
• 19h30: Custom Views and the Hierarchy Viewer by Etienne Caron and François Légaré
• 20h00: Food and Drinks (room reserved until 20h50)

Welcome & Announcements

We’d like to discuss the following with the group:

• Going back to regularly scheduled Meetups
  • Proposed: last Wednesday of each month.
• Winter-Spring goals:
  • Workshops
    • Design Workshop
    • App Development
    • Play Store Publishing
  • Upcoming Subjects [proposals for monthly themes]
    • Full stack development
    • Server-side talks (REST/DropWizard/Heroku/Google Cloud/Docker)
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Tools of the Trade
  • Meetup Outreach / Event Mentorship
  • Call for speakers & mentors / Subject proposals
• Announcing upcoming events:
  • Intro to Android @ APPLETS MOBILE CHALLENGE, February 6th (Note: this event targets students.)
  • Intro to Android Talk @ Concordia, week of February 2nd

Managing a task scheduling queue

by John Brohan

“An App for Grandma” operates continuously and autonomously, it requires no input from the user (typically an elderly person unwilling to press any buttons).

The “TimeActionQueue” schedules many different kinds of events:

• Show the next picture in a gallery in nn seconds
• Process a GCM broadcast message to download a photo
• Start a Skype session
• Send an email to remind friend to send more photos every 10 days
• Manage the steps to setup and refresh Google Cloud Messaging
• Display the time in the Action Bar to 5 minute precision…….

Things you need in a TimeActionQueue:

• Create an action
• Add a new time action
• Add unique and Poll
• Does not need a destroy (discuss)

Debugging aid for coping lots of enums by getting the names of enums into the debug log.

Question getting from static functions to non-static methods in an Activity?

Custom Views and the Hierarchy Viewer

by Etienne Caron and François Légaré

Recent studies have consistently shown that latencies in the order of a 100 milliseconds can have fairly big impacts on usage patterns. Worse yet, the effects of latency exposure tend to linger on. Once your users are exposed to it, it can take weeks before they go back to their original usage pattern!

This highlights how important it is to optimize your UI. Thankfully you have multiple tools on Android that can help you achieve this.

In this session, we’ll look at the Hierarchy Viewer and how to use it (and some other onboard debugging tools) to create truly responsive UI and UX.

We’ll also take a look at the basics of Custom View creation, and how to define custom-made XML attributes to leverage the Android Interface editor.

December Meetup

@ Brutopia

1219 Crescent Street, Montréal, QC

This month we have two exciting presentations, and lots-o-beer!

Our usual location (Notman House) is unable to accommodate us so this month we are going to be happily hosted by Brutopia, a popular brew pub located downtown at Metro Guy-Concordia.

Note, we will start at 6pm (presentations start at 18h15) to accommodate the happy hour crowd.

• 18h00: Arrival and socializing
• 18h15: Contrôler ses écouteurs Bluetooth avec sa montre
• 18h45: Testing Android with Computer Vision
• 19h30: Beer and food, @Brutopia

Contrôler ses écouteurs Bluetooth avec sa montre

Avec Boris Dubois

Contrôler ses écouteurs Bluetooth avec sa montre : débuter avec des interactions simples sur Android Wear en respectant les design guidelines.

Testing Android with Computer Vision

How to setup and tweak Sikuli tests for Android

With Farah Abbasi & Gina Chiodo

In this talk we will show you can test image heavy, and/or legacy/hybrid android apps using OpenCV (computer vision) and Sikuli. Sikuli is a framework which automates anything you see on the screen. It uses image recognition to identify and control GUI components. It is useful when there is no easy access to a GUI’s internal or source code, or writing tests crosses layers of technologies ie in a Cordova/HTML5 app running in a webview.

Une startup locale à la recherche de talent.

Bonjour à tous, des amis du club sont à la recherche de développeurs mobile, faites passer le mot.

APPCOM est à la recherche de développeurs mobile IOS et/ou Android!

Tu aimerais t’ajouter à une équipe de feu?

Nous sommes une entreprise spécialisée en développement de solutions novatrices dans le domaine du mobile et du web. Notre équipe se compose de passionné(e)s qui repoussent constamment leurs limites au cœur de projets intéressants et motivants. On aimerait en trouver d’autres comme ça!

Compétences complémentaires avantageuses :

• Connaissances Web Front-End
• Connaissances Web Back-End
• Connaissances des outils Git

Convaincu(e)?
Pour toute information, tu peux contacter Jean-Christophe par téléphone ou courriel.

Jean-Christophe Duchaine

514-466-0553

ANDROID DevFest HACKATHON!

** SCHEDULE CHANGE **

We will now start at 18h on Friday.

We’ll give you some sample code, food and lots of coffee, just bring your enthusiasm to learn!

(And your laptop… and preferably with AndroidStudio installed… maybe you should get that nice emulator too, alongside a git client … 😉

The DevFest is an annual event held by GDG (Google Developer Groups) around the world. Come join one of the most active GDG in Canada. Our mission is to mentor and welcome new and experienced Android developers and Android developers en devenir.

At the hackathon we will have a couple of extra devices on hand so that you can build

• an Android Wear app,
• an Android TV app
• a Google Cardboard app,
• or anything that strikes your fancy that you can do with an Android device.

Tickets here: http://gdgandroidmontrealdevfest2014.eventbrite.ca

Android DevFest Montreal 2014

We will even have a few prizes (TBA). Join 60+ hackers on October 24-26, 2014 at Notman House, 11 Sherbrooke West, Montreal.

Schedule

Friday 24 Oct

• ** SCHEDULE CHANGE **
• 6:00pm Meet & Greet + beer
• 6:30pm Presentation Session about the event, Agenda, purpose etc..
• 7:00pm Teams pitch ideas

Sat 25 Oct :

• 9:00am Opening = welcoming breakfast – meet & greet
• 9:30am to 10am Presentation about hacking for Android Wear & Android TV
• 10:00am to 6:00pm hacking (12-1pm : LUNCH)
• Evening/Overnight schedule To Be Determined/Confirmed with Notman House

Sunday 26 Oct

• 9:00am Hacking
• 3:30pm Publish Demo Videos on YouTube
• 4:00pm Project Presentations
• 5:00pm Judging + Beer

Partners

About

Hoping to learn more about the DevFest? Check out our website. You can also follow us on Twitter and Google +.

Have questions about the GDG DevFest 2014? Contact Us!

EcoHackMTL 2014

C’est le temps d’acheter votre billet pour le hackathon écoHackMTL2014! Cette année nous avons plus de 3000 $ en prix, un lieu exceptionnel, et tout dont vous aurez besoin pour un « hack » hors pair. Le tarif réduit se termine le 6 octobre. Voici tous les détails :

Hackathon écoHackMTL 2014
Samedi 18 octobre 2014 – 8 h 30 à 18 h – LB Atrium, Université Concordia
Billet EventBrite

Vous êtes invités à hacker Montréal pour la rendre plus verte et plus durable! Pour participer, vous pouvez apporter votre aide à un des projets existants, créer votre propre projet ou répondre à un défi.

Le billet comprend la participation au hackathon et le délicieux lunch servi sur place. Il y aura également des collations et du café pendant la journée.

Profitez d’un tarif réduit de 15 $ en prenant votre billet avant le 6 octobre 2014! Après cette date, le tarif sera de 20 $.

De super prix pour les gagnants
Cette année, grâce à l’appui de nos commanditaires, nous vous offrons des bourses très intéressantes et plus encore!

Prix systèmes alimentaires – 1000 $ + 10 heures de mentorat
Pour le projet avec le plus grand potentiel pour l’amélioration de la durabilité du système alimentaire montréalais.

Prix Start-Up verte – 1000 $ + 7 heures de mentorat de Montréal NewTech + billets pour participer au International Start-up Festival en 2015
Pour le projet qui a le plus de possibilité de commercialisation (peut-être à but lucratif ou non).

Prix évolution – 500 $
Ce prix est spécialement pour les équipes qui ont participé à écoHackMTL en 2013 et qui ont continué à faire évoluer leur projet.

Prix des participants – 500 $
Le projet gagnant sera choisi le 18 octobre par les participants de écoHackMTL.

Prix du public – 500 $
Le projet gagnant sera déterminé à l’issue d’un période de vote public de 1 semaine lancé sur le SparkBoard écoHackMTL à la fin du hackathon.
En savoir plus sur les prix et les modalités

September Meetup

Overview

Our next meetup will be taking place Thursday September 25th, on the 3rd floor at Notman House

Our two speakers this month are Anas Ambri who will introduce us to Groovy on Android, and Simon Guerout who will cover the Android Account Manager.

• 18h00 Welcome / upcoming events
• 18h30 Groovy on Android
• 19h30 Android Account Manager
• 20h30~21h Wrap up

Food and Drinks sponsored by PasswordBox!

I’m happy to report that my employer, PasswordBox, will be sponsoring pizza and drinks for this month’s Meetup.

In turn, we want Montreal area mobile developers to know we’re in full hiring mode here at PasswordBox. Business is booming, and obviously we’re looking for top-notch Android developers, but I invite you to look at the full list of available positions on our website: https://www.passwordbox.com/careers

Send your inquiries/CVs to etienne.caron@passwordbox.com

Presentations

Groovy for Android

by Anas Ambri

About me: An apprentice in the growing domain of software development, with a meticulous interest into solving problems (with software), an appreciation for open-source solutions, and an annoying tendency to have an opinion about almost everything.

About the topic: Since the advent of Swift on iOS, many Android developers have been looking into a similar higher level construct to develop apps on their favorite platform. Today we will talk about some of the current options, and focus mostly on Groovy. Finally, we will show how we used Groovy at Guestful to develop our app, as well as the lessons learned. Spoiler: the app was actually delivered. Duration: ~20 min + questions

Android Account Manager

by Simon GUEROUT, of Sidereo Solutions

Gestionnaire de comptes d’Android

Pendant cette présentation, je vais vous présenter un cas d’usage du gestionnaire de comptes d’Android.
Il n’est pas rare pour une application d’être connectée à un service.
Ce lien peut être fait en utilisant le gestionnaire de comptes pour simplifier la gestion de la synchronisation des données avec le service.
Dans le cas d’usage que je vais présenter, nous allons voir comment utiliser ce gestionnaire non pas pour un seul service, mais pour une multitude de sources de données.

During this presentation, I will talk about a use case of the Android Account Manager.
It is not rare for an application to be connected to a service.
This link can be managed using the Android Account Manager, in order to simplify the data sync with the service.
In the use case I will be presenting, we will see how I used the Account Manager to connect not only to a single service, but to different sources of data.

August Meetup

Overview

Hello everyone, hope you all enjoyed your summer so far!

Our next meetup will be taking place Wednesday August 20th, on the 3rd floor at Notman House. (Same awesome space where we held our Android Wear hackathon early this summer.)

We have 2 great talks scheduled, and a small recap / show and tell session for the various toys we managed to bring back from Google I/O. As always you’re welcome to drop by to introduce yourself and your projects to the community.

• 17h30: Google I/O Recap
• 18h30: Recognizing Speech on Android
• 19h30: Byte-Code Weaving on Android
• 20h30: Beer and food, @Ye Olde Orchard Pub

You can get your tickets on our Eventbrite.

Presentations

Google I/O 2014 Recap

Small informal presentation reviewing what was announced at Google I/O, with small hands-on + Q&A session for:

• Android Wear
• Android TV
• Google Cardboard

Recognizing Speech on Android

by Gina Cook – Android Developer for iLanguage Lab

In this talk I’ll show you how to use speech recognition in your own Android apps. The talk will have something for both beginner and advanced Android devs, namely I will show two ways to do speech recognition: the easy way (using the built-in RecognizerIntent for the user’s language) and the hard way (building a recognizer which wraps existing open source libraries if the built-in RecognizerIntent can’t handle the user’s language). While I was in Batumi my friends and I built an app so that Kartuli users (code) (slides) could train their Androids to recognize SMS messages and web searches. Recognizing Kartuli is one of the cases where you can’t use the built-in recognizer. Kartuli spoken by only 4 million people in the country of Georgia: that is roughly the population of Montreal and surrounding areas. The talk will start with a demo of our Kartuli trainer app to set the context for the talk, and then dig into the code and Android concepts under the demo.

• How to use the default system recognizer’s results in your own Android projects,
• How to use the NDK in your projects,
• How to use PocketSphinx (a lightweight recognizer library written in C) on Android

Byte-Code Weaving on Android

by Stéphane Nicolas – Senior Android Developer for Groupon Canada

During the last few years, we have all assisted or participated to a small
revolution on Android : the emergence of annotation processing. Many
popular libs now rely on annotation processing during build to pre-compute
a lot of stuff that will boost them at runtime. Let’s think about Dagger,
ButterKnife, Hugo, RoboGuice, BoundBox, Memento, IcePick, etc.

All those libs use annotation processing to generate data as Java source
files that are executed at runtime. Nevertheless, writing annotation
processors is far from obvious as they are based on the annotation
processing API that is very difficult to understand.

But there is an alternative : byte code weaving. This technique is popular
in the Java World for a large variety of applications : from creating mocks
(easymock/mockito) to data persistence (Eclipse Link, EBeans, etc.), or
Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP).

So, why don’t we use post-compilation processing on Android too ?

This sessions offers an overview of different byte code weaving techniques
and will examine whether they can be applied to Android. We will see how
post compilation byte code weaving can be used during Android apps’ builds
when using either Gradle or Maven.

Finally, we will present 2 libraries : AfterBurner & Mimic. They are based
on javassist, and aim to make byte code manipulation easy for Android. We
will go through simple use cases that will show us how to eliminate all
boiler plate when using our favorite libraries and boost apps using post
compilation byte code weaving. Byte code weaving could even be used to
normalize new and simpler programming techniques for Android that could get
standardized via Android Specification Requests.