If you are driving, take any highway exits that heads to Bukit Jalil. If you follow the map, you can find your way if you use the Bukit Jalil National Stadium as your landmark. For parking, all DevFest participants will get a flat rate of RM3 per entry. Please get your parking ticket stamped during morning registration.
If you are taking public transportation, take the RapidKL light rail transit from Masjid Jamek to Bukit Jalil station. There's a RapidKL bus with a "TPM" or "Technology Park Malaysia" sticker on it's windscreen. Take that bus & alight at Enterprise 4 building. According to the people from this area, there's a bus every 15 minutes. Since it's a working day, we're in luck because alot of people will be going to work by bus. So just ask around if you're clueless. Or you can alternatively take a taxi from Bukit Jalil station.
To celebrate the coming 1st DevFest in Kuala Lumpur, a fellow community member from GTUG Kuala Lumpur, Leonard Lee also known as @sheeeng, has developed a super cool Chrome extension for the Google Chrome browser.
Leonard spents most of this time developing desktop applications' user interface using Qt at F-Secure. He first experience with Google technologies dated back around 2005 when he was doing his internship. Back in those days, Gmail beta invite was a privilege. Leonard was looking around the Internet for few weeks and imagine the excitement he had when he got his first Gmail beta invite in June 2005. Gmail is fast and most importantly, it had the most effective spam filter among all the free web mails providers.
He was born in Kuching, Sarawak. However, he grew up in Kuala Lumpur after his family moved here when he was about 8 years old. His default language is set to English most the the time. However, he polymorphically speaks Malay, Mandarin, etc. depending on situation.
Currently, he's experimenting with Google Chrome extension with his limited web knowledge. Next in his list, hacking around the MeeGo system (Linux-based open source mobile operating system project), the hybrid of Moblin project, by Intel, and Maemo by Nokia. MeeGo for Netbook comes with Google Chrome browser. Notable to see MeeGo API is based on open source Qt.
Last week, I had the opportunity to join in the fun at Google DevFest Singapore, co-organised by Singapore GTUG. The experience was more than words can explain, so I decided to give you a pictorial of what happened.
Daniels Lee, who works in the Maps team, started the day with some strong coffee. Literally.
Jeremey Orlow from the Chrome team in London, explains a little bit about HTML5 & Google Chrome. Too bad he wasn't able to come for KL stop.
The dynamic Buzz duo, Timothy Jordan & Bob Aman. Or what I personally like to call them, Buzzman & Bobaman. Their talk was fun and engaging! All they need now is super hero costumes...
Q&A session. Malaysians, please don't be shy asking questions. If you're unable to speak English, just raise your hand & I'll help you to translate your questions. Be fun & curious!
Patrick Chanezon loves the crowd and the crowd loved him too!
Peeps from Creately shared their experiences with the Google Apps Marketplace during the local demos/presentations slot.
Developers were showing off what they built with Google Maps & Buzz APIs within 1.5 hours of hackathon. Freaking awesome!
Lim Chee Aun, GTUG KL resident hacker who is coincidently working in Singapore, showed Daniels Lee his toilet Buzz & Maps mashup. Yup, it's all about toilets! And he took home a Maps tshirt and a Buzz tshirt. Awesome!
Timothy literally suggested to Chee Aun to make a pillow out of the Buzz tshirt because it was too big for Chee Aun. Hahaha.
Group photo with all the developers that walked away with cool swags from Google. Do you want one too?
Google DevFest is a day-long technical workshop for developers to learn how to create awesome applications using Google technology like Maps API, Social APIs & Google App Engine in a very interactive and educational environment. This will be the first Google DevFest in Kuala Lumpur and their 3rd time touring Southeast Asia.
What happens at DevFest?
Google developer advocates and engineers will spend time with developers and cover various topics like:
Social APIs like Google Buzz, OpenSocial, iGoogle.
Maps & Geo APIs which focuses on creating geo-based applications.
HTML5 & what's next in the next version of Web standards.
App Engine & what's next from Google's cloud platform
KL DevFest is happening on Friday July 16, 2010 from 8.30am to 6pm.
Thanks to its renown, excellent facilities and its dedication to technology, TPM Auditorium at Technology Park Malaysia will be hosting the 1st Google DevFest in Malaysia.
Patrick Chanezon manages the Client and Cloud Advocacy team at Google, making the web better as a development platform with open web standards, GWT, Google Appengine and a lot of coffee. He has been a Developer Advocate at Google since 2005, building and growing developer ecosystems for OpenSocial, Google Checkout and the AdWords API.
Daniels Lee
Daniels joined the Developer Relations team at Google over 3 years ago. He dedicated most of his time supporting and building up the community around the Google Gadgets API for iGoogle. After spending over two years on the product, he shifted focus onto supporting the Google Maps APIs.
Timothy Jordan
Timothy is a Developer Advocate at Google working on the social web. He has a B.S. in Computer Engineering, a Theater Arts graduate degree, and an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from UC Santa Cruz.
Bob Aman
Bob works on the Developer Relations team at Google in Mountain View. He loves contributing to open source, open web standards, and generally making the web a friendlier, more useful place for everybody.
How will DevFest benefit developers?
KL DevFest is a great opportunity to learn more about Google technology and developer products. Developers, technology professionals and enthusiasts will be able to learn practical tips and best practices face to face with Google developer advocates & engineers. Participants will be able to meet experts in the industry and make relationships with other like-minded folks. They will see what technology companies like Google and other developers are currently doing in the industry.
Where can I sign up?
Registration is FREE and seats are limited to about 400 people. Developers, let's fill the auditorium and show Google some love & the might of Malaysian developers. Book your seats now!
This event is jointly organized by the awesome people from Google Developer Relations & GTUG Kuala Lumpur team. Email nazrul@gtugs.org for more details.
GTUG Kuala Lumpur Office Hours is a session to get advice & help from product experts in an intimate and informal setting. We're lucky to kickoff our first session by having Wesley Chun, a Developer Advocate from Google on June 13, 2010 at iTrain, Kuala Lumpur.
Wesley Chun is author of Prentice Hall's bestseller 'Core Python Programming', its video training course 'Python Fundamentals' and co-author of 'Python Web Development with Django'. He is a software architect and developer advocate at Google and runs a consulting business called CyberWeb. And you'll meet him at PyCon APAC 2010.
Here's the agenda:
1300 - Opening intro by Nazrul, GTUG KL Community Manager.
1315 - Office Hours with Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate from Google.
1530 - Breakout sessions
If you have questions to ask Wesley about App Engine or Python programming, submit them at Google Moderator: http://bit.ly/c2vrh5
Please RSVP your attendance to make sure there's enough seats. Here's the link: http://bit.ly/d0qhEY
See you there!
P/S: It's our 1st year anniversary! Wuhoooo! Thank you Google :)
Google I/O is near. Happening in less than 10 days, this year's conference will surely be a hit. Tickets sold out months before the actual closing date. With a variety of technical sessions, developer sandbox demos, Office Hours sessions with Googlers and many more.
To make it easy for those who didn't make it to (buy the tickets!) I/O, you can watch a live broadcast of the opening keynotes at the Google Developers channe on YouTube.
Day 1 keynote starts on Thursday, May 20th at 12:00AM.
Day 2 keynote starts on Thursday, May 20th (same day) at 11:30PM.
These times are according to Malaysia's standard time. You can read about the live broadcast schedule according to US-time. Don't forget to set your alarm & bookmark the YouTube channel!
The inaugural GTUGKL meetup for 2010 was held on 6th February 2010 at iTrain. The long awaited meetup saw familiar faces as well as a few who were first-timers.
We hope you enjoyed the show!
Now to those who missed it, here's a recap.
Our regular host for GTUG KL, Nazrul, introduced CodeAndroid Malaysia, a community for Android users & developers. And the best part, GTUG KL & CodeAndroid Malaysia will have joint meetups every month. We will see a lot more Android in future meetups.
We Code Android Code Android Malaysia is a local chapter from CodeAndroid.org, founded by Zi Yong and started in Singapore.
Local team here currently consists of following members.
Nazrul - Team Manager Marvin - Editorial Hongster - Application development, like making apps and coding Wen Jiun - Workshops & resources Bernie - Hardware & Devices
2010 Vision for CodeAndroid
South East Asia is an emerging market for Android. While Android is already very popular in the US and other countries, Asian countries were still dominated by iPhone and Blackberry. We see the potential growth for Android in the SE Asia market and we know it will be a dominant player soon.
It is our vision to gather more developers building on the Android platform and provide resources to them.
In the pipeline are also campus tours where CodeAndroid Malaysia team will be conducting Android workshops.
Android Apps Demonstration Wen Jiun demonstrated to everyone the CodeAndroid Malaysia community projects: Antollroid - by Hean Hong, KL Traffic Cam by Bernie, The Star Online by Marvin and 3D Geometry app by Wen Jiun himself.
Lightning talks Kegan who developed MalaysiaCrime.com is now working for YTL Communications and talked about myPrize, an initiative to invite the public to submit original ideas, software or devices for use on YTL's 4G network. And it comes with a USD$1 million bounty. That's right, that's more than RM 3.3 million in total up for grabs.
Kegan shared tips on how to win, and yes, we got them during the meetup. :-)
If you can't wait, checkout these tips too.
Mobile Content Challenge
Nazrul had been to Mobile Content Challenge and expressed surprise that most of the applications submitted are variations of J2ME apps and especially SMS centric.
The number of participants who know of Android is also very low. This is where CodeAndroid Malaysia will work on to raise awareness to Malaysian students.
Hacking Google EarthRazlan, also a regular to GTUG KL introduced his current project which is one that provides services in updating high resolution aerial images by utilizing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
RPG games on Android
Sonny, a games software developer shared his online RPG project which utilizes inline frames and invited developers to create a mobile version of the game.
The meetup ended around 5pm where everyone mingled around to share knowledge and talk about other geeky stuff. This is what we do during GTUG KL meetups and I must say, these people are cool people. :-)
Join us in our next meetup, tentatively scheduled for 13th March 2010, where the main focus will be on Google's Chromes Extension.
