Wednesday, May 18, 2011

GTUG KL Office Hours with Vinoaj Vijeyakumar


Photo courtesy of iTrain

On May 3 2011, Vinoaj Vijeyakumar, a Googler from Google Singapore headquarters dropped by Kuala Lumpur and hosted a meetup with the community from Kuala Lumpur GTUG. He shared with us tips and tricks on how to fully utilize Google Analytics for web and mobile applications.

Here are some notes on his presentation:

  • Use Goals to analyse your users engagement with your website, web app and mobile application.
  • Use Event Tracking to track your users' behavior and improve on your website, web app and mobile application user experience.
  • Google Analytics for Mobile is important for Android application developers.

You can follow along his presentation slide below.

I hope for the next Office Hours meetup, Vinoaj would tell us some dirty secrets on how to use Website Optimizer tools. Thanks for coming by Vinny!

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Google I/O Extended is 3 days away!

We're coming close to Google I/O 2011, and GTUG Kuala Lumpur is glad to be hosting the I/O Extended event happening on May 10, 2011. It's part viewing party, part commune event for developers and people who are deeply interested in Google technologies and developer APIs. You'll be mingling with other developers from the community and will be watching the opening keynote live from Moscone West Center, San Francisco by Vic Gondutra from Google.

Here's the full agenda of I/O Extended KL.

11:00 PM on May 10, 2011 - Arrival of developers.
11:50 PM on May 10, 2001 - Opening address by GTUG Kuala Lumpur.
11:59 PM on May 10, 2011 - Special appearance.
00:00 AM on May 11, 2011 - Livestream of opening keynote from Google I/O.
01:30 AM on May 11, 2011 - Breakout sessions.

Location of I/O Extended

iTrain, 7th Floor,
Block E, Megan Avenue 1,
189 Jalan Tun Razak,
50400 Kuala Lumpur. (click here for map)

How to get there: Take the LRT and alight at Ampang Park station. Walk towards Bank of China building and Megan Avenue is right behind the building.

Share the love

When you're at the I/O Extended, please take photos and share with the world by using the Twitter hashtag #ioxkl! Don't forget to email me your photos if you're too shy :)

I understand that some of you will be travelling via public transportation, and since the nature of this event will be at midnight, I personally encourage those who have transportation (driving a car) would offer a ride to those that don't have their own mode of transportation. Pay it forward.

See you at I/O!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

We have a venue! #ioxKL

Choosing a location is not easy. You have to consider a lot of things, but 1 major important criteria is the internet speed. After deliberating a few locations in Kuala Lumpur, I've finally come to terms by choosing iTrain as the venue of choice for this inaugural "live" event. They have speedy internets!

iTrain, 7th Floor,
Block E, Megan Avenue 1,
189 Jalan Tun Razak,
50400 Kuala Lumpur.

iTrain has been our supporter from day one of inception and together we've come up with various training programs on Google technologies, notably Android application development training for beginners, intermediate & advance. If you're interested, lookout for Mike (also known as Bikesh) at the event.

How to get there

Take the LRT and alight at Ampang Park station. Walk towards to Bank of China and Megan Avenue is right behind the building.

Here's a brief agenda of what's going to happen at the event on 10th May 2011.

2300hrs: Arrival of attendees. When you arrive, make yourself comfortable, find a seat, open up your laptop and share with everyone on what you're up to!
2350hrs: Opening I/O Extended keynote from a special guest.
0000hrs: Live streaming from Moscone West Convention Center, San Francisco.
0130hrs: Breakout.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me prior to the event. When you're at the I/O Extended, please take photos and share with the world by using the Twitter hashtag #ioxkl! Don't forget to email me your photos if you're too shy :)

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Join the fun at Google I/O Extended in Kuala Lumpur

This year is yet another record breaking for Google I/O: Tickets were sold out in 59 minutes! So, for those who couldn't make it for Google I/O (that includes myself), the awesome people from Google Developer Relations team has agreed to work together with GTUGs worldwide to organize Google I/O Extended.

What is Google I/O Extended? It's part viewing party, part commune event for developers and people who are deeply interested in Google technologies and developer APIs. You get to mingle with the coolest developers from all around Malaysia (and Singapore apparently), share ideas and thoughts with each other, and most importantly, together we will be watching the live keynote from Moscone West, San Francisco, USA. Expect to hear something really good from Vic Gondutra, VP of Engineering from Google.

Here's the current itinerary for the event:

  • Where: Location to be confirmed. I will send the exact location to your email.
  • When: Live keynote will start at 00:00 hours on 11th May 2010. It will end at 01:30 hours.

Snacks will be served during the whole event. I will update attendees via email provided during registration.

Register here to book your place. If you can't make it, please let me know. I'd like to make sure everybody gets a chance to join in the fun.

P/S: If you can show me your latest project (or side project) using Google developer APIs, you might walk away with something very cool! Show me the apps!

Monday, January 31, 2011

GTUG KL in 2010.

Usually you'll get this kind of reporting at the early of the year. But it took me some time to make time to go back & follow up on what has been happening in the year 2010 for the GTUG Kuala Lumpur community.

2010 was the year of the Android. Together with the core team members of CodeAndroid Malaysia, we've been working really hard to promote and build up the developer community for the Android platform. But that is for another blog post. Now, let's have a recap on what happened last year.

6 February 2010.

Our first meetup of the year. At this meetup, we introduced CodeAndroid Malaysia and their line of Android applications developed by the core team members. CodeAndroid Malaysia objectives for 2010 is pull in more interest in Android applications development. We've said that we will put more effort in growing awareness and most importantly knowledge in Android development. Here's what we've reached so far in 2010:

20 March 2010.

Chrome extensions mini hackathon. Presented a tutorial on how to create an extension for the Google Chrome browser. What did we get? A Google Chrome extension for DevFest developed by Leonard Lee, a GTUG KL community member. Wuhoo!

13 June 2010.

Our first Office Hours session with Wesley Chun, a visiting Googler from Mountain View, California. A number of Python developers from Malaysia attended this event and Wesley was more than glad to bounce questions & answers with them. We're looking to invite more Googlers to come to Kuala Lumpur and connect with the local community!

16 July 2010.

Google DevFest Kuala Lumpur. The mother of all GTUG KL meetups (as tweeted by our friend, @sweemeng). Over 300 developers attended this event and was awed by presentations from the Google Developer Relations team. Daniels Lee on Google Maps, Google Places and how to find coffee; the dynamic duo Timothy Jordan & Bob Aman on Google Buzz and the Open Web; Patrick Chanezon on Google Predictions API & App Engine. We took this chance to highlight some of the best work from Malaysia as well.

Reza from Terato Tech presented Undies, an iPhone application to find out what kind of underwear people around you are wearing; Leonard Lee shared his experience about developing the Chrome extension for DevFest 2010.

18 September 2010.

A 1 hour tutorial on how to prepare existing or new web applications (and websites in many regards) for the upcoming Google Chrome Web Store. Showcased in this meetup was a webapp called TimeToBuka. TimeToBuka is a simple webapp for Muslims in Malaysia & Singapore to check for breaking fast times. It was built on App Engine using Google Spreadsheet as the database & a little bit of jQuery to make it work. It's HTML(5) compliant and is available on the Chrome Web Store. At Barcamp Bangkok this year, I presented an overview on how I used different technologies to build this webapp in 4 days.

16 October 2010.

Swee Meng, GTUG KL community member, organised a meetup at HackerspaceKL with Graham Dumpleton, the creator of mod_wsgi for Python.

12 October 2010.

Timothy Jordan was in town again and wanted to meetup with developers. Instead, he got a classroom of students and lecturers from Multimedia University in Cyberjaya, conversing with him about the Open Web. This meetup was organised by Ikhwan, a GTUG KL community member.

That was last year. So what's coming for this year? This year will be a continuing focus on Android. CodeAndroid Malaysia has gone places last year and will continue to do so this year. We're also planning to have more mini (and large) scale hackathons and showcase applications developed using Google technologies. And one lesson that we've learned is to organize a meetup at least a month before. No more last minute planning!

If you have suggestions on what kind of Google technologies you would like to learn, which Googlers you want to meet, email your suggestions to nazrul at gtugs dot org.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

A honeycombed Google Code periodic table

Google Code released this periodic view of all the available developer APIs from Google. It's a really cool visual representation in a form that's familiar to geeks. When you hover over the Android (or Mobile) icon, you'll get to see the related APIs in the same category.

Got this tip from @ropu, a software engineer from Argentina. He was a presenter at the first Google DevFest in Singapore a few years back.

Honeycomb Preview SDK released.

In other news, the Android team has released a preview SDK for Honeycomb! Hurrah! Now developers can start building (or porting) new or existing apps for the tablet format. Apparently, any applications developed from this preview release won't be able to make it to the Market just yet. However, developers will have the chance to prepare themselves and their apps when it's officially released. You can start reading about the new SDK and fire up your Eclipse to download that honey. It's the beez knees!

Monday, October 11, 2010

Meet Timothy Jordan and "The New Social Web" at MMU Cyberjaya

Picture of Timothy Jordan, Google

Timothy Jordan from Google's Mountain View office is in town and will be meeting up with students, academicians & developers to talk about the new social web and how open standards like oAuth, PubSubHubub and you (yes you!) can take the bold steps in pursuing that change.

Venue: MMU Cyberjaya, Room DR0002, Lower Ground Floor, Faculty of Creative Multimedia (FCM)
Time: 2pm - 4pm
Date: 12 October 2010

This talk is also open for the general public.

A little bit of background about Timothy.

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. In his spare time he runs half marathons and announces for the Santa Cruz Derby Girls, the Silicon Valley Roller Girls, and any other Roller Derby team that asks. As an engineer he enjoys solving problems for the benefit of fellow humans. As an artist he enjoys the search for truth and beauty.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Meet Graham Dumpleton of mod_wsgi Python

Photo of Graham Dumpleton

Graham Dumpleton is a Python developer from Sydney, Australia. He's the creator of mod_wsgi, which allows enables Apache-based server to host any Python application that supports the Python WSGI interface.

He's in KL for vacation and Swee Meng from HackerspaceKL is organising a meetup for Graham wth the local Python developer community. Details for the event:

Date: 16th October 2010
Time: 2.00 PM
Location: HackerspaceKL, 21B, Jalan SS21/1A, Damansara Uptown, Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya.

Tip: Look for Paparich & Wondermilk. HackerspaceKL is in between.

Come and join the HackerspaceKL crew for some Python fun!

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Time To Buka Puasa now comes with local shopping promotions near YOU!

After a few iterations & code refactoring, I hereby release version 2.5 of Time To Buka Puasa. Time To Buka Puasa is a HTML5 app that allows you to check local times for breaking fast (iftar) and Imsak during the holy month of Ramadhan. A new feature for this release is the integration with Chlkboard, a hyperlocal mobile advertising network for retailers. However, Chlkboard promotions is only available in Singapore for the time being. So if you're a Muslim Singaporean or living in Singapore, you can quickly check for the closest & the best shopping promotions from retailers near you, while having your meal during iftar. Handy isn't it?

I'm looking forward to support Malaysian retailers for Ramadhan next year. Wuhoo!