Newsletter - February 2018

Android / Google Play

• Check out the preview of Android KTX - a set of extensions designed to make writing Kotlin code for Android more concise, idiomatic, and pleasant. The portion of Android KTX that covers the Android framework is now available in the Android GitHub repo .
  
• A new Google Play chatbot is available 24/7 to help you with the Google Play Console and developer policy questions. You can chat with the bot by sending @GooglePlayDev a direct message. We also offer regular support responses when you tweet us questions @GooglePlayDev using #AskPlayDev .
• Congrats to the winners of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe!

Firebase / Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

• Learn why you should consider writing your functions in TypeScript rather than JavaScript, and how to streamline your development when doing so.
  
• Games developer Rockbite used Predictions to grow revenue by ~25%.
• Securing your Realtime Database just got easier with query-based rules .

Web

• Watch all of the talks from this year's AMP Conf , including AMP stories and AMP in email.
  
• PageSpeed Insights will start using data from the Chrome User Experience Report to make better recommendations for developers and the optimization score has been tuned to be more aligned with real-world data.
  

Misc

• Launchpad hosted its newest Accelerator and Studio classes of startups in San Francisco for two weeks of workshops and 1:1 mentorship. Speakers and mentors included Dan Ariely, Peter Norvig, Eric Schmidt, Bradley Horowitz, and Sowmya Subramanian. Apply for future classes .
  
• TensorFlow 1.5 is now public! The developer preview of TensorFlow Lite, TensorFlow's lightweight solution for mobile and embedded devices, is built into this version.
  
• Missed DartConf 2018 ? Catch all the videos including live coding and lightning talks.
  
• Announcing Dart 2 ! It’s optimized for mobile and web development, and it’s compiled to native code and JavaScript, with new language features designed to make building and debugging Flutter apps even easier.
• Join the new Dialogflow Google+ community where you can connect with other developers and be the first to hear about product updates directly from the Dialogflow team.