Abuja JUG & GTUG Sync Android SSA Event

The Abuja Java User Group (JUG) and GTUG co-hosted the Android Developer Challenge on 3oth April 2011.

Check out the event pics here.

Public Wave For Abuja GTUG

During the just concluded IO conference, Google has made 'Google Wave' public so anyone can now sign up at http://wave.google.com .

Below is a public Wave I created for the Abuja GTUG so we can collaborate and discuss about the group.

Make sure you get your own Wave account now and start waving. When you get your account you can access the Abuja GTUG Wave by searching for the Wave using this ID: w+NE6wQ8UdB

Wish you happy waving :)

Abuja GTUG Meeting #3 (Google Visualization + Maps API)

When you want to build a web application with chart functionality, such that your data source can be represented in different charts (Bar, Pie, Table, etc) by changing just a line of code, or use different sources from database to spreadsheet or dynamically created data as your data source, your biggest question would be what charting tool am I going to use.

This question was answered by Farouk Alogba in the third event of the Abuja GTUG held on 1st May 2010.

In the first session of the event, Farouk discussed on all the nuts and bolts of the Google Visualization API. He explained on how to use the API in your web application, configure your datasource for presentation and how to create Gadgets for your charts. To cap it all, he gave a demo on a live application he created using the Google Visualization API. Find more details
from the slides below.



In the second session I gave a brief introduction on the Maps API and how to create and customize your own maps for your applications.


[Event Pics]

Meeting #2 - (GWT and Google App Engine)

The second event for the Abuja GTUG took place today, 13th March.
The event was made up of two sessions. In the first session I discussed on building Ajax apps using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). General introduction to Ajax and GWT was given and a demo on how to create GWT apps using Eclipse was shown.

The second session discussed on building cloud applications on App Engine. Google App Engine's overview was given pointing out the benefits that can be leveraged upon with App Engine including ease of development, achieving large scalable applications on Google's infrastructure, and getting up to 5 million page views/month for free.

In order to give a comprehensive demo on GWT and Goolge App Engine, I implemented a TwitterYoutube App, motivated by Chewy Trewhella's demo during the G-Nigeria Day 2010.

His demo which was built in Python, gets the trending topics on Twitter, then searches for Youtube videos related to the first trending topic and displays the videos. The TwitterYoutube App does similar thing and gets the first 10 trending topics on Twitter (excluding hashtags), search for Youtube videos related to a particular trending topic and displays 1st 10 videos of the search.

Twitter4j API and Google Data API (for Java) were used to search for Twitter trending topics and Youtube videos respectively. The client and server side communication was easily achieved using GWT Remote Procedure Call (RPC). The application is hosted on Google App Engine and is live at this url: http://www.abujagtug.appspot.com.

You can find the complete Eclipse project for the TwitterYoutube app here. You can also get the presentation slides below:

1) Developing Ajax Apps With Google Web Toolkit (GWT)
2) Moving to the Cloud With Google App Engine

[Event Pics]

Google Code Jam Africa

The Google Code Jam is one of the best avenues for understanding the real concept of Computer Science, particularly Data Structures and Algorithm. It is an international programming competition hosted and administered by Google.

Contestants get the opportunity to solve a set of algorithmic problems similar to real life programming challenges thus improving their problem solving methodology.

However, this opportunity is not utilized in Nigeria and Africa in general. In Google Code Jam 2009 there were only 4 Nigerian participants; but I believe there are lot of competent CS students and programmers that would perform wonderfully.

Today Google announced the Google Code Jam Africa where coders around the continent would test their skills, win prizes and increase their chances of doing an internship with Google. This is a very good opportunity that should not be missed.

In the competition, any programming language can be used; everyone has a good reason to participate therefore.

You can start practicing from previous Google Code Jams to get the feel of what it's all about. TopCoder's tutorial on algorithm is also a very good resource to get you equipped.

Read more from the Google Africa Blog.

G-Nigeria Day 2010

The G-Nigeria Day 2010 is in its 3rd day. Today is for the Computer Science students and is focused on Software and Tools. Google Technologies ranging from Google Maps, App Engine, Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and Gadgets are part of today's discussions. CS students have been very exciting and the sessions are interactive with lot of questions.

Yesterday, the focus was on Marketing Professionals and Entrepreneurs. The sessions began on how to advertise and make money using Google Adwords and Adsense with a successful story of a Nigerian Entrepreneur who emptied her annual inventory in just 2 months after using Google Adwords. Tracking your website to measure its performance and improve on the traffic is very relevant for your business; that's what the Google Analytics session discussed about.

The first day was for Developers which also discussed on Google technologies from Maps, App Engine, GWT and lots more.

Google is now focusing on Africa with the objective of improving the ICT and providing better opportunities for the continent. G-Nigeria Day is one of those initiatives.

Google technologies and their free and open source APIs is a big opportunity for the region as well. Get started from www.code.google.com to leverage on these opportunities.

You can also join any Google Technology User Group (GTUG) around you to learn more and stay informed about Google Technologies. Currently there are two GTUGs in Nigeria that you may join: Lagos-GTUG and Abuja-GTUG.

Event Pics

First Meeting - Introducing Google Technologies

The Abuja GTUG held it's first physical meeting on 13th February at Abuja International Conference Center with 10 people in attendance. The agenda of the meeting was on Google Technologies overview, what they offer and how to leverage on them to build large scale applications with minimum effort, resources and time.

In the first part of the meeting, Faiz Bashir discussed on some of the Google Technologies including Google Maps API, GViz API, Youtube APIs, Google Web Toolkit and lots more.

To give a more comprehensive overview and real example of large scale application built with Google Technologies, the second part of the meeting showed a video from Google I/O 2009, Building Applications with Google APIs by Ray Cromwell. The video is embedded below.







Event Pics