BigQuery

Google has updated its BigQuery analytics engine with new features that include a new graphical user interface and new APIs.

Maps API applications can now offer users a tactile interactivity using the new Drawing Library. The Drawing Library provides a toolbox that enables users to draw markers, lines and shapes on the map, much as they would in any drawing application. The tools can be used for collecting annotations from users or for selecting regions to search or highlight.

Created by the Google Internationalization Engineering team, the sfntly Java and C++ library makes it easy for programmers to build high performance font manipulation applications and services. Now, both Java and C++ programmers can use sfntly to quickly develop code to read, edit, and subset OpenType and TrueType fonts. Sfntly is pronounced s-font-lē.

Version 3 of the Google Calendar API provides several improvements over previous versions of the API, including, lightweight resource representation in JSON, consistent and comprehensive reference documentation, better support for recurring events and the ability to manipulate default reminders on calendars.

When the Closure Tools were first released two years ago, Web developers could organize and optimize their JavaScript and HTML in a new way. But there was something missing—a tool to help manage CSS. Closure Stylesheets is an extension to CSS that adds variables, functions, conditionals and mix-ins to standard CSS. The tool also supports minification, linting, RTL flipping and CSS class renaming.

Google gave Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE), including GWT Designer, to the open-source community under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) v1.0. GPE is a set of software development tools that enables Java developers to quickly design, build, optimize and deploy cloud-based applications using the Google Web Toolkit, Speed Tracer, App Engine and other Google Cloud services.

Google is offering a Swiffy Extension for Flash Professional, which lets developers convert their animation to HTML5 with one click or keyboard shortcut. The extension is available for both Mac and Windows, and it uses Swiffy as a Web service. Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing developers to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads).

The updated Native Development Kit (NDK) lets developers who are using native code get started with the new native APIs available in Android 4.0. Android NDK r7 includes a number of build system improvements and bug fixes, but it gives developers access to two new sets of APIs. The first is a low-level streaming multimedia API based on Khronos OpenMAX AL 1.0.1, which provides a direct path for low-level streaming multimedia. Its ideal for applications that need to maintain complete control over media data before passing it to the platform for presentation. The other is Audio Decoding into PCM: Extensions to the existing native audio API based on Khronos OpenSL ES.