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Monkey Project is an open source organization that focuses on the development of web backend technologies with products such as Monkey HTTP Server: a fast and lightweight HTTP Server for Linux and Embedded Linux, and Duda I/O: an event-driven and scalable web services framework in C.

This is our second year participating as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code program and this year we were given four student slots. During the evaluation period we chose the students not just by their technical skills, but also their motivation, previous contribution with the organization, capacity to learn and ability to adapt to change.

After months of hard work, all students accomplished their main goals and they worked very hard to learn networking programming and different areas of the architecture of our HTTP server. Below are descriptions of the four projects our students worked on this summer.

 – Monkey Architecture changes (Future Monkey proof for new protocols): Monkey HTTP Server is an event driven web server with a strong focus in Linux and its current architecture allows to extend the core features through plugins. But with the incoming improved protocols such as SPDY and HTTP/2.0, it requires a major refactoring to support multiple protocol layers in the proper way to avoid sacrifice performance. On this project, Sonny Karlsson is busy working on refactoring the plugin API and different scheduler mechanisms, the work completed is very promising and will be merged with mainline code shortly.

 – Monkey Caching plugin: the Monkey server is very fast but it can still perform better by reducing some I/O, so this summer we received a good proposal to add caching support to the server through the plugin interface. Hamza Zia did research and tested different caching mechanisms and has already implemented the first caching prototype which is showing good performance improvements.

- Monkey Proxy Reverse plugin: a HTTP server not only needs to serve static content, it is mostly a proxy for different resources. This project aims to create a Proxy Reverse plugin with different balancing algorithms to add a security layer in front of backend servers and redirect requests per different configuration schemas. Nikola Nikov has implemented all required components to accomplish this goal, the plugin is in a good state and already functional for testing purposes.

 – Duda I/O – MariaDB/MySQL and PostgreSQL support: Duda I/O is a web services framework built on top of Monkey, it is an event driven extensible stack in C for high performance web applications. This goal of this project is the creation of two packages to add support for asynchronous connectivity to MariaDB/MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. Zeying Xie has done a very good job adding support for the relational databases mentioned. Now we support NoSQL and common DBs.

It is very important to us to keep our organization and community informed about “how” and “what” is being done by our students through the Google Summer of Code program. If you are interested in more technical details about each project, we invite you to follow the blogs (linked to the student’s names above) that are updated on a weekly basis.

By Eduardo Silva, Monkey Project – Google Summer of Code Organization Administrator

When it comes to reaching women in technology, there is absolutely no better forum than the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference. This conference has it all — breaking down stereotypes and celebrating the accomplishments of women in the field of computer science, providing an avenue for collaboration and information exchange, encouraging female role models and mentoring, and building great networking opportunities. Google has, and will continue to be, a proud supporter of the conference because of its firm belief in celebrating women in computing and empowering the next generation of female tech leaders.

Next week, the event will take place over four days from October 2nd-5th at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minnesota. This year’s theme for the conference is “Think Big, Drive Forward”, and while Google is certainly no stranger to the notion of moon shots, we know that this year is bound to have even bigger ideas and surprises in store than we can imagine.

If you plan on attending, we would love for you to come visit our booth (#507) to chat with Googlers, grab some swag, and take pictures at our photo booth. Join our Google+ Event to see what we’re up to and share interesting moments with us – don’t forget to use the #ghc2013 hashtag!

We’ll also be hosting the following demos in our booth (#507):

Exploring ways to make CS fun with Google Research
Wednesday, 10/2 4:00pm – 6:00pm

Morphing the Turf: Computer Science Education
Thursday, 10/3 1:00pm – 3:00pm

Outside of the booth, Googlers are hosting a variety of different sessions at the conference on technical topics, professional development and everything in between! We encourage you to stop by and hear from our speakers.

Lightning Talks (Mobile Experiences Track)
Designing Accessible Mobile Applications
Thursday 10/3 2:15pm – 3:30pm @ MCC 200 A-C
Presenters: Sonia Sharma (Google)

Multiple Presentations (API’s and Software Process)
Writing Code for the Long Haul: Four industry skills you (probably) won’t learn in school
Thursday, 10/3 3:45pm – 4:45pm @ MCC Auditorium Room 3
Presenters: Becky Willrich (Google)

Velocity vs Quality
Thursday, 10/3 5:15pm – 6:15pm @ MCC Auditorium Room 3
Moderator: Fiona Condon (Etsy)
Panelists: Surabhi Gupta (Google), Neha Shevade (Trulia), Ketaki Deo (Pulse), Anupreet Walia (Adobe)

Is it possible to work for life rather than live for work?
Thursday, 10/3 5:15pm – 6:15pm @ MCC Auditorium Room 2
Moderator: Carol Muller (Stanford University)
Presenters: Umit Yalcinalp (MyAppellation.com), Beryl Nelson (Google), Brian Pawlowski (NetApp), Jody Greenstone MIller (Business Talent Group)

Lightning Talks (Career) – Nailing Your Technical Interview
Friday, 10/4 11:45am – 12:45pm @ MCC Auditorium Room 2
Presenters: Sabrina B. Williams (Google)

Multiple Presentations (Software Applications & Futures)
The Role of Internet Technology in Humanitarian Disaster Response
Friday, 10/4 5:15pm – 6:16pm @ MCC 101 H-J
Presenters: Raquel Romano (Google)

Please check out the Conference Program Visual for the full agenda. We hope to see many of you there!

Posted by My-Linh Le, Tech Student Engagement

Posted by Hak Matsuda and Dirk Dougherty, Android Developer Relations team

If you develop a performance-intensive 3D game, you’re always looking for ways to give users richer graphics, higher frame rates, and better responsiveness. You also want to conserve the user’s battery and keep the device from getting too warm during play. To help you optimize in all of these areas, consider taking advantage of the hardware scaler that’s available on almost all Android devices in the market today.

How it works and why you should use it

Virtually all modern Android devices use a CPU/GPU chipset that includes a hardware video scaler. Android provides the higher-level integration and makes the scaler available to apps through standard Android APIs, from Java or native (C++) code. To take advantage of the hardware scaler, all you have to do is render to a fixed-size graphics buffer, rather than using the system-provided default buffers, which are sized to the device’s full screen resolution.

When you render to a fixed-size buffer, the device hardware does the work of scaling your scene up (or down) to match the device’s screen resolution, including making any adjustments to aspect ratio. Typically, you would create a fixed-size buffer that’s smaller than the device’s full screen resolution, which lets you render more efficiently — especially on today’s high-resolution screens.

Using the hardware scaler is more efficient for several reasons. First, hardware scalers are extremely fast and can produce great visual results through multi-tap and other algorithms that reduce artifacts. Second, because your app is rendering to a smaller buffer, the computation load on the GPU is reduced and performance improves. Third, with less computation work to do, the GPU runs cooler and uses less battery. And finally, you can choose what size rendering buffer you want to use, and that buffer can be the same on all devices, regardless of the actual screen resolution.

Optimizing the fill rate

In a mobile GPU, the pixel fill rate is one of the major sources of performance bottlenecks for performance game applications. With newer phones and tablets offering higher and higher screen resolutions, rendering your 2D or 3D graphics on those those devices can significantly reduce your frame rate. The GPU hits its maximum fill rate, and with so many pixels to fill, your frame rate drops.

Power consumed in the GPU at different rendering resolutions, across several popular chipsets in use on Android devices. (Data provided by Qualcomm).

To avoid these bottlenecks, you need to reduce the number of pixels that your game is drawing in each frame. There are several techniques for achieving that, such as using depth-prepass optimizations and others, but a really simple and effective way is making use of the hardware scaler.

Instead of rendering to a full-size buffer that could be as large as 2560×1600, your game can instead render to a smaller buffer — for example 1280×720 or 1920×1080 — and let the hardware scaler expand your scene without any additional cost and minimal loss in visual quality.

Reducing power consumption and thermal effects

A performance-intensive game can tend to consume too much battery and generate too much heat. The game’s power consumption and thermal conditions are important to users, and they are important considerations to developers as well.

As shown in the diagram, the power consumed in the device GPU increases significantly as rendering resolution rises. In most cases, any heavy use of power in GPU will end up reducing battery life in the device.

In addition, as CPU/GPU rendering load increases, heat is generated that can make the device uncomfortable to hold. The heat can even trigger CPU/GPU speed adjustments designed to cool the CPU/GPU, and these in turn can throttle the processing power that’s available to your game.

For both minimizing power consumption and thermal effects, using the hardware scaler can be very useful. Because you are rendering to a smaller buffer, the GPU spends less energy rendering and generates less heat.

Accessing the hardware scaler from Android APIs

Android gives you easy access to the hardware scaler through standard APIs, available from your Java code or from your native (C++) code through the Android NDK.

All you need to do is use the APIs to create a fixed-size buffer and render into it. You don’t need to consider the actual size of the device screen, however in cases where you want to preserve the original aspect ratio, you can either match the aspect ratio of the buffer to that of the screen, or you can adjust your rendering into the buffer.

From your Java code, you access the scaler through SurfaceView, introduced in API level 1. Here’s how you would create a fixed-size buffer at 1280×720 resolution:

surfaceView = new GLSurfaceView(this);
surfaceView.getHolder().setFixedSize(1280, 720);

If you want to use the scaler from native code, you can do so through the NativeActivity class, introduced in Android 2.3 (API level 9). Here’s how you would create a fixed-size buffer at 1280×720 resolution using NativeActivity:

int32_t ret = ANativeWindow_setBuffersGeometry(window, 1280, 720, 0);

By specifying a size for the buffer, the hardware scaler is enabled and you benefit in your rendering to the specified window.

Choosing a size for your graphics buffer

If you will use a fixed-size graphics buffer, it’s important to choose a size that balances visual quality across targeted devices with performance and efficiency gains.

For most performance 3D games that use the hardware scaler, the recommended size for rendering is 1080p. As illustrated in the diagram, 1080p is a sweet spot that balances a visual quality, frame rate, and power consumption. If you are satisfied with 720p, of course you can use that size for even more efficient operations.

More information

If you’d like to take advantage of the hardware scaler in your app, take a look at the class documentation for SurfaceView or NativeActivity, depending on whether you are rendering through the Android framework or native APIs.

Watch for sample code on using the hardware scaler coming soon!

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Posted by Yang Li, Research Scientist, Google Research

Previously, we presented Deep Shot, a system that allows a user to “capture” an application (such as Google Maps) running on a remote computer monitor via a smartphone camera and bring the application on the go. Today, we’d like to discuss how we support the opposite process, i.e., transferring mobile content to a remote display, again using the smartphone camera.

Although the computing power of today’s mobile devices grows at an accelerated rate, the form factor of these devices remains small, which constrains both the input and output bandwidth for mobile interaction. To address this issue, we investigated how to enable users to leverage nearby IO resources to operate their mobile devices. As part of the effort, we developed Open Project, an end-to-end framework that allows a user to “project” a native mobile application onto an arbitrary display using a smartphone camera, leveraging interaction spaces and input modality of the display. The display can range from a PC or laptop monitor, to a home Internet TV and to a public wall-sized display. Via an intuitive, projection-based metaphor, a user can easily share a mobile application by projecting it onto a target display.

Open Project is an open, scalable, web-based framework for enabling mobile sharing and collaboration. It can turn any computer display projectable instantaneously and without deployment. Developers can add support for Open Project in native mobile apps by simply linking a library, requiring no additional hardware or sensors. Our user participants responded highly positively to Open Project-enabled applications for mobile sharing and collaboration.

At CERN, the European particle physics laboratory based in the suburbs of Geneva, some of the world’s best physicists and engineers are using advanced particle accelerators to help solve age old questions about the universe — What is is made of? How did it start?

We’re delighted that CERN opened its doors to Google Maps Street View allowing anyone, anywhere in the world to take a peek into its laboratories, control centers and its myriad underground tunnels housing cutting-edge experiments. Street View also lets scientists working on the experiments, who may be on the other side of the world, explore the equipment they’re using.

For two full weeks back in 2011, members of our Street View team from Google’s Zurich office worked with our CERN partners to capture this incredible imagery. You can check out the above experiments, like ATLAS, ALICE, CMS, LHCb and the Large Hadron Collider tunnel in Google Maps, as well as collections of other Street View imagery from amazing sites around the world, on our Views site.

You can also learn more about CERN by following its Google+ page.

Posted by Pascale Milite, Google Street View operations

Ever wondered what it’s like to provide IT support to one of the world’s largest tech companies? Read on for a look into a day in the lives of two of Google’s Information Technology Residents, Jesus Lugo and Lisa Mauck. These IT ninjas have been trotting the globe to provide Googlers with exceptional IT support.

Hi there! My name is Jesus Lugo and I was born in Ciudad Ojeda, Venezuela, and moved to the US when I was 10 years old. I joined the Marine Corp after high school and received my associate’s degree from Miami Dade College and my bachelor’s degree from Florida International University after finishing my active duty service. Before joining the IT Residency Program, I worked as a remote services technician and as a customer engineer. At Google, I spend most days working at a Techstop in Mountain View, CA, where Googlers go for technical assistance. We’re committed to solving any issue that comes our way – troubleshooting laptops, phones, desktops – and getting Googlers back to work as quickly as possible. I recently traveled to Dublin, Ireland, for my three-month IT rotation. Check out a day in my life while on assignment abroad:

Here I am, at the Techstop in Google’s Dublin office. I’m working on a project to customize a mini computer for Googlers to badge-in to Techstops, which reduces setup time and the cost of the hardware. These units are also slightly bigger than a deck of cards, have wifi, and can be run from a battery, so they can be mounted anywhere. It’s cool to work on a project that has an impact on my team’s workload and physical space.

Dublin has hosted a number of IT Residents over the past few years. They held a welcome event when I arrived, which included a walking tour of this historic city.

Each Techstop is different. This one in Dublin has a variety of “amenities” that make it unique – from its psychedelic decor to its impressive collection of Lego creations, including Pac Man, Zelda’s Link, and a set of Imperial Star Destroyers. The layout also allows for all the techs to face each other to further promote collaboration.

While on rotation in Dublin, I was afforded the opportunity to travel to other offices in Europe to provide remote support. I got to visit Prague, the Czech Republic, and Wroclaw, Poland. Touring the Prague Castle was a definite highlight!

Check out this rest and relaxation room in Google’s Prague office. These spots can be found at nearly all Google offices and are loaded with books, video game consoles, arcades, and musical instruments. Most of the Googlers in this office can play an instrument seen here. They even have their own band!

Engineering at Google takes many forms. Here, I’m engineering a stand for a hoola hoop in preparation for our challenge in the Engineering Crawl Event. The event consists of mini challenges created by the different engineering teams in Dublin, like: trace-routing your way across the world; achieving the highest score in Donkey Kong; making the best tinfoil hat; building the tallest tower out of toothpicks and blue tack; and our very own Helicopter Lego Obstacle Course!

This small cache of plastic weapons is often used as a team-building activity. We split all participants into color-coded teams and break into an all-out war. After the battle is over, we usually clean up the dart mess over pizza or barbecue and refreshments.

Hey students! My name is Lisa Mauck and I‘m from a small town in Michigan where there’s exactly one stop light. Relocating to Ann Arbor for the IT Residency Program was a big culture shock (in a good way!). Prior to Google, I received my bachelor’s degree from the ITT Technical Institute, and worked for a small software company as an IT technician/project coordinator. Working at Google has been an amazing experience! I’ve had the opportunity to travel to Sydney, Australia, for three weeks to work with Google’s IT team there. By far, the best perk at Google is the great people that I get to work with – from my colleagues in Sydney to those in Ann Arbor, Mountain View, and NYC. We all share a passion for working with the latest technologies and helping our end users. I hope that you enjoy some snapshots of my adventures – domestic and abroad!

That’s me! I’m at my desk in Ann Arbor, working with the team to support Googlers worldwide. I typically start my day by updating any open tickets and keeping an eye out for urgent requests. Then I check in on which role I’m assigned to that day: chats, tickets, phone, quality assurance, or projects. I love the variability of the role – it keeps things exciting!

We like to test our flying abilities when we aren’t busy having a nerf fight assisting users! You get kudos on our team if you can keep the helicopter from crash landing.

Meet some more members of the IT Residency team in Ann Arbor! We typically spend our lunches together, which makes us feel like a family. Once a week, we also attend a CCNA class together that my team in Ann Arbor started. We’re hoping to become CCNA certified.

The Google patio is pretty iconic. I tend to come out here a lot when I’m doing project-based work. Currently, I’m “dogfooding” Google’s different remote tools by comparing how they work across platforms. I then document my findings and communicate them to the appropriate teams.

Outside of providing exceptional service to Googlers, the team also arranges what we call “Jedi talks.” A few times a month, we schedule a talk led by an IT Resident about a subject that they’re knowledgeable in. Similarly, other teams deliver monthly tech talks to our team. I try to take advantage of a lot of these opportunities at Google for peer learning.

Check out this view from the office that I’m working at in Sydney, Australia, overlooking the harbour. Team members here take turns rotating weekly into the Techstop to handle in-person support issues. We also benefit from sitting close by the Google+ software engineers and the gTech team, who help us work through more escalated cases.

The view from inside isn’t so bad either! At the Google Sydney office, they bring the sea life to you! Okay, back to work – the tickets in my queue need some attention, too!

If you’re also a techie at heart, who loves to play, tinker, break and fix, then consider applying for Google’s Information Technology Residency Program! Check out this video to learn more about the role. Seniors with at least one year of IT support experience are encouraged to apply at: google.com/jobs/students/ITRP.

Posted by Natalie Van Kleef, Tech Student Engagement team