google

The LLM revolution

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged ai google llama meta openai on by
I took this photo of three Llamas in Machu Picchu some years ago…

ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, and it changed our world as we knew it. Since then, Large Language Models (LLMs) have integrated into our daily workflows enhancing our productivity and the quality of our work.

Another interesting milestone happened in February 2023, when Meta released the Llama LLM under a noncommercial license:

https://llama.meta.com

This sparked the enthusiasm among numerous developers dedicated to advancing LLMs, leading to a increase in collaborative efforts and innovation within the field. A good example is the Hugging Face Model Hub where new models are constantly published:

https://huggingface.co/models

Developers started creating improved models and optimizing performance for local execution of LLMs on consumer-grade hardware.

Llama.cpp is a port of Llama to C++, started in March 2023 with a strong emphasis on performance and portability. It includes a web server and an API:

https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp

Mistral 7B was released in October 2023, achieving better performance than larger Llama models and demonstrating the effectiveness of LLMs in compressing knowledge.:

https://huggingface.co/papers/2310.06825

And now it’s easier than ever to locally execute LLMs, especially since November 2023, with the Llamafile project that packs Llama.cpp and a full LLM into a multi-OS single executable file:

https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile

The llama.cpp web interface running Mistral 7B Instruct in local via a llamafile

It’s even possible to run LLMs in a Raspberry Pi 4, like the TinyLlama-1.1B used from a llamafile in this project:

https://github.com/nickbild/local_llm_assistant

And about using LLMs for code generation (Github’s Copilot has been available since 2021), there are IntelliJ plugins like CodeGPT (with its first release in February 2023) that now allows you to run the code generation against a local LLM (running under llama.cpp):

https://github.com/carlrobertoh/CodeGPT

Google is a bit late to the party. In December 2023 they announced Gemini. In February 2024, they launched the Gemma open models, based on the same technology than Gemini:

https://blog.google/technology/developers/gemma-open-models

They also released a gemma.cpp inference engine:

https://github.com/google/gemma.cpp

And finally, if you are lost among so many LLM models, an interesting resource is the Chatbot Arena, released in August 2023. It allows humans to compare the results from different LLMs, keeping a leaderboard with chess-like ELO ratings:

https://chat.lmsys.org

And according to this leaderboard, at the moment GPT-4 is still the king.

Cambios en el IVA para las ventas en Google Play

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android google legal on by
euro

A partir del 1 de enero de 2015 entran en vigor nuevas reglas de IVA para la prestación de servicios TRE (Telecomunicaciones, Radiodifusión y TV, y Electrónicos) en la Unión Europea y afecta a las ventas de apps en Google Play. Anteriormente a las apps se les aplicaba en Europa el IVA del país desde el que eran vendidas, pero ahora se les va a tener que apicar el IVA de cada uno de los países en los que se vendan.

Hasta ahora éramos los desarrolladores europeos los que nos encargábamos de recaudar el IVA y pagarlo a la agencia tributaria de nuestro país, y con este cambio habría que pagar el IVA recaudado en cada país a cada una de sus agencias tributarias. Para simplificar este proceso se va a poner el marcha la ventanilla única (Mini-One-Stop-Shop o MOSS) que, aunque simplificaría algo el proceso, seguiría siendo complejo….

Google al rescate

Afortunadamente Google acaba de anunciar que a partir del 1 de enero se va a encargar de recaudar el IVA y presentarlo ante las agencias tributarias de los países europeos, liberando a los desarrolladores de esta responsabilidad:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/138000

Por lo tanto a partir de ahora es Google quien vende las apps directamente a los usuarios, y luego el desarrollador facturará a Google, de forma similar a como se facturan las ventas en Amazon Appstore. La diferencia es que en este caso se le factura todo a Google Inc. USA. como se entiende al leer las Condiciones de Servicio de Google Play.

También se cambiará la forma de incluir el IVA en los precios: hasta ahora se le sumaba el IVA al precio especificado por el desarrollador, ahora el precio final pasará a llevar incluído el IVA (Tax-Incusive-Pricing).

Puedes comentar este post en Google+.

¿Cuánto queda de cada euro al vender una app en Europa?

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android google mobile on by

Cuando me invitan a hablar sobre Android o sobre apps suelo siempre comentar algo de monetización y saco este gráfico:

vender_app_europa

Y como siempre genera bastante interés y es lo mas twitteado y a lo que mucha gente le saca fotos, voy a explicar de dónde salen estos datos.

Partiendo de que el usuario paga 1€ por la aplicación:

  • Primero se le quita el IVA, un 21% cuando se vende en Europa desde España. Si vendes fuera de Europa no se aplica IVA, por lo que el gráfico mejoraría un poco, pero sigamos con el caso de Europa.  Tenemos que 1€/1.21 = 0,8264€, por lo que 0,1735€ son de IVA. El IVA se quita antes que la comisión de la appstore.
  • Luego vienen Apple o Google y cogen su comisión, un 30% en ambos casos, por lo que el gráfico es válido para apps tanto Android como iOS. Entonces 0.8264€ x 0,3 = 0,2479€, y nos quedan 0,5785€
  • Y ahora están los pagos a la Seguridad Social y a la Agencia Tributaria. Variarán en función de la base de cotización y el volumen de facturación, pero estimando que anda sobre un 30%, es 0,5785€ x0,3 = 0,1735€
  • Entonces al desarrollador le queda 0,5785€ – 0,1735 = 0,4050€. Vamos, 40 céntimos, y aún habría que quitar inversión en equipos, alquiler de oficina, electricidad, etc.

Lo curioso es que pasa algo parecido si tienes un kiosco y vendes Chupa-Chups. Poca gente es consciente de los costes que conlleva vender o realizar cualquier actividad económica.

Para más temas fiscales sobre vender apps os recomiendo mi artículo Vender en Google Play desde España.

Setting up the GoogleTV Emulator

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android google mobile on by

Many people has problems with the Google TV Emulator because it hangs up booting at the Google TV logo. The problem is that it only works with specific device configurations and resolutions.

First you need to install the “GoogleTV Emulation Addon” using the Android SDK Manager. Then, create a new “Device Definition” (notice the new “Device Definition” tab at the top of the Android Virtual Device Manager in the lasts Android SDKs).

When prompted for the device definition parameters you must enter:

googletv1

This setup is for a 720p resolution, for a 1080p you must change the resolution to 1920×1080 and the density from tvdpi to xhdpi. Once the device definition is created, the next step is to create a new Android Virtual Device using it:

googletv2

Et voilà, our Google Tv emulator is up and running:

googletv3

JavaScript as a Runtime

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged dart google internet java javascript on by

The future is here, and JavaScript (JS) is everywhere, but JS development is so hard that many people prefer to develop in other languages and then compile their code to JS, using JS as a universal runtime. Here are the most interesting options:

GWT

GWT stand for Google Web Toolkit, but now it’s in hands of the community and extensively used in many corporations. GWT compiles Java into JS and it’s strongly optimized. I use it a lot, and I feel very productive using an advanced IDE like Eclipse with tools like code assist, refactor, etc.

https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/

CoffeeScript

A very compact language, inspired by Ruby and Python and that has become extremely popular in the last years. I’m not very familiar with the “Syntactic sugar” and I’m more productive with traditional languages (yes, I love curly backets! {}).

http://coffeescript.org/

Haxe

If you are an ActionScript developer (Adobe Flash), this is your language. It not only compiles to JS and ActionScript, also to PHP, C++, C#, etc. It’s becoming popular for the development of multi-platform mobile games with NME.

http://www.haxe.org/

Dart

This is a new language for the web pushed by Google. It tries to be a “modern and structured” language for the web that can be run directly into the browser, but to retain compatibility (and to run in other browsers that publicly rejected Dart), it can also be compiled to JS.

http://www.dartlang.org/

List of languages that compile to Js: http://altjs.org/

DevFest-X BCN 2012

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android gdg google html webgl on by

For those who don’t follow me in the social networks, I’m now a co-organizator of the GDG Vigo (Google Developers Group), founded by Reinaldo Aguilera. In this group we are organizating a lot of interesting (and free!) Android and HTML5 activities (speechs, codelabs…) near Vigo, Galicia. Join to our Google Group and stay tuned!

This year I also went to the Barcelona DevFest, but as GDG Vigo we tried to help with the organization.

We participated in a Three.js codelab with Ricardo Cabello (Mr.Doob) showing how to make a very simple WebGL game in some simple steps. Slides are available at:

http://www.alonsoruibal.com/slides/codelab_three.js/

and source code is hosted in github: https://github.com/albertoruibal/codelab_three.js/

In another session I also told my experience migrating some Mobialia apps from Android to HTML5 with GWT, those slides are at http://www.alonsoruibal.com/slides/android2gwt/

Thanks Google, GDG Barcelona and GDG Tarrragona for the organization of such great event!

Google DevFest 2011 BCN

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android chrome google html internet mobialia on by

This week I assisted to the Google DevFest 2011 Barcelona. This year it was celebrated on a great “garage” located on an industrial area of Barcelona. I will tell the more interesting things that I found on the different sessions:

NEW IN HTML

As usual, this session presented by Paul Kinlan showed us the future of HTML5. I love the x-webkit-speech Chrome feature to make voice inputs that we already could see on the Madrid DevFest 2010. Paul made also some demos of WebIntents  a great idea to make something similar to Android intents on the web. Finally we could see that HTML5 is advancing very fast trying to implement many APIS that will make Flash obsolete, like window.navigator.getUserMedia() ot the Web Audio API.

GLSL

This session was presented by Mr. doob aka. Ricardo Cabello, a guy from the demoscene. He made a introduction of how 3D works in the browser and showed us how to use the GLSL language to make great effects on web pages. He has those GLSL demos on his blog.

GOOGLE+ SESSIONS

There were two Google+ sessions driven by Ade Oshineye, one presenting the new social network (also announcing the Google+ Pages) and other with more technical details for developers. One thing that you can do easily is adding the +1 button to your site. Other very interesting tools that we could see were the Google APIs Console and the Google APIs Explorer.

ANDROID SESSIONS

Bruno Oliveira is replacing Reto Meier as our “Android Developer Relations”.  On the first session he made a great review of the Android platform evolution since 2.1 to 4.0. On the second session he gave us great tips to improve UX experience on Android. This guy is a showman!

MAKING A BUSSINESS OUT OF APPS

This session was presented by Paul Kinlan and Bruno Oliveira, showing us that monetization tips are valid for both web and Android apps: Lazy registration, try before you buy, easy payment, in-app payments… Bruno also presented the new multilingual “Guide to the App Galaxy” http://www.guidetotheappgalaxy.com/.

GOOGLE SHOPPING API

Daniel Hermes showed us the Google Shopping API and many integration samples.

CHROME DEV TOOLS

Finally Sam Dutton made a review of the Google Chrome development tools. This tools replaced my FireBug many years ago! He also made his slides available.

APP COMPETITION

This year Google also organized and Appcircus-style app competition. Those were the apps and sites presented:

I won the app competition, but all were great apps. Our presentation and some photos of the app competition are available at our Mobialia Blog.

Find Android apps with AppBrain

This entry was posted in General and tagged android google market mobialia mobile on by

One of the first things that you can notice after buying an android phone is the great amount of mobile applications (apps) that you can download from the Android Market, but searching for a specific app can be very frustating, and a time-consuming task.

This is due to one of the biggest problems of the Android Market: the lack of a complete web interface to query the applications avaiable, and AppBrain is an independent web (not affiliated with Google) where you can list, search, etc. those apps.

There are many similar webs: Cyrket, Bubiloop, but Appbrain has some features which make the difference:

  • You can sign-in on the web with your Google account
  • Apps can be queried by country, genre (of the user), age range, etc.
  • You can create list of apps and share it with your friends
  • There is an android app (search for AppBrain on the Android Market) to synchronize your mobile with appbrain, and once installed:
  • You can query the installed apps on your mobile
  • You can install apps from the web

And everything with a very simple and pretty interface, so don’t wait to try it:

http://www.appbrain.com

Google DevFest 2010

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android google internet java on by

As many of you know, this year I’m involved on Android with my project Mobialia. On February I was on the Android Developer Lab at Madrid and today I returned for the Google DevFest.

The event started with Dave Burke presenting Google Technologies in general. Many jokes about the iPhone (to show the Chrome2Phone extension he send a page about iPhone unlocking from Chrome to a Nexus One). He made the typical Sunspider Javascript Test comparation between a Nexus One with Froyo and an iPad. It also was quite impressive so see GWT Quake2 Port running on Chrome at 50 FPS and the new voice/camera input fields on HTML5.

Then the sessions where split on two lines, I assisted to the Android, Chrome&HTML5 and Maps related.

Our beloved Reto Meier was speaking at the Android Sessions, much more technical than on February’s Android Developer Lab (good!). On his first session he made a great presentation about good and bad practices developing Android Apps (I suggest every android developer to see it!), on the second he speaked in detail about Cloud to Device Messaging and vice-versa. He gave me lots of app ideas using this feature. Finally he swowed us proudly his new Samsung Galaxy Tab and encouraged us to adapt our applications to the new tablet devices. I even had to buy myself one after hearing how amazing it was. Luckily, I was able to find some pretty good deals online (more right here).

There were also very short presentations of spanish app developers (eAdventure, LibreGeoSocial, Inmobilia, Sicad and great the one of AnderWeb!).

Next, Paul Kinlan speaked about Chrome Apps and Extensions, the App Store and HTML5 on detail. I’m also very happy to see the progression of HTML5 and how Chrome is leaveraging the innovation towards a better web. Quite funny to see a modified Pacman Doodle controlled with the acceleromers of the iBook. There was also a presentation of Fiabee showing their HTML5 app and Chrome extension.

On the last sessions with Josh Livni talking about maps and presenting the Google Maps API v3, I was very impressed with maps customization, Fusion Tables and the new Google Street view API possibiliting the creation of 360º photos and adding them on specific locations (as inside a bar!).

All the sessions where recorded on video and will be avaiable at the Google DevFest Madrid web site.