(This post is part of a serie on GDG Rome DevFest 2014)

(Alessandro Martellucci e Matteo Bonifazi)

Agatino Grillo: Hi Matteo, hi Alessandro. Could you introduce yourselves in a few sentences?

Matteo Bonifazi: Mobile Software Engineer, I work as Android developer at Open Reply. Member of Google Developer Group Lazio-Abruzzo (GDG L-ab) . Author of the book  “Sviluppare applicazioni per Android in 7 giorni” (“Create Android apps in seven days”). Living in Rome IT, computer addicted, traveller tireless, boxer by chance.

Alessandro Martellucci: I am Computer Scientist and I work at Open Reply as Senior Android developer and specialist in mobile development sector. What I’d like is tempt to make sure everything would be innovative everyday. I’ve experience in mobile-side and server-side development, domain modelling, analysis requirements but always careful of world changes.

Agatino Grillo: Matteo, what are GDGs?

Matteo Bonifazi: Google Developer Groups (GDGs) are communities of people interested in Google’s developer technologies and solutions. GDGs are not just programmers’ groups: we want to foster a community for developers, designer, computer science students and teachers, startuppers who build on Google’s platforms.

Agatino Grillo: Both of you work at Open Reply. What about it?

Alessandro & Matteo: Founded in 1996 Reply Group is made up of a network of highly specialised companies which operates in Italy, Germany, UK, Benelux, USA and Brasil. Open Reply is the company of Reply Group focused on open source software, multichannel web solutions and mobile applications. Based in Rome and Milan, OpenReply is a team of about 30 engineers, specialized in Android, iOS and Windows Phone development and our skills are pretty focused on broadcasting, banking and Android OS customisation.

Agatino Grillo: At Rome Google DevFest on 8th November 2014 you gave a presentation titled “Video Streaming: from the native Android player to unconventional devices” (here the slides in pptx and pdf format in Italian, here a similar one in English presented at Droidcon London some days before). Could you summarize it?

Alessandro & Matteo: In this talk we gave an overview about the streaming in Android. Starting from video streaming on mobile devices, we explored the evolution of the development through Chromecast up to Android TV illustrating with our experiences developing mobile television applications for the main Italian broadcaster providers.

Agatino Grillo: What is the Google proposition in this field?

Alessandro & Matteo: Getting a streaming video in your Android smartphone or tablet is no longer enough.In the latest period, Google shows how to push this concept forward to new appliances. Chromecast and Android TV are two of the most promising gadgets for upsetting the way users enjoy video streaming.

Agatino Grillo: In which sense?

Alessandro & Matteo:Nowadays the evolution of video streaming is towards mobility experience. Chromecast and Android TV represent an additional mode of use of the video itself because final users can benefit from new forms of interaction and new kinds of information.
In our presentation  we analized the Android multimedia framework also which permits to play several media types from media file stored inside the application (raw resources, standalone files) or for OTT streaming. However documentation of the media framework is enough just for simple test case and MediaPlayer Framework documentation is kind of nightmare (lot of events and error are not documented at all).
Finally, we concluded with examples on video streaming using Android TV and Chromecast.

Agatino Grillo: What is Android TV?

Alessandro & Matteo: Android TV is a smart TV platform developed by Google announced at Google I/O 2014 as a successor to Google's earlier attempt at smart TV, Google TV. Android TV has inside the same Android multimedia framework of normal devices. Android TV can be built into both TVs and standalone set-top boxes. Users will have access to the Google Play Store to download Android apps, including media streaming services as well as games.

Agatino Grillo: Chromecast at a glance?

Alessandro & Matteo: Chromecast is a digital media player developed by Google. It is a HDMI dongle playing audio/video content on a high-definition display by directly streaming it via Wi-Fi from the Internet or a local network.

Agatino Grillo: Matteo you recently published “Sviluppare applicazioni per Android in 7 giorni” (“Create Android apps in seven days”). Could you summarize it contents?

Matteo Bonifazi: “Sviluppare applicazioni per Android in 7 giorni” provides a comprehensive and state-of-art guide of the various steps involved with the development of Android apps. It follows the “seven days” schema to assure a practical approach and better motivate the readers. The last chapter gave a brief introduction to Android Wear, a version of Google's Android operating system designed for smartwatches and other wearables.

Agatino Grillo: Thanks Alessandro, thanks Matteo

Slides

• Matteo Bonifazi & Alessandro Martellucci, “Video Streaming: from the native Android player to uncoventional devices”, Rome Google DevFest, 8th November 2014  (pptx and pdf, in Italian)

Links

• Droidcon London Speaker Spotlight: Interview with Open Reply’s Alessandro Martellucci and Matteo Bonifazi, October 28, 2014
• Matteo Bonifazi & Alessandro Martellucci, “Video Streaming: from the native Android player to uncoventional devices”, Droidcon London, October 2014, (pdf  , 42 slides, 8 M)

How to contact Alessandro

• Email: alex[dot]martellucci[at]gmail[dot]com and a[dot] martellucci [at]reply[dot]it
• Google+: https://plus.google.com/+AlessandroMartellucci/posts
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/alessandro-martellucci/70/a9b/362
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/martellux @martellux
• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/alexmartellucci

How to contact Matteo

• Email:  dekra06[at]gmail[dot]com  and m[dot]bonifazi[at]reply[dot]it
• Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MatteoBonifazi/posts
• LinkedIn: http://it.linkedin.com/pub/matteo-bonifazi/11/675/38b/it
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbonifazi @mbonifazi
• Web: http://mbonifazi.wordpress.com
• https://www.youtube.com/user/MegaDekra

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