The Dev Discourse – A Daily Roundup from #SDC2017 #2
Samsung Developer Program
#SDC2017 wrapped up today and it was our best conference yet. The day started off with keynote speeches from Arianna Huffington, Stan Lee and Rain Paris. The action continued on the floor with lots of activity at the Samsung Pay, Galaxy Apps and Samsung Health booths, just to name a few.
However, the talk of the conference was the announcement of Bixby 2.0, which introduces deep linking capabilities and enhanced natural language abilities to better recognize individual users and create a predictive, personalized experience that better anticipates needs.
The Bixby SDK will be available to select developers and through a private beta program, with general availability coming in 2018. This afternoon, we sat down with the Samsung Bixby Home team to learn more about Bixby Home and what developers can expect from its newly launched SDK.
Tell us about Bixby Home.
Bixby Home helps you navigate your smartphone and make your day easier. It learns and adapts to show you the content you care about. It allows for easier access to apps, important information and personalized daily content. Essentially, you get what you need when you need it. When you interact with Bixby Home, you’ll engage with cards that contain the information you want.
- Social media cards contain all your important social feeds
- News cards carry the information that you want to read
- Media cards show you the videos you want to interact with
- International cards allow you to book travel
It’s available on the S8, S8+ and the Note 8. It will be available on all Galaxy flagships devices coming out in the new year.
Tell us about the SDK you just launched for Bixby Home here at SDC.
The new SDK gives developers two different ways to develop content cards for Bixby home:
- The first way is app-based integration, which pulls content from partner mobile apps. This creates app-based cards. For this type of development, devs will need to add an API library into their mobile apps.
- The second way is server-based integration, which pulls content from partner servers. Here, developers are required to map endpoints from their server to the Bixby home server through a server API.
The creation process is simple enough: first devs need to register as a developer and then they need to submit their card plan. Next, they create, configure, submit the card for approval, conduct an integration test and deploy.
Currently, there are six different types of cards they can create: utility, multimedia, news cards, location cards, communications cards and commerce cards – more to come in the near future.
What’s the value proposition for devs? Why develop Bixby Home cards?
Well, there are a few reasons why devs would want to develop for not only for Bixby home, but also for Samsung mobile: they get access to all Samsung customers, they see increased engagement with apps and services and they extend consumer reach across multiple devices.
What kind of support will devs receive when developing with the new SDK?
With the SDK, partners control their content. However, there are API libraries for both app-based cards and server-based cards. They receive a developer guide, a UX guide, and sample cards and apps to review. Through the partner portal, devs can manage their cards. Here they can propose, design and create their cards, as well as track card analytics. They’re supported every step of the way.
We’re very excited about this new SDK and want to set our developer partners up for success.
Thanks to all the developers, designers, creators, partners, sponsors and everyone else who joined us at #SDC2017. It truly was a great event and we can wait to start working with you all this year to bring our announcements to life. Follow us on @samsung_dev to keep the conversation going and keep an eye on our blog for technical content that will bring your dev game to the next level.
And see you next year!
