Structure opened its doors a couple of days ago.
Structure offers a simple and powerful IoT cloud platform for developing the next generation of connected experiences. They offer device management with robust data visualization that reacts in real-time.
They have a nice drag & drop workflow interface that allows you to forward data coming in, combine data or just store it.
I will be testing a builder kit with the platform, that includes the Adafruit Feather Huzzah, which offers native Wifi connectivity. My Raspberry Pi’s will also find their way into the system. The platform allows to consume REST Apis as well, that will make it even more fun to build something unique.
If you are interested in IoT, you should really check it out. Its free :)
Structure / Adafruit Feather Huzzah
Google’s AMP is here to save us from slow mobile content delivery, by enforcing strict standards and limiting what is allowed within AMP pages. The pages only allow a subset of tags and introduce their own tags for fast prefetching of content (images, videos … AMP Specs)
“The Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”) Project is an open source initiative that came out of discussions between publishers and technology companies about the need to improve the entire mobile content ecosystem for everyone – publishers, consumer platforms, creators, and users.
Today, the expectation is that content should load super fast and be easy to explore. The reality is that content can take several seconds to load, or, because the user abandons the slow page, never fully loads at all. Accelerated Mobile Pages are web pages designed to load instantaneously – they are a step towards a better mobile web for all.”
AMP pages are cached within the AMP Cache, providing even faster delivery of your content. The core libs validate your implementation and highlight any problems by pushing errors to the console.
The documentation lists all components currently supported within a page and experimental components in development as well.
I have already added AMP support to our blog posts:
Google’s Webmaster Tools also integrates a new section for AMP, to see how they perform.
AMP is not supposed to replace your webpage, but offer a faster access point to presented content. It will not solve all use cases, but offer better performance for your simple reading pleasure for now. Its a start and lets see how it evolves ;)
As I mentioned the usage of Markdown for the Slate documentation builder, here some Markdown editors:
Highly customizable editor.
Use it anywhere and sync to dropbox if you like.
Nice split-screen setup, that shows you how the html conversion looks like.
A nice minimal editor that was developed for Elementary OS.
https://github.com/voldyman/MarkMyWords
Slate helps you create beautiful, intelligent, responsive API documentation. All documentation is written in Markdown and than converted into a responsive layout.
Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax designed so that it can be converted to HTML and many other formats.
Have used it on multiple projects and I love it.
Alertify.js is a small library which provides light-weight, high performance browser dialogs.
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// confirm dialog alertify.confirm("Message", function () { // user clicked "ok" }, function() { // user clicked "cancel" }); |
jQuery.sheet is spreadsheet plugin, that offers creation, viewing and editing. All combined with a nice API.
As I said before, Learning Management is really taking off and I get many client requests to do some kind of integration or custom solution for them.
What is a LMS?
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery of educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs.
It is used by organizations to manage and deliver their internal training programs and can be used by schools and universities for managing online courses as well. An LMS typically includes features such as creating and delivering content, user management, tracking progress, assessments, reporting, and collaboration tools.
In one of my latest articles I started listing solutions for WordPress, WordPress and the LMS universe.
But those solutions might not always be the best fit for your project. Many of them actually try too hard to be everything. The amount of cross linked functionality is getting insane and increases the point of failure.
In some cases a trimmed down solid solution might be the better way to go. SaaS (Software as a Service), part of the cloud trend, is providing more and more options, this includes the LMS arena.
A SaaS solution refers to software that is delivered to users over the internet, typically on a subscription basis. Instead of installing and running the software locally on individual computers or servers, users access it through a web browser or a thin client. The service provider manages the infrastructure, maintenance, and upgrades of the software, allowing users to benefit from the latest features and improvements without having to manage the underlying technology themselves.
Stop worrying about the software and concentrate on your content again. The SaaS provider takes care of functionality, support, updates and delivery.
This is nothing new, solutions like TalentLMS or Litmos LMS offer this for some time now.
TalentLMS is a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) designed for small to mid-sized businesses and organizations. It offers features such as creating and delivering online courses, tracking progress and performance, reporting, and integrations with other tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Zapier. TalentLMS also includes mobile learning capabilities, allowing users to access courses on their smartphones or tablets. The platform is easy to use and offers a range of customization options for branding and layout. It also includes features for creating and managing certificates and badges for learners upon completion of courses.
Litmos is a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) designed for businesses and organizations of all sizes. It offers features such as creating and delivering online courses, tracking progress and performance, reporting, and integrations with other tools like Salesforce, Marketo, and Google Drive. Litmos also includes mobile learning capabilities, allowing users to access courses on their smartphones or tablets. The platform is easy to use and offers a range of customization options for branding and layout. It also includes features for creating and managing certificates and badges for learners upon completion of courses. Additionally, Litmos offers features for automating course assignments, tracking compliance with regulatory requirements, and providing personalized learning experiences for individual learners based on their performance and progress.
Modern SaaS solutions provide Public APIs, that allow you to seamlessly integrate them with your current solution. So in case of a LMS, that part of your project could be handled by the SaaS provider, while e-commerce, social and other content areas remain under your full control.
We are looking at a very crowded LMS market, but always nice to have options :)
Now that Parse is phasing out (01/2017), people are looking for alternatives that offer:
Collaborative list of Parse alternative backend service providers @ GitHub
Nice set of Google Analytics helper plugins.
Riveted is measuring the amount of time users are actively engaged (e.g., clicking, scrolling, using the keyboard) and then reporting the data to Google Analytics in frequent intervals. GitHub
Scroll Depth is a small Google Analytics plugin that lets you measure how far users are scrolling. GitHub
Screentime is a small tool that helps you start thinking of your website traffic in terms of time instead of hits (pageviews, visits, etc). You can define areas of the page, called Fields, and then Screentime will keep track of how much time each Field is on screen for. GitHub
“PNotify is a JavaScript notification plugin, developed by SciActive. PNotify can also provide desktop notifications based on the Web Notifications spec. If desktop notifications are not available or not allowed, PNotify will fall back to displaying the notice as a regular, in-browser notice.”