Did you know that you can access your user's geolocation coordinates via JavaScript? What about accessing a device's battery status, orientation, accelerometer, and gyroscope? Or connecting to a Bluetooth device. How about pulling data from an external device via a Serial or WebUSB? Are you aware of the Fullscreen or the GamePad API? Have an e-commerce app or an app that processes microtransactions? Does it use the PaymentRequest API? There are tons of really cool APIs that you might not be aware of. Or maybe you are aware of them, but you're just not sure how to use them to improve your application? In this session, I'll introduce you to some of the lesser known APIs that are available in most modern web browsers. I'll also show you some demos that I've created with these APIs to show you how they can actually be used to make engaging experiences that keep your users happy and keep them coming back to your site.

In this session, we'll look at how you can use Amazon Interactive Video Service (IVS) to add live, interactive video streaming to your application with the IVS JavaScript SDK. In the first 5 months of 2022, users consumed over 543 billion minutes of live video created by almost 9 million creators on Twitch. There's no question that streaming is popular, but why is it so in-demand? Part of the draw for users is that streaming is unscripted, dynamic, and unpredictable. It's not the same old formulaic "cookie-cutter" content available via traditional mediums. Another attraction is the high level of interactivity with the content producer. What other medium provides live chat and interaction to viewers while they consume the content? Streaming gives the consumer a level of active participation in their entertainment instead of just passively consuming it. It's also highly accessible - anyone can set up a stream at little to no cost from the comfort of their own home or office - or anywhere as long as they have a modern mobile device and internet connectivity. But it's not just for video games - any application that needs to reach an audience can take advantage of the power of streaming to reach millions of users!

Have you ever created the perfect Minecraft world and wished that you could share that world with your friends and family that don't live near you? What about customizing every single aspect of the game - mods, difficulty, weather, spawn rates, physics, landscapes, etc? You probably already know that all of that is possible by running your own custom Minecraft server. But, it can be tricky to host your own server. First, you need a spare computer lying around to host it. Then, you need to make sure that your internet firewall ports are properly configured to allow other people to connect to the server. On top of all that, your computer needs enough CPU and RAM to handle running the game server and hosting multiple connections. It can be a real pain to launch, run and manage your own Minecraft server at home! Wouldn't it be better if you could run it from a really powerful computer that is managed by someone else in a secure data center with a really fast internet connection? In this session, we'll look at how to sign up for a completely free account in the cloud that you can use forever to host your own Minecraft server. We'll launch the server, install Minecraft and configure the firewall so that you can connect to it from your own computer and share it with your friends. We'll also talk about some basic concepts (like - what exactly is "the cloud") and we'll look at some other things you can do with your free account.

It's easy to install Node-RED on a Raspberry Pi or a spare laptop that we have lying around the house, but sometimes you need the power and flexibility of having an instance running in the cloud. Maybe you need to use it for a school or work project and need it to be accessible to the public web? In this session, I'll show you how to turn up an "always free" Ampere Arm instance in the Oracle Cloud and install Node-RED on that instance. We'll make sure the installation is web accessible and secure, and I'll show you a few other tips for integrating your Node-RED install into the free Oracle Cloud tier that can enable very powerful flows!

It all started with a small project to pass the time during The Great Quarantine of 2020. I bought some chiles from the local farmer’s market (with proper face coverings and social distancing, of course), fermented my first batch of hot sauce, and shared it with a few friends around the globe. I had no idea the sauce would be such a massive success, so I resolved to build on that triumph in 2021. But this time, I knew that I would have to start from the very beginning and grow the chiles myself. Of course, this presented the wonderful opportunity to combine two of my life’s greatest passions - the culinary arts and technology - to ensure that my growth operation was the ultimate success. Join me in this session where I show you how I used a microcontroller, some sensors and the cloud to monitor and automate the germination and maturation of this year’s crop.