There is an entire category of problems in distributed computing that require a single client amongst a set of peers in a network to coordinate the behavior of all the other clients. It is common in systems responsible for processing queues of work that connect to downstream systems that don’t…

Web Components are a great way to build reusable functionality you can use in different web pages and web apps. Imagine sharing components between different frameworks like React, Vue.js, or Next.js! …

Build your very own chat application with React — This post will teach you the following: Create a brand new Next.js application Adding realtime functionality with Ably Create a Next.js Vercel Serverless API Use React Functional components and React Hooks with Ably Host your app on Vercel Check out a running version of the app. WebSockets in Vercel with Ably Vercel allows users to…

How I helped my mother, who is hard of hearing, to understand me while I visit her with my mask on — Live captioning of speech into text has so many useful applications and Azure Cognitive Services makes it fast and easy to build captioning into your applications. Used together with Ably Realtime, it is possible to make wearable devices which can display what you’re saying, in real time. Wearable live captions!

A walk through of how to turn a photograph of yourself into an Andy Warhol style graphic, like the one below. Disclaimer: there are many different techniques for Photoshop. This tutorial describes the TOS unused for this piece, you may know different techniques and that is great. …

Coping with quarantine by coding! — It is September 2020 and we’re still mid pandemic, which means I’m social distancing and missing my friends. At the start of lockdown I played a lot of online multiplayer party games with friends to try and replace our regular board game hangouts. After consuming so many, I decided it…

The Station Manager game with Realtime Tube data I’ve been learning a lot recently about using realtime data streams and how and why one might use them in an app. In order to better understand the differences between realtime streaming data and REST APIs (which I’ve had more experience with)…

How to make your own internet connected t-shirt with LEDs that respond to realtime data — As a developer advocate I get to make all kind of fun projects. I particularly like to make wearable technology, specifically, things with lots of lights on that can connect to the internet. Because I like to be sparkly! …

Making an interactive Christmas jumper — After my previous project, the tweet controlled wedding dress, I wanted to make another wearable using the lessons I learnt while making the dress. Since the festive season is now upon us, it seemed like a great opportunity to make an IoT Christmas jumper! Christmas jumpers often have a large…