For developers: 20 online meetup recordings you should watch from June 2020

IBM Developer hosts weekly online meetups on various topics. Online events are one of the best ways to scale your Developer Relations program and reach developers anywhere, anytime and for a long time after the event.

🎟 Register for our upcoming events

Node-RED Series

  • Node-RED Series: Getting Started with Node-RED Essentials
    Watch replay
  • Node-RED Series Node-RED Dashboard and UI Techniques
    Watch replay
  • Node-RED Series: Building end to end Node-RED Application
    Watch replay

Single Events

Containers Developer Summit – Online
Watch replay

Domain-Driven Design: Lessons Learned & Useful Patterns
Watch replay

IBM Cloud Series – Getting Started with Edge Computing
Watch replay

Kubernetes vs Red Hat OpenShift
Watch replay

Continue reading “For developers: 20 online meetup recordings you should watch from June 2020” →

Video: How to update Google Sheets with JSON API

This video shows how to update Google Sheets with JSON API. The video is based on this blog post.

Video: Building a no-code application that sends an email and a text message when a new user registers

This 12-minute video shows how I built a no-code application that sends an email and a text message when a new user registers. I used the following no-code tools: Airtable, Parabola and Twilio. The video is based on this blog post.

Building a no-code app to send daily Covid-19 data

I live in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area. The county has setup a web site with Covid-19 information for its residents. The main page shows key Covid-19 data updated daily. I have been visiting this page almost daily. This is how it looks for Friday, June 19, 2020:

Covid-19 data for June 19, 2020

I wanted to build an application that would email me this data every day. To continue my no-code journey I built a no-code application that sends me a daily email with the latest data. I didn’t need to write a single line of code!

These are the tools I used to build the application:

  • Simplescraper – to scrap data from the county web site and turn it into an API
  • Parabola – build a flow to invoke the API and send the email

This is how the application flow looks in Parabola:

Parabola flow

Let’s review the application flow.

Continue reading “Building a no-code app to send daily Covid-19 data” →

Building a no-code application that sends an email and a text message when a new user registers

In this blog post I will give you an overview of how I built a no-code application that sends an email and a text message when a new users registers. This is part of me taking an application built with code and building it with no-code tools.

I previously shared how to build a no-code application to send positive news.

This particular application is based on Upkar Lidder’s application built with Apache OpenWhisk. The application registers a user and sends a notification via email and text.

I used Parabola to build this application. This is how the application flow looks:

Parabola application flow
Continue reading “Building a no-code application that sends an email and a text message when a new user registers” →

20 online meetup recordings you should watch from May 2020

IBM Developer hosts weekly online meetups on various topics. Online events are one of the best ways to scale your Developer Relations program and reach developers anywhere, anytime and for a long time after the event.

🎟 Register for our upcoming events

AI/ML Masterclass

  • AI/ML Masterclass Part 1: Building and Deploying models with Visual Recognition and Natural Language Classifier
    Watch replay
  • AI/ML Masterclass Part 2: Building and Deploying models with Auto AI
    Watch replay
  • AI/ML Masterclass Part 3 – Building and Deploying models with Jupyter Notebooks
    Watch replay

IBM Cloud series

  • IBM Cloud Series – Getting Started with Serverless
    Watch replay
  • IBM Cloud Series – Getting Started with Containers
    Watch replay
  • IBM Cloud Series – Getting Started with AI
    Watch replay
  • IBM Cloud Series – Getting Started with Edge Computing
    Watch replay

A Developer’s Introduction to Kubernetes
Watch replay

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More content ideas: event series, Q&A and short videos

Coming with content ideas is not easy. I have previously shared interesting content ideas you can try:

In this blog post I want to share a few additional ideas you can try.

Online event series

Pick a topic and schedule a series of online events covering a particular aspect of a bigger topic. For example Marek Sadowski and Lennart Frantzell are doing a 4-part online meetup on IBM Cloud.

IBM Cloud series
  1. IBM Cloud – Getting started with Serverless
  2. IBM Cloud – Getting started with Containers
  3. IBM Cloud – Getting Started with AI
  4. IBM Cloud – Getting Started with Edge Computing

I like breaking a topic into series as it allows to focus on a particular technology in more detail. You also don’t need to think about running out of time when you try to cover everything at once. Once you complete the series you can upload the videos to YouTube and publish a blog post with links and a short description of what developers will learn. You can also collect all the questions and answer them in a separate blog post. That’s part of content creates content approach.

Continue reading “More content ideas: event series, Q&A and short videos” →

How to update Google Sheets with JSON API

Google Sheets is a well-known service and online spreadsheet. Google Sheets can be more than just a spreadsheet, it can be used as a back-end or a database for applications. For example, Glide uses Google Sheets as a database for its mobile applications. Glide allows to build a mobile application without any code connected to Google Sheets. It’s incredible how fast you can build a real app, .

I was building an app in Glide that displays the latest news using News API. I connected the app to a Google Sheets spreadsheet where I entered a number of news stories manually. The app looks like this:

Glide app

This is how the Google Sheets spreadsheets looks:

Data for Glide app in Google Sheets

If I need to update any news I can manually edit the Google Sheets spreadsheets and the Glide app will be updated.

This manual update is not ideal of course.

Continue reading “How to update Google Sheets with JSON API” →

Video: Building a no-code application to text positive news with Parabola, News API, Watson NLU and Twilio

Earlier I published two blogs posts where I share my experience building a no-code application that texts positive COVID-19 news:

I also recorded a video that shows how I built the application:

Hope you will find it useful. Let me know if you have any question.

Tutorial: building a no-code application to text positive news with Parabola, News API, Watson NLU and Twilio

I wanted to take an app build with code and rebuild it using no-code tools. Gwyneth Peña built a wonderful app that sends a daily positive news article about COVID-19 via a text message so I decided to build this app using no-code tools. I shared a high-level overview of the app in an earlier blog post.

In this blog post I will share a more step-by-step how I built the app. You should be able to follow the steps and build it as well.

Tools you need

You will need the following tools to build the application. All four services offer a free plan.

  1. Parabola – no-code platform
  2. News API – news service
  3. Watson NLU – sentiment service
  4. Twilio – SMS service

Parabola

Parabola is a no-code tool where I built the app. Parabola is a drag-and-drop workflow builder. You build a flow with multiple steps (nodes) and connections between steps. Each step has input and output. Output from one step is passed as input to the next step. You can also look at it as a serverless application – where each step represents a serverless function. But, instead of writing code, each step is dropped onto the flow and configuring. This is how the application flow looks:

Application flow in Parabola

Register for a free Parabola account.

Continue reading “Tutorial: building a no-code application to text positive news with Parabola, News API, Watson NLU and Twilio” →