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Ivo Šiško has written this article about how to extend your JAMstack application with some dynamic functionality using serverless. He will guide you on his journey of implementation 2 dynamic features to static page.

The first feature was to offer the product for the user when he enters the web page and if he is interested, ask him to fill a two-field form to get the product in the e-mail. The second feature was saving that info in the Google Sheets on the Drive using the Google Sheets API.

As the web page is just a simple static page with no backend and simple cms, hosted on the Netlify, author opted for the Netlify functions.

The article then provides all the necessary information about:

• Feature 1: Sending an email
• Feature 2: Interacting with the Google Sheets

To be able to test the functions while developing them itt is easiest to use Netlify dev CLI. It allows us to manually invoke the functions, test them and logging in the console, just by starting the dev environment using netlify dev or ntl dev command.

Since the client already had an account on Sendgrid, Ivo used the Sendgrid API to send the email via @sendgrid/mail – the official package for node from Sendgrid. All steps are explained with all the needed code provided. Good read!

At Ericsson, they are fortunate enough to frequently work and speak with IoT leaders in the industry. Ericsson thrives on hearing what excites their partners most about IoT, what challenges they have faced, and if we can help solve any, and what they think the future will look like in the industry. On Ericsson blog.

Throughout recording the last 10 episodes of their IoT podcast, they gathered the insights from these conversations which are extensive, and compiled some favorites form each episode:

• Focus on long-term success
• Digital transformation is a company effort
• The three key questions
• Focus on the value, not the tech
• Monetize data

We liked: Secure connectivity is the base business that operators offer customers. However, operators have an opportunity to climb the IoT value chain and grow their business into different verticals by leveraging their data.

For the full list and further resources links (including podcast) follow the link to the original article.

Kubernetes has seized center stage in the DevOps world when building and migrating applications to a cloud-native environment. In reality, Kubernetes is a means to an end — to scale operations of containerized microservice architecture. By Daniella Pontes.

Managing deployment, scaling, upgrading and updating of the various microservices of fragmented applications running on containers is not a trivial task, certainly already beyond manual processes. So automation is the only way to go. Kubernetes came to take the role of orchestrating containerized workloads.

The article is split into these parts:

• InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 Kubernetes monitoring
• Watching the watcher
• Other good reasons
• Key lessons learned

Scaling monitoring is not about adding more manual processes and controls. Scaling cannot be coupled with higher complexity, and surely, must embrace empowering developers — with observability, predictability and prescriptive means – to ensure that monitoring is doing its job. Good read!

Nataly Birch wrote this article about importance of well crafted product update email. The product update email is a unique type of newsletter. Although it seems that it does not differ from others, it is a collaboration between marketing and product teams.

The product update newsletter is all about brand new features or upgrades of the system. However, no one likes to read boring documentation and bug fixes. Everyone expects a story that is exciting and enlightening. It should reveal important improvements and promote the product or bring customers to landing pages. Therefore, unlike transactional emails, welcome emails or seasonal emails, these newsletters require turning boring things into exciting ones.

The article goes in some detail over:

• Subject lines
• Tips for product update emails
• Content
• Design a product update email
• Collection of great product update email newsletters

A good product update email is all about a good story. No one likes reports about changes. What people want is to know how these changes will improve their lives. Nice one!

Now more than ever, startups and corporates are looking for ways to run lean. There is pressure to make cuts to staff and outsource when possible, and this has led to a trend of hiring virtual CFO services over the more traditional in-house full-time chief financial officer (CFO). Written by Dave Robinson.

Page Speed performance is incredibly important. Every millisecond counts, and you will lose customers, leads and SEO ranking if you have a slow site. But how much business will you lose? Should I make my website faster? Do I have a business case? Can I spend $10,000 to make my site load faster?

The summary of what you will get:

• all variables and code to implement in Google Tag Manager, so you won’t have to think (and click 632 times to create all the variables)
• the SQL to nicely model the data in an tidy non-nested table
• a step by step guide on how to set things up and use the data

This is step by step tutorial with all the steps explained and accompanied by clear screen shots. Solution includes (amongst others):

• How to set up a Google Cloud project and enable billing
• Create a Google Analytics App+Web property (via a Firebase Analytics project)
• Enable the streaming of Firebase data to Big Query
• Create / import a Google Tag Manager container and include it on your web site
• Set up data collection tag + variables in Google Tag Manager

… and more. You don’t have to stay in the Google stack. You can pull data in R to mode page speed in relation to web site behaviour. Excellent!

Now more than ever, startups and corporates are looking for ways to run lean. There is pressure to make cuts to staff and outsource when possible, and this has led to a trend of hiring virtual CFO services over the more traditional in-house full-time chief financial officer (CFO). Written by Dave Robinson.

You, your board and your investors are probably asking some questions like:

• How do we run on as little executive overhead as possible without missing out on making the right decisions?
• What services do virtual CFOs offer and what will we need to find elsewhere?
• How does working with a virtual CFO actually happen? How often will they be available? How will they deliver reports?
• And, of course, How much do part-time CFOs cost?

The artticle covers some of the more specific deliverables, and captures some of the broader benefits of virtual CFO services. A CFO can identify and manage bookkeeper/controller to produce reliable data and interpret the results, providing insight to help steer the ship toward your stated goals. Nice read!

A mental model reflects an individual’s beliefs, values, and assumptions. As those are internal, we need to somehow express them in order to learn and improve. Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) is a powerful technique from Systems thinking. By Yi Lv

Models created using CLD often reflect the mental models of people creating them. We could explore different mental models by simply doing advocacy and inquiry with CLD. Balancing advocacy and inquiry is one key practice for the discipline of mental models, among the five disciplines from the classical “The fifth discipline” book.

The article provides few examples when author was doing system modeling for the number of backlogs and its impact on adaptiveness. For some organizations, strong reliance on business feedback increases the motivation to adapt, while the limited broad learning due to specialization decreases the ability to adapt. Good read!

React is a popular JavaScript library developed by Facebook for building user interfaces. It uses the concept of Virtual DOM to render Elements into the browser DOM because it is a popular belief that manipulating the browser DOM directly can be very slow and costly. By Temitope.

Well according to React, Hooks are functions that let you “hook into” React state and lifecycle features from function components. Before the arrival of Hook, state and React lifecycles can only be used in a class component. Starting from version 16.8, React rolled out a lot of features that enable developers to hook into a React state without having to write a single class component.

You will be building a simple CRUD blog app where a user can create a post, read the post, update post, and delete the post without making any API request to the server.

The article is split into:

• What are Hooks in React?
• What we’re building
• The Setup
• Building Our App
• JSX

… and more. All the code in the tutorial is well explained and documented and you will get link to GitHub repository as well. Great!

How (not) to put your APIs in a freezer while implementing a Frankensite or an API Ghosttown. In this article we will investigate developer portal anti-patterns – common solutions to developer portal problems where the solution is ineffective and may result in undesired consequences. By Diliny Corlosquet.

Anti-patterns differ from bad practices when:

• It is a common practice that initially looks like an appropriate solution but ends up having bad consequences that outweigh any benefits.
• There’s another solution that is known, repeatable, and effective.

Regardless of the route taken to build a devportal: these anti-patterns occur as a direct result of tight deadlines, inadequate planning, or when the conceptualization of the devportal is oversimplified and underestimated.

The article then goes and describes following:

• How to (over) simplify a developer portal
• The anti-patterns of developer portals
  • API Freezer
  • Frankensite
  • API ghost town
  • Tyrannical toolchain

Assumptions that a developer portal is only for developers will lead down these routes. These types of sites also occur when one department creates a solution for multiple without taking into consideration that people of varying technical backgrounds will have a role to play. Good read!

For some time now, 5G has been associated with the promise of new digital applications and services that come with a hyper-connected life. We have seen that this new technology, which provides “perfect” connectivity, creates new value for both us as individuals and to industries and enterprises. By Balaji Ethirajulu.

Augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) are two technology concepts providing significant benefits in this new digital reality. These technologies open new ways of working in areas such as manufacturing, gaming, media, automotive and healthcare, allowing for both increased productivity and completely new user experiences. In the Ericsson ConsumerLab merged reality report, 7 out of 10 early adopters expect VR and AR to change everyday life fundamentally.

The article describes:

• Technologies driving the 5G evolution
• 5G business models
• AR/VR use cases at home and enterprises
• Enabling AR/VR experiences with 5G and edge compute
• Our solution: Ericsson Private networks

While many of us see AR and VR technologies mainly used for gaming, in reality, many industry verticals are looking at these technologies as game changers. Good read!