June 2021 Summaries

Speedbird Aero is a Brazilian startup that develops technology and operates its own systems for drone logistics, aiming to revolutionize the way people receive e-commerce orders, food, and medicines by providing a faster, cleaner, cheaper, and environmentally friendly solution. The company focuses on solving real logistics problems by working closely with aviation regulators to ensure its operations are safe and certified according to aviation standards. With thousands of hours of drone flying experience and several certifications in progress, Speedbird Aero is expanding its operations abroad and targeting complex approvals for heavier aircraft, with plans to transport 30-60 kilograms over a 500-kilometer radius within three years.

ws://localhost:8080/socket` is the URL used by the client to connect to the WebSocket server, where `8080` is the port number on which the server is listening. The client uses this URL to establish a connection with the server and send messages, including text and binary data, back and forth between the client and the server.

In the functional programming paradigm, pure functions are ideal for code efficiency and reliability, but in reality, many applications can't achieve 100% purity due to external factors like persistence, user input, or network data access. Pure functions always produce the same output given the same inputs, without side effects such as modifying external state or accessing external resources. Impure functions have side effects that can lead to bugs and make testing more complex. While pure functions are ideal, a mix of pure and impure functions is often necessary in real-world applications, and being aware of purity/impurity helps with application testing and debugging.

Oeto is a SaaS company that provides workflow automation tools to help businesses manage and monetize their experts' time, differentiating itself from competitors by focusing on existing businesses with an expert or mentor pool and prioritizing customer service. The startup was founded in 2020 and has already validated its business model, launched its MVP, and is onboarding its first clients, aiming to become the go-to tool for expert workflow management in three years. Oeto's CEO Piia Sander believes that the company will play a crucial role in helping companies adapt to the new way of working brought about by the pandemic, providing tools that enable people to better manage their time and workload. The startup is currently seeking funding through angel investors and has received support from Vonage for Startups.

Plato.immo aims to simplify the complex process of finding a place to live in Paris by offering an online calendar that enables self-service visit booking for real estate agencies, allowing them to reduce administrative time and improve customer satisfaction. The startup has gained traction since its launch in 2020 and is part of reputable startup campus Station F. With three co-founders, including one with extensive knowledge of the real estate market, Plato.immo differentiates itself from competitors through its focus on delivering new features quickly and creating tools that match the needs of customers. The company has faced challenges such as educating real estate agents about digital tools and implementing effective change management processes, but is now onboarding a competitor network and working to improve its platform. With plans to develop new features, raise funds, and become a leading platform in the market, Plato.immo is poised for continued growth and success.

As a Python Developer Advocate at Vonage, Tonya shares her passion for connecting people in an easy-going way and building the Python community. With a background in academics and sports, Tonya's journey into technology began with coding as a child, influenced by her parents' computer purchase. She continued to code after college, where she played basketball competitively and professionally overseas, before joining Vonage. Now, she looks forward to spreading the joy of technology and sports intersection through her work.

At Vonage, we're constantly improving our APIs, with security being one of the essential aspects. The company has delivered recent significant improvements to its Secure Real-time Transfer Protocol (SRTP), Signed Callbacks, and HTTPS Caching features. SRTP allows for secure transmission of real-time media, such as voice in a Voice over IP (VoIP) call, while Signed Callbacks enable checking of JWT signatures to ensure authenticity. The new HTTPS caching feature supports both HTTP and HTTPS URLs, improving performance without compromising security. These updates aim to provide secure interfaces for all Vonage APIs and products, ensuring users' private data remains private.

Vonage for Startups has partnered with Freshworks for Startups to empower startups globally, providing innovative customer engagement software and a range of benefits including credit packages, hands-on support, exclusive co-promotion opportunities, and access to various Freshworks products such as CRM, customer support software, HR management software, and IT service management software. Both programs were born out of the need to pay it forward to the founder community, with whom they share roots, and aim to provide startups with the right tools to grow their business and build outstanding customer experiences. The partnership combines efforts to support startups across both communities, enabling them to acquire, close, and keep customers for life, and gain access to valuable resources including mentorship, learning opportunities, and industry leaders.

A birthday time capsule system was created using Go and Vonage's Voice API, allowing well-wishers to leave voice recordings for a birthday person at a specified date and time. The system consists of several components, including a virtual phone number, an Ngrok tunnel, a Vonage application with webhooks, and a database to store the recorded audio files. When a call is made to the virtual phone number, the system answers the call and instructs the caller to leave a message. The messages are then stored in the database and played back to the birthday person at a later date using an outbound call from Vonage's Voice API. The system also includes functionality to play multiple audio files in sequence, with each file being played after the previous one is completed.

I am a software developer turned developer advocate, and I have been working as a Developer Advocate at Vonage for one month. During this time, I have completed onboarding, learned about internal processes and APIs, supported events and answered questions in chats, and participated in developer communities and forums. I have also given talks and workshops, updated blog posts and documentation, created content in different formats, and worked remotely with people from different timezones. As a Developer Advocate, my goal is to bring awareness and create relationships with the developer community through constructive conversations and feedback. I am a lifelong learner and believe that learning something new can turn into a nice demo. I have gathered resources such as books and newsletters that have helped me understand better what Developer Relations are, and I would love to share them with others who may be interested in this field.

The Android platform has undergone significant changes over its lifetime, from using the Model-View-Controller pattern to the Model-View-ViewModel pattern recommended by Google. The usage of XML files for defining layouts has remained relatively consistent, but new features like Kotlin's DSL have been introduced. JetPack Compose is a new way of dealing with UI that utilizes Kotlin and custom DSL language to configure screen layouts, define themes, manage view state, and add UI animations, achieving a declarative approach similar to ReactNative, Flutter, and iOS apps. With Android Studio Arctic Fox 2020.3.1 or newer, developers can create new projects using the Empty Compose Activity template and start defining views in the setContent lambda function, which has replaced XML files for view definitions. The JetPack Compose DSL provides basic building blocks for UI applications, including columns, rows, boxes, and composable components that can be extracted into separate methods annotated with the Composable annotation. As of June 2021, JetPack Compose is not stable yet but has great potential and will likely become a new standard for Android UI in the future.

Agricultural technology, also known as agritech, has gained significant attention in recent years due to its potential to improve the efficiency of food production processes through technological innovation. The sector has seen substantial investment growth, with over $700 million invested in 2017 alone, and is expected to experience exponential growth in 2021. One startup innovating in this space is AgServer, a peer-to-peer knowledge sharing platform that enables farmers to ask questions and receive answers from other farmers and extension agents, regardless of their location or mobile device usage. The company aims to democratize access to information for smallholder farmers, who are often isolated and lack access to holistic information and extension services. With its unique approach combining bottom-up and top-down approaches, AgServer has differentiated itself from competitors by utilizing both peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and expert views, as well as preloaded answers to provide a more robust response system. The startup is currently bootstrapping but seeking venture capital, angel funding, and other sources of funding to further its growth and ambitions.