May 2022 Summaries

In 2018, the author moved to Tel Aviv with a basic programming skillset and found that there was no active Ruby community in the city. The author helped build this community by attending meetups, reaching out to organizers, and cold-calling potential attendees. Despite some initial successes, the author struggled to connect with current Rubyists or companies actively developing in Ruby. However, with the help of co-organizers Ben Greenberg and Ariel Caplan, the Israel.rb meetup was formed, which has since become a thriving community with online meetups, hybrid events, and a job board. The key to success lies in finding people interested in the specific language or framework, creating content, and providing a place for meeting. Consistency is also crucial, along with using the right tools for communication and engagement.

Breakout Room is a common feature in video conferencing applications that allows splitting the main meeting room into separate ones, and participants can send messages to the host no matter which room they are in. The Vonage Video API provides multiple ways to implement this feature, including creating a big Video Session with logic controlling which streams to subscribe to for each user or implementing breakout rooms as separate sessions and connecting participants to these different sessions. This tutorial explains how to use the separate sessions method to build the Breakout Room feature into an application using signaling API, where the application server creates rooms, generates tokens, maintains the rooms and participants, and sends signaling messages to rooms. The tutorial covers the application's server and database design, including a room table that stores information about each room, and how to use Signaling-REST API to send messages to clients connected to all sessions related to a main-room/breakout-room. It also shows how to re-use the Publisher object when switching back and forth among rooms.

Welcome to One Dev Minute! This series is hosted on the Vonage Dev YouTube channel. The goal of this video series is to share knowledge in a bite-sized manner. In this quick walkthrough, Amanda Cavallaro will show you how to receive SMS messages with the Vonage Messages API, Express and Node.js. You need to have a Vonage account, installed Node.js, Ngrok, and the Vonage CLI globally, created an Express application that uses JSON parser and URL encoded modules, set up a post request handler for the webhook inbound, logged the request body to the console, ran the code with node server.js and ngrok http 3000, generated an HTTPS URL in the Vonage dashboard, linked a phone number, sent a message from your phone to your virtual phone number, and learned further from links below.

UrbanAir is a mobile app that aims to solve the fragmentation problem in the shared mobility market by providing a single platform for users to find and ride various types of vehicles, such as e-scooters, bikes, cars, and more. The startup has secured an investment of EUR 600,000 from Early Game Ventures and is currently fundraising. UrbanAir's proprietary tech stack allows it to integrate with over 100 mobility providers globally, providing a unified riding experience for users. Despite facing challenges in integrating multiple providers quickly, the company has developed a solution that enables seamless booking and use of various mobility options in one app, reducing friction for users. Ultimately, UrbanAir's goal is to have every provider on the planet integrated into its platform, enabling users to access all possible means of transportation through a single app.

Vonage has joined the OW2 Quick App Initiative, a community-driven open-source project exploring emerging W3C MiniApp standards and their potential in instant apps. The initiative aims to promote transparency, collaboration, and sharing among its members. Vonage is interested in integrating communication APIs into Quick Apps, which are already popular in China and gaining global traction. By joining the QAI, Vonage plans to research use cases and business requirements for instant mobile applications, develop sample applications, and provide documentation to help developers integrate communication APIs into their apps.

Boas vindas ao One Dev Minute! Esta série está hospedada no canal de YouTube VonageDev. O objetivo desta série de vídeos é compartilhar conhecimento de uma maneira breve. Neste vídeo, Amanda Cavallaro, nossa Developer Advocate, fala sobre os objetos de controle de chamadas, que são um conjunto de ações que instruem o Vonage a controlar a chamada para seu aplicativo Vonage. Um objeto de controle de chamada é composto por uma ou mais ações, e suas opções descrevem o fluxo da chamada. As ações podem ser usadas para personalizar uma chamada, como conectar uma chamada, enviar fala sintetizada, transmitir áudio ou gravar uma chamada. É importante notar que o NCCO é representado por um array de JSON e as opções são usadas para personalizar uma ação. As ações podem ser combinadas para criar uma conversa em conferência, e também pode-se aproveitar do reconhecimento de fala, aceitando DTMF, fala ou ambos. Você pode aprender mais sobre NCCO nos links abaixo.

Amanda Cavallaro, a Developer Advocate at Vonage, introduces the concept of call control objects (NCCOs) in a brief video series on the VonageDev YouTube channel. NCCOs are a set of actions that guide the flow of voice calls in Vonage applications, using a JSON array to represent them. The order of actions in an NCCO is crucial as it dictates the call's progression, with options to customize actions such as connecting calls, transmitting audio, or recording conversations. Examples include connecting calls to phone numbers or app endpoints and incorporating speech recognition or DTMF inputs. The series aims to educate developers on effectively utilizing these tools to enhance call handling in their applications, with additional resources and community support available through Vonage's Slack channel and online guides.