Google Cloud Dataproc and the 17 minute train challenge

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Shine Technologies

multiple-seats

My work commute

My commute to and from work on the train is on average 17 minutes. It’s the usual uneventful affair, where the majority of people pass the time by surfing their mobile devices, catching a few Zs, or by reading a book. I’m one of those people who like to check in with family & friends on my phone, and see what they have been up to back home in Europe, while I’ve been snug as a bug in my bed.

Stay with me here folks.

But aside from getting up to speed with the latest events from back home, I also like to catch up on the latest tech news, and in particular what’s been happening in the rapidly evolving cloud area. And this week, one news item in my AppyGeek feed immediately jumped off the screen at me. Google have launched yet another game-changing product into their cloud platform big data suite.

It’s called Cloud Dataproc.

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re:Invent 2015 Conference report: Welcome to the Starship Enterprise

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Shine Technologies
Too cool for a suit, not cool enough for jeans and a t-shirt

Too cool for a suit, not cool enough for jeans and a t-shirt

Last week I attended the fourth re:Invent conference for Amazon Web Services in Las Vegas. During four days I got to hear some new announcements, gain insights into specific technologies and gauge the mood of the AWS ecosystem. Reflecting on the week, there is one theme that resonated with me: AWS has its eyes on the Enterprise.

Andy Jassy (SVP Web Services) himself talked about the phases of adoption of the cloud, from initial use in development, to cloud-native web applications, and finally ‘all-in’ migration of core systems. Given that adoption in the enterprise has already been significant in the first two phases, AWS’s focus has shifted to assisting the last.

So how are they going to do it? A combination of enterprise-friendly services and partnering. Let’s talk through the major new announcements.

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YOW! Connected 2015: Conference Report

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Shine Technologies

yowconnected

Last week I had the privilege of attending the YOW! Connected conference in Melbourne, Australia. YOW! Connected offers a look at all the interesting things that are happening in the mobile and IoT (Internet of Things) space, from the perspective of both software developers and UX designers.

On the mobile front it included a variety of talks relating to both the iOS and Android platforms and yes, even a little bit of Windows.

In general all the talks that I went to were pretty good,  but here I will write about a few that particularly interested me.

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Faster, Higher, Stronger! Go Go Go!

Posted on September 12, 2015 by Shine Technologies

gogo

It was a Friday and I was thinking about what to do on the weekend. My better half was going shopping with her friends, and I was choosing between bike riding on the Great Ocean Road or having a garage party with friends.

Then, just before I was going to shut my laptop, I took a quick look at Reddit and saw a post about a challenge that the guys from Go Challenge run each week.

So that’s what I decided to do that weekend…and the next 3.

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Shiners nominated for ‘Google Developer Expert’ program!

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Shine Technologies

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Shine are delighted to announce that our very own Pablo Caif, and Graham Polley have both been nominated to become part of the Google Developer Expert program!

Becoming an expert, means undergoing a stringent evaluation and interview process, as well as being nominated by a Google employee, authorised by the Google Developers team, and all based on the special contribution they make to their field.

If you’ve been following our blog, then you’ll know that the guys have been doing some awesome work for our client Telstra using the Google Cloud Platform. In particular, they’ve been building scalable big data solutions using bleeding edge technology tools like BigQuery and Dataflow. In addition to building these cool solutions, they’ve both been blogging, and giving talks on their experiences.

The Dataflow engineering team decided it was high time that both Pablo and Graham should be acknowledged for their contribution to the Google cloud platform, and decided to nominate both of them. Their nominations have been submitted for the Cloud Platform category, which will in fact make them the first developer experts in that category in Australia! WOW!

We’d like to wish Graham and Pablo all the best with their application, and hopefully they’ll be awarded the braggable title of ‘Google Developer Expert’ in the not so distant future!

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Shiner Ben Teese to speak at YOW! Connected

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Shine Technologies

yowconnected

Shine is proud to announce that senior consultant Ben Teese will be speaking at the YOW! Connected conference being held in Melbourne on the 17th and 18th of September.

Ben’s topic will be React Native, an innovative new framework that applies the principles of the React web development library to native mobile application development.

If you haven’t purchased a ticket to YOW! Connected yet, be sure to get one whilst they’re still available. And if you’re already coming, be sure to check out Ben’s talk and say hi afterwards!

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Adobe Innovation Session (June 2015)

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Shine Technologies

Adobe-Marketing-Cloud

As part of the Adobe Partner program, various sessions and events are organised to keep partners updated on the latest features of the Adobe Marketing Cloud platform. Best practices are also talked about in order to deliver high quality solutions to clients that invest in Adobe’s digital experience management solutions.

On June 3rd, Shine Technologies was invited to an Innovation Session with a focus on leveraging the Adobe Marketing Cloud to deliver engaging customer experiences.

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Video of ‘Big Data the Cloud Way’ presentation now available

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Shine Technologies

Video of the recent ‘Big Data the Cloud Way’ presentation by Shine’s Graham Polley and Shane Neubauer is now available.

In it, Graham and Shane talk about how they used both the Google and Amazon cloud stacks at Telstra to query massive quantities of data in super-fast times using regular SQL queries.

In a world of exponentially-growing datasets, we think these technologies have tremendous potential for businesses because they make large-scale data analytics easy and affordable. If you want to learn more, check out the video!

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ES6 with Babel.js

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Shine Technologies
babel_meme

With Babel.js, we can all use ES6 before browsers support it

ECMAScript 2015, also commonly known as ES2015 or ES6, is the specification that defines the ECMAScript language, of which JavaScript is one implementation. This new version of the specification introduces language features to JavaScript that can improve developer efficiency and happiness.

Some features of the ES6 spec have already been implemented in browsers, whilst others are only beginning to be implemented. However if your desired features are not implemented yet, or you need to support older browsers, it is still possible to get the benefits of ES6 now by using Babel.js.

Over the last few months we have been using Babel to gain access ES6 features, while still maintaining support for browsers like Internet Explorer 9. In this blog post I will explain what Babel is, and how you can use Babel for yourself.

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Shine proud to support CoderDojo for kids

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Shine Technologies

Shine was extremely proud to be part of the very first CoderDojo in Melbourne at the Inspire9 building last Saturday.

Organised by Shine’s Graham Polley, volunteers mentored ten enthusiastic kids (or “Ninjas”!) between the ages of 7 and 17 years, and guided them towards making their first steps into the world of software development!

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‘Dancing Cat’ using Scratch

Shiners Graham Polley and Shane Neubauer helping a Coder Dojo attendee

Shiners Graham Polley and Shane Neubauer helping a Coder Dojo attendee

The kids had a fantastic time using Scratch, which teaches the basics of programming to children. Their first challenge was to program a cat to move, make noises and even disco-dance on the screen!

This was a great opportunity for kids to learn from real professionals in the industry. At times, the kids were even encouraged to mentor each other, which was really terrific to see.

 

The sessions are run every second weekend on a Saturday, and many of the kids from the first session have already registered to attend the next session on 11 July.

If you’d like to learn more, become a mentor, or even just help out, then visit the Melbourne CoderDojo at Inspire9 website, or follow them on Twitter, and Facebook.

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