Upcoming Presentation: Couchbase Live NYC 2015

I’m trying something new so bare with me here. I speak at quite a few events (conferences, meetups, code camps, etc.) so I figured it would be useful to my followers to know when and where these events are in case I am in your part of the world.

I’ll keep it short and to the point. I’m going to be in New York on October 6th, 2015 to present at Couchbase Live New York. It is free to attend this conference, so if you’re in the area, please swing by.

My presentation will be on Node.js and is titled Getting Started: Couchbase Server Node.js SDK.

The abstract to my talk is as follows:

Access The Native Device Clipboard In React Native

Keeping up the trend of React Native coolness, I figured it would be a good idea to see how to access the native device clipboard. I had already demonstrated the device clipboard with Ionic Framework so it would only be fair to accomplish the same with React Native as well.

Out of the box with React Native you won’t be able to access the clipboard. You’re going to have to install a component, and lucky for us, one such component exists. We are going to check out the react-native-clipboard component by Fishfly.

Add Glyph Icons To Your React Native Mobile App

Out of the box mobile platforms, and even React Native for that matter, don’t ship with a very large selection of icons. If we’ve chosen to use React Native as our development framework then we’re lucky that there is a great component that can be added to give us thousands of icons for use in our application.

Previously I wrote about how to use Font Awesome in an Ionic Framework and native Android applications. This time we’re going to see the same using React Native and the react-native-icons component by Cory Smith.

Using Navigator Routes In Your React Native Application

When creating a mobile application, chances are at some point in time you’re going to want to have more than one application view or screen. In many programming languages this is referred to as application routes.

With React Native, the navigator is used to switch between screens.

Use The iOS Camera In Your React Native Mobile App

In many mobile applications it is essential to be able to use the device camera. Maybe you’re creating the next Instagram or other photo sharing application.

Previously I wrote how to use the device camera in Ionic Framework, but how might we do the same with React Native?

Lucky for us, with React Native, there is an external component that lets us use the camera. Using react-native-camera by Loch Wansbrough, we have access to both the front and back device camera.

Support iBeacons In Your Ionic Framework Mobile App

I recently picked up some Estimote iBeacons to play around with and figured I’d try to get them working in an Ionic Framework Android and iOS application.

If you’re unfamiliar with iBeacons, they are small bluetooth proximity devices. There are many different manufacturers, but Estimote appears to have the best advertised battery life and durability. iBeacons generally broadcast a signal every 100ms to 1000ms depending on the configuration or brand. The broadcast signal contains a UUID and two numeric identifiers which are a major and minor version.

Before I get into the code I’ll share a few possible use cases for iBeacons:

1. Triggering some literature or audio when your device detects that you’re near a particular iBeacon in a museum. Put one near The Statue of David in Italy and bam, you could have information about it when you approach it.
2. Tracking foot traffic in your store. Maybe you have a large store like Walmart with iBeacons in every department. You can see which department gets the most traffic.
3. Calculating how long time-wise a queue / line is for a particular ride at an amusement park based on device to beacon discovery.

There are endless other useful scenarios.

Upcoming Presentation: Phoenix Mobile Festival

In case I’m in your part of the world, I’ll be giving a talk at the Phoenix Mobile Festival in Phoenix, Arizona on September 19th, 2015. I encourage you to attend or at least swing by and say hello.

The title of my talk is Building Offline First Mobile Applications and the abstract is as follows:

What happens when your mobile device does not have a network connection? That device will have no content, no experience and the amazing application that you spent so much effort to build just simply will not work.

You will gain knowledge in NoSQL databases technologies and walk away with insights on how to create offline type of applications that to sync to the cloud with Couchbase Mobile.

This is a free event, so if you’re available and are interested in learning about mobile technologies, mark it on your calendar. Based on the listed agenda there are going to be a lot of fun topics.