Google Chrome is testing a new ‘search term chip’ in its tab switcher interface

Sometime back in November 2019, Chrome began testing a new tab switcher interface. It had a grid layout, the logo of Google and the incognito toggle, Google Search bar, shortcuts to the frequently visited sites, and some article suggestions below. At that time, Google brought it on the latest...

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

YouTubers Are Turning To Alternative Ways to Earn Money, 80K Channels Earned Revenue on the Platform from Alternative Sources in April

The consumer usage of many television and video services has increased considerably during the last five months due to the coronavirus lockdowns. According to a recent national online survey of adult US citizens, around 20% of individuals have started watching more internet videos due to the...

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

eMarketer predicts a dramatic rise in the video viewing time and the usage of mobile apps in the US adults in 2020

Recently, eMarketer came up with a survey and predicted that the time spent on viewing mobile videos and mobile web is going to increase by 10 minutes in overall viewing trend, as compared to the previous year. Furthermore, this report also predicts that an average US adult will be using more...

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Google's Live Caption Will Now Work With Voice and Video Calls Made On Pixel Phones

Some times the voice in video and audio calls become so distorted that captions remain to be the only hope to understand what the other person is saying. Well, Google is about to make that wish come to life with its Android’s real-time captions feature, Live Caption, that will now work with voice...

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by Daniyal Malik via Digital Information World

Remote Workers and Email Mistakes - A Correlation!

Remote working may be flexible as it allows employees to continue work from the comfort of their homes. But did you know, that remote workers are also more likely to make email mistakes? Recent research from the email security company Tessian in collaboration with a Stanford University expert on...

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by Saima Salim via Digital Information World

How We Built a Serverless Web App for the Stax Console

This post was originally published on the Stax website.

Building a web console for a product as complex as Stax presented a number of challenges. Our API-first, serverless platform offers a diverse range of features for enterprises who want to manage and optimize their AWS ecosystem.

With such a developer-focused foundation, we needed to provide customers with a performant, reactive web app, with an intuitive user-experience that didn’t hide the power and functionality of our API. Data access through our console also needed to be built to the same high standard of security and compliance as the rest of our product.

This post will cover what we set out to achieve when building the Stax Console, our experience building a serverless GraphQL API to power it, and the lessons we learned along the way.

Serverless By Design

We wanted to produce a solution that was serverless from the start, to match the architecture we use for the rest of the product. One of the biggest benefits we’ve seen from going all in on serverless architectures at Stax is uptime and reliability. Avoiding relying on a server that can become a single point of failure allows us to meet our Service-Level Agreement, and ensure customers can access the platform during peak load times. Using AWS Lambda means queries from our front-end scale out horizontally and there’s always enough compute resources to process requests.

Using serverless products also improves security during development, as services like AWS Lambda provide baked-in compliance and service levels out of the box. Allowing Amazon to handle upgrades and patching of the infrastructure that our code runs on allows us to focus on building software instead of managing hardware.

The minimal infrastructure overhead when going serverless has allowed our team to fully own the deployment and monitoring of our GraphQL API. For example, developers can add new Networks functionality using separate Lambda functions to those used to fetch account data, minimizing the blast radius from pushing a new change to production.

Early Days

The first iteration of our Console had a fairly traditional web architecture. A React single-page application (SPA) called the Stax REST API directly, which is a serverless solution using AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda in front of a relational database. AWS Cognito handles user authentication and sign-on for both the Console and REST API.

We ran into a few technical issues with this approach:

1. Tooling. Modern front-end frameworks evolve quickly. Consuming data from REST APIs with React was complex and it was difficult to manage state.
2. Stability. The tight coupling of our front-end SPA to back-end REST API was efficient, but the contract between systems was constantly changing as features developed which risked breaking our user interface.
3. Real-Time Updates. We would need to build our own WebSocket implementation to push data to our front-end SPA to provide real-time updates. This would have been complex to implement in both the front end and back end.

It also became apparent that as Stax grew as a product, the Console needed to integrate with other back-end services than our REST API, such as Cost and Compliance data for accounts and our Customer Support Case service. Interfacing with multiple APIs and protocols, all with differing authentication mechanisms, led us to consider a Back End for Front End pattern with a single GraphQL API.

Our Console Architecture Now

The architecture centers on a GraphQL API layer that acts as a proxy between our front-end and back-end services. GraphQL is a query language for APIs; it allows developers to define the types of data in a system (the schema), and wire up functions to fetch data from different sources (resolvers). Relationships between data can be expanded in a single GraphQL query. For example, a single request can resolve a Stax Workload and the user that deployed it in one go.

A key reason GraphQL suited our needs is that data can be fetched from any source by a resolver and be presented to a front end as a single interface. This means that as Stax grows, we can refactor and optimize back-end services with minimal impact to our front-end developers and customers. Authentication is also massively simplified. The front-end authenticates to our GraphQL API in one place, which handles connections to various REST and GraphQL APIs and event sources behind the scenes.

At Stax, we’re closely partnered with AWS, and try to use native AWS solutions where possible as part of our development philosophy. We opted to use AWS AppSync, a fully managed serverless GraphQL implementation as the core of our service.

AWS AppSync implements the main GraphQL directives, including GraphQL Subscriptions that manage WebSocket connections between clients and your GraphQL API. AWS Lambda fetches and transforms data in GraphQL resolver functions, AWS DynamoDB is used for serverless data stores, and AWS EventBridge triggers Lambda functions in response to system events.

Continue reading How We Built a Serverless Web App for the Stax Console on SitePoint.

by Adam Quigley via SitePoint

Real-Time Stock Market Data With the marketstack API

To make sound financial decisions, you need a reliable, up-to-the-minute source of real-time stock market data. 

You want the same source of data used by Microsoft, Amazon, Credit Suisse, and Uber.

The good news is you don't have to be a major player to have this data in real time. 

Whether you're an individual, small business, financial advisor, or developer, the marketstack API gives you access to real-time, intraday, and historical stock data from 72 global stock exchanges, including Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange, and the London Stock Exchange. 

You too can now deliver real-time, intraday, historical stock, or end-of-day market data to your website and to your clients and create satisfying user experiences. 

It's simple and cost-effective: let me introduce you to marketstack. 

What Is the marketstack API?

marketstack is a popular, easy-to-use REST API interface that delivers real-time, intraday, and historical stock market data.          

The API is powered by cutting-edge technology and a scalable cloud infrastructure capable of handling several million API requests per hour with ease. 

You can search from 125,000+ worldwide stock tickers, collected from 72 global exchanges, including Nasdaq and the NYSE.

Using the marketstack REST API, you will be able to obtain end-of-day and intraday data, as well as historical market data for the last 30 years.

With the marketstack API, you can:

• query for real-time, intraday, and historical stock market data
• define multiple stock symbols
• retrieve extensive data from about 72+ stock exchanges
• access 125,000+ stock tickers from more than 50 countries
• retrieve information on time zones, currencies, and more

Why Use the marketstack API?

It Uses JSON

marketstack uses the lightweight JSON format, and HTTP GET for all the requests. API queries are easy to create and to interpret.

Integration With Multiple Languages

The API integrates with widely used programming languages and platforms: PHP, Python, jQuery, Node, Go, and Ruby.               

Scalable

The marketstack API can scale with your information and data demands. It can easily handle spikes and increases in your daily queries. 

Bank-Grade Security

Client data is protected by a layer of heavy security. Each bit and byte sent to and from the marketstack API is encrypted using industry-standard 256-bit HTTPS encryption.

Reliable Information Sources 

Stock market data provided by the marketstack API is licensed and sourced from multiple high-authority market data providers around the world. 

Proof in Numbers 

Trusted by 30,000 companies and 75 universities. 

Documentation

The marketstack API comes with extensive and detailed documentation. 

How It Works

The marketstack API is built upon a RESTful and easy-to-understand request and response structure. 

1. API requests are always sent in the URL string with a series of required and optional HTTP GET parameters.
2. API responses are provided in lightweight JSON format.

Quick Tutorial

Here is an example of the information returned from a marketstack API query.

It's very easy to get set up and start using marketstack. This short tutorial will show you how. 

To get started, first sign up for a free account at marketstack. Once you've registered, you'll be taken to the marketstack API quick start screen. From here, you can get your API key and try some example API queries.    

Now you can perform a request. Using your API key and the example queries shown in the quick start guide, you can look up stock prices and other information. For example, let's perform a single request for Apple stock.

The quick start guide shows the following format for the query.

Click the example to try the request, or enter it into your address bar:

http://api.marketstack.com/v1/eod?access_key=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY&symbols=AAPL 

Be sure to copy your access key into this URL to try it. If your API request was successful, the marketstack API will return pagination information as well as a data object, which contains a separate sub-object for each requested date/time and symbol. 

Note that requests you make on the free plan are not encrypted, so you must use the HTTP protocol for free requests. If you try to use HTTPS, you will get the message that "Your current subscription plan does not support HTTPS encryption". If HTTPS is important to you, then you'll need to go with a paid plan.

You can learn more from the official marketstack documentation, including code examples for JavaScript, PHP, Python, and more. 

Pricing

marketstack has several market data subscription plans. 

Free: You get 1,000 data requests per month without paying anything. This applies for all supported stock tickers and exchanges. It does not offer intraday data, and you are restricted to one year of historical data. No credit card is needed to register. 

Who is this plan best for? It's best for beginners wanting to test the waters and see how marketstack works. 

Basic: gets you 10,000 requests per month, support for intraday data, access to ten-year historical data, HTTPS encryption, a commercial license, and more. At the time of writing, this plan is $9.99 per month, or $7.99 if billed yearly. 

Who is this plan best for? For those who have seen how marketstack works and want to get serious using it. 

Professional (Most Popular): With this plan, you get real-time updates, full historical data, up to 100,000 requests per month, and technical support. 

Business: This plan gives you all the tools you will ever need, for up to 500,000 monthly requests, real-time updates, and direct support.  

Enterprise: If none of the other plans are adequate, you can get custom pricing that is tailored to your needs. 

Conclusion

marketstack is trusted by 30,000 companies and 75 universities. This is a big mark of approval. The interfaces for requests and responses are easy to use, and there is detailed documentation that explains all the API parameters.

Try it out today with a free API key!

by Franc Lucas via Envato Tuts+ Code