Hey everyone! Yesterday was Labor Day in the US, so it's a rare Tuesday post this week.
Last week Chris Trag and I sat down for a live build session for the Build, Ship, Shape Amazon Developer Hackathon. I hope everyone reading this participates, so check it out, if you're looking for ideas.
Ring launched the new Ring Dome Cam 4K, a 4K dome camera built for business and multi-site installs, giving you a new device your integrations can work with.
We also launched a new Fire TV Beta program for Fire TV customers to try out new software before it's released. If you're a Fire TV dev, it could be a great opportunity for you too, to test your apps against pre-release Fire OS builds.
On the events side, we're out in force this fall: Agent Conf in Warsaw next week, with Kourtney Meiss and Anisha Malde on stage and Giovanni Laquidara running a workshop, then Next App Con Berlin and CityJS Athens in October, so we hope to see you there!
Let's dive in!
🛠️ Dev Updates
- 🆘 Alexa+ and Smart Home Developer Support — Alexa+ and Smart Home devs can now get support through the DevAssistant tool, instead of the Contact Us form.
📢 Announcements
🔥 Fire TV Beta program
- Amazon launched a new Fire TV Beta program for customers. It's open to Fire TV devs too, so I recommend checking out the FAQ, covering how to enroll and what to expect, if you'd like to test your apps against pre-release Fire OS builds.
🔔 Introducing the Ring Dome Cam 4K
- Ring extends its lineup with a 4K dome camera built for business and multi-site installs, with USB-C or PoE power, Wi-Fi or Ethernet, local storage, and end-to-end encryption, widening the surface of Ring devices and footage your Ring Appstore integrations can work with.
📅 Events
We're out across Europe and the US this fall. Next up is Agent Conf in Warsaw on September 17, where Dev Advocates Kourtney Meiss and Anisha Malde are giving a talk and Giovanni Laquidara leads a workshop, then we head to Next App Con Berlin and CityJS Athens in October. We hope to see you there!
| Date | Event | Location | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 31 – Oct 23 | Build, Ship, Shape: Amazon Developer Hackathon | Online | Our first global developer hackathon, which we're hosting: build on Fire TV, Alexa+, Ring, or Bee for a share of a $190K pool of cash and AWS credits, with submissions closing October 23. |
| Sept 11 | ZurichJS Conf | Zurich, CH | Annual JavaScript conference covering the web, frameworks, and emerging JS platforms, and we'll be in the room. |
| Sept 11–14 | IBC Show | Amsterdam, NL | The leading media, entertainment, and broadcast-technology show at RAI Amsterdam, worth a look for anyone shipping streaming apps. |
| Sept 17–18 | Agent Conf | Warsaw, PL | Dev Advocates Kourtney Meiss and Anisha Malde are giving a talk, and Sr. Dev Advocate Giovanni Laquidara leads a workshop on agentic development. |
| Sept 24 | React Native Connection | Paris, FR | French React Native conference covering the framework and the platforms built on it, and we'll be dropping in. |
| Oct 7–9 | Next App Con Berlin | Berlin, DE | Dev Advocate Anisha Malde joins a panel, Sr. Dev Advocate Giovanni Laquidara leads a workshop, and Dev Advocate Moses Roth gives a lightning talk. |
| Oct 21–22 | NAB Show New York | New York City, US | East-coast edition of NAB Show for broadcast, media, and entertainment tech, at the Javits Center. |
| Oct 21–23 | CityJS Athens | Athens, GR | Dev Advocate Moses Roth is giving a talk at the Athens edition of the CityJS series on modern JavaScript and frontend. |
| Oct 22–23 | AGNTCon + MCPCon North America | San Jose, US | Linux Foundation conference for the open agentic-AI ecosystem, with MCP and agent-systems tracks for builders. |
| Oct 23–26 | React Advanced London | London, GB | Advanced-React conference for senior practitioners working with the framework at scale. |
| Oct 28–29 | GitHub Universe | San Francisco, US | GitHub's flagship event for developers and maintainers, focused on collaboration and workflows in the agentic era. |
| Oct 29–31 | React India | Goa, IN | India's largest React conference, covering web, mobile, and emerging React platforms; billed as the final edition. |
💬 Dev Posts
A few things worth your time this week: our hackathon build session, a new Vega guide on User-Agent strings, and a look at how Amazon Luna runs AAA games on a $35 stick.
📽️ Amazon Developer Hackathon Build Session: Fire TV, Alexa+, Bee & Ring
Chris Trag and I (with some help from Emerson Sklar and Darlyze Calixte) walk through all four hackathon tracks (Fire TV, Alexa+ with MCP, the Bee wearable, and Ring), plus the AWS Builder and open-source mini-challenges, with live Q&A on judging and where to get help. If you're deciding what to build before the October 23 deadline, this is the fastest way to see what each track is looking for.
📰 Handling User-Agent Strings in Vega WebView and React Native Apps
Vega WebView and React Native apps expose different User-Agent strings, and the OS and Chromium version tokens inside them change with every release. The guidance is to treat the UA as opaque: never hardcode substring or version checks, and if you need to identify your own Vega traffic, append an app-owned token or a custom header you control instead of parsing Amazon's default string. Essential reading if your backend does any device detection or capability gating.
📰 AAA games on a $35 stick: How Luna removes the hardware barrier with AWS
By Tyler Ng and Richard Lawrence
Amazon Luna streams AAA titles at 1080p60 to a $35 Fire TV Stick, a smart TV, or a browser with no download, and this piece digs into how: latency-based GPU instance selection across Regions, games in lightweight Linux containers, and controller input sent straight over Wi-Fi to dodge display lag. The engineering hook is the multi-tenancy model, four-plus certified 60fps sessions per GPU while keeping the fleet busy about 76% of the time, and it points you at Amazon GameLift Streams if you want to build your own streaming storefront on the same service.
📰 Zoox's Aicha Evans Is Reimagining Urban Mobility
By Joe Mullich
TIME's Trailblazers profile of Aicha Evans, CEO of Amazon's robotaxi company Zoox, which began charging for rides in Las Vegas in August and is expanding to Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and Austin next. It's a good look at where Amazon's autonomous and robotics ambitions are heading, toward purpose-built vehicles with no steering wheel and face-to-face seating.
📬 Feedback
Questions or comments? Have an item for next week's post? Let me know!
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