Here is a recap of new posts for the week of June 8^th on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Here is a recap of new posts for the week of June 1^st and May 25^th on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Here is a recap of new posts for the week of May 18^th on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Amazon is hosting a Developer Day on June 13th at NRECA in Arlington, VA. Amazon Developer Evangelists will share industry best practices and help mobile developers learn how to grow their app business via the Amazon Appstore. Amazon technology leaders will be on-hand to answer developer questions and lead talks on topics such as building apps and games for Android devices, BlackBerry, Fire tablets, Fire phone, Amazon Fire TV, and how to build voice controlled experiences for Amazon Echo. Attendees will also learn best practices around how to make fun games and to market your game to influencers and build a fan base.

The format of the workshop will be split between morning lectures and afternoon “App Hours.” The App Hours will allow developers to get 1:1 support to publish and tests their own apps and games to the Amazon Appstore, guidance around building apps and games with Android, Unity and Xamarin, and hands on experience with the Amazon Mobile App SDK, Fire Phone SDK, Fire TV SDK and Alexa AppKit code samples. Developers will also be rewarded with Amazon gift cards for successful app submissions to the Amazon Appstore during the App Hours’ time period.

Already have an Android app? Bring your APK for a chance to win cool prizes! Click here to register now!

Agenda

Check-in and Breakfast
9:30am-10:00am

An Overview of the Amazon Devices and Services for Mobile Developers
10:00am-10:45am
David Isbitski, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
We will start the day off with an overview of Amazon's current developer ecosystem. Learn how you can take advantage of Amazon’s Mobile Apps SDK, Amazon's Appstore and the new line of consumer Fire devices like Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick and Fire tablets, as well as monetization services such as in-app purchasing.

Building Spoken Language Apps and Experiences for Amazon Echo
10:45am-11:45am
David Isbitski, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
Echo is a new device from Amazon designed around your voice. It's always on—just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Tucked under Echo's light ring is an array of seven microphones. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where it leverages the power of Amazon Web Services to recognize and respond to your request. With the release of the Alexa AppKit you can now build your own apps and experiences for Amazon Echo. This session will cover everything you need to know starting off with how to use the Alexa AppKit, how to build your first voice app, and end with the app submission process.

Lunch
11:45am-12:00pm                       

How We Made a Game No Fun
12:00pm-12:45pm
Paul Cutsinger, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
There are lots of suggestions about how to make a game fun.  Best practices are everywhere, but you can't just follow them blindly.  To create a fun game, you have to figure out how best practices integrate into your specific game.  Come see what we did wrong, and what we learned along the way.          

How to Evolve Players into Fans
12:45pm-1:30pm
Paul Cutsinger, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
We’ve analyzed the top mobile games to see what best practices make them stand out from the crowd. Several trends emerging now will amplify those best practices, and games will have more opportunity than ever to excel. In the future, the top games will have fully realized fan bases that will drive their user acquisition and engagement engines. That fan base will include players but also content creators, advocates and potential new customers — this will open up a wider range of monetization options. Come see how top mobile games drive more engagement and revenue and learn how to you can do this with your own game.      

Break
1:30pm-1:45pm

App Hours
1:45pm-3:45pm
Get 1:1 support to publish and test apps and games to the Amazon Appstore. Learn how to build apps and games with Android, Unity and Xamarin. Get hands on experience with the Amazon Mobile App SDK, Fire Phone SDK, Fire TV SDK and Alexa AppKit code samples.

Raffle and Wrap-Up
3:45pm-4pm

Speakers

Paul Cutsinger, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
Paul Cutsinger is an advocate for app builders and likes to help them turn great ideas into strong businesses. At Amazon, he's focusing on cross-platform and customer optimization. Previously, he ran engineering for Disney's Club Penguin game studio. At Microsoft, he shipped HTML5 in IE9 and the Windows user experience back when there was still a start menu. He can be found on twitter @PaulCutsinger or www.PaulCutsinger.com.

David Isbitski, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
Dave has been a professional speaker, trainer and evangelist for over a decade. He has taught full-day courses on many topics including Mobile Apps, Cloud and the Web. Dave has helped launch numerous technology platforms, frameworks and programming languages across an array of devices at both Microsoft and Amazon. Dave is also an author for Lynda.com and can be found on twitter as @TheDaveDev and the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Seating is limited so be sure to register for the event to reserve your spot. Hope to see you there!

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Here is a recap of new posts for the week of May 11^th on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

If you are in the New York City area this week the Amazon Appstore team will be at Streaming Media East conference located in the Hilton Hotel NYC in Midtown.

Amazon will be offering two sessions on Fire TV the morning of Tuesday, May 12^th.

D101: HOW TO: Bringing Media Channels to Amazon Fire TV
Russell Beattie, Technical Evangelist - Amazon Lab126
Justin Webster, Executive Director, Product Development & Operations - The Wall Street Journal Digital Network Amazon Fire TV can help content creators and developers find new customers by making it easy to create media-based apps for the best-selling Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. In this presentation, we will dive into the Fire TV platform and show attendees how they can quickly publish their content as media apps using Amazon's open source Web App Starter Kit for Fire TV. Attendees will also hear from Wall Street Journal, a Starter Kit beta partner, about their experience rapidly developing a real-world Fire TV media app that provides a great viewing experience for their customers.

D102: HOW TO: Top Tips for Getting Your Android Apps Running on Amazon Fire TV
11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
David Isbitski, Developer Evangelist – Amazon
This session will introduce you to Amazon Fire TV and what you need to do to get your Android apps ready. What does your app’s 10 foot experience look like, how will your touch controls convert to a controller based experience, how will you sync game progress across all of your players devices, and what are the TV-specific gotchas like overscan. This session will get you started with Amazon’s free Fire TV developer SDK and provide plenty of tips for getting your app up and running.  Both Android Studio and Xamarin Studio will also be covered showing how you can target Fire TV using the same familiar developer environment.

If you haven’t registered for the conference but would like to check out the Amazon sessions please let us know and we can get you a free pass to attend the talks.

Hope to see you there!

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Here is a recap of new posts for the week of May 4^th on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Here is a recap of new posts for the week of April 27^th on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Here is a recap of new posts for the week of April 20^th on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the largest annual gathering of professional video game developers providing a place for the industry to collaborate, network and share best practices for creating compelling game experiences. This year Amazon hosted a full Developer Day with sessions that covered building Android games for our full line of devices, Amazon Echo, Fire Tablets, Fire TV and Fire Phone, how to build better cloud gaming experiences, reaching fans with Twitch, and applying in-app monetization best practices based on Amazon's IAP data.

These sessions were previously only available to GDC attendees, and we’re excited to announce that we’ve made all of the Amazon GDC Developer Day sessions freely available online. Enjoy!

An Overview of the Amazon Devices and Services for Game Developers
David Isbitski, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
Alf Tan, Head of Games Business Development, Amazon
Vlad Suglobov, CEO, G5 Entertainment
An overview of Amazon's current developer ecosystem.  Learn how you can take advantage of AWS services specifically targeted for Game Developers, Amazon's Appstore and the new line of consumer Fire devices like Amazon Echo, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick and Fire tablets, as well as monetization services such as in-app purchasing.  Plus, hear how G5 entertainment has had success on the Amazon platform from G5 CEO Vlad Suglobov.    

Top Tips for Porting Unity Games to Fire Devices
Jesse Freeman, Developer Evangelist, Amazon   
In this talk, we cover important tips for porting Unity games over to Fire TV, Fire tablets and Fire phone. Through code examples, we'll demo how to support multiple resolutions for pixel perfect Orthographic and Perspective Cameras, abstracting player input to support keyboard, controller and touch, and optimization tips for C# for the best performance. We'll also show how to deploy to our devices and get your game up and running on Fire OS. You'll walk away knowing what it takes to publish to the Amazon Appstore and help expand your game's user base.

How to Evolve Players into Fans
Peter Heinrich, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
We’ve analyzed the top mobile games to see what best practices make them stand out from the crowd. Several trends emerging now will amplify those best practices, and games will have more opportunity than ever to excel. In the future, the top games will have fully realized fan bases that will drive their user acquisition and engagement engines. That fan base will include players but also content creators, advocates and potential new customers — this will open up a wider range of monetization options.  Hear more about how top mobile games drive greater engagement and revenue and learn how to you can do this with your own game.

Build and Deploy Your Mobile Game with AWS
Dhruv Thukral, Gaming Solutions Architect, Amazon
Tara Walker, Technical Evangelist, Amazon 
Developing a successful mobile game today is about more than just the game:  Users expect backend services like user authentication, downloadable content, and social features. Using our AWS Mobile SDK for iOS and Android, it’s easier than ever to build a game with these services.  This session will provide a step-by-step approach to add features to your game such as user identity management, dynamic content updates, cross-platform data sync, and more.  We’ll demonstrate how to use the AWS Mobile SDK to securely interact with services such as Cognito, DynamoDB, S3, and EC2.  Finally, we’ll provide a few common architecture patterns and scalability tips for AWS game backends.

How We Made a Game No Fun
Mike Hines, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
There are lots of suggestions about how to make a game fun.  Best practices are everywhere, but you can't just follow them blindly.  To create a fun game, you have to figure out how best practices integrate into your specific game.  Watch what we did wrong, and what we learned along the way.       

Connecting with Your Customers - Building Successful Mobile Games through the Power of AWS Analytics
Nate Wiger, Principal Gaming Solutions Architect, Amazon
Free to play is now the standard for mobile and social games.  But succeeding in free-to-play is not easy:  You need in-depth data analytics to gain insight into your players so you can monetize your game.  Learn how to leverage new features of AWS services such as Elastic MapReduce, Amazon S3, Kinesis, and Redshift to build an end-to-end analytics pipeline.  Plus, we’ll show you how to easily integrate analytics with other AWS services in your game.

Deploying a Low-Latency Multiplayer Game Globally: Loadout
3:30pm-4:15pm
Nate Wiger, Principal Gaming Solutions Architect, Amazon
This is a deep-dive straight into the guts of running a low-latency multiplayer game, such as a first-person shooter, on a global scale. We dive into architectures that enable you to split apart your back-end APIs from your game servers, and Auto Scale them independently.  See how to run game servers in multiple AWS regions such as China and Frankfurt, and integrate them with your central game stack.  We’ll even demo this in action, using AWS CloudFormation and Chef to deploy Unreal Engine game servers.
 

How Game Developers Reach New Customers with Twitch
4:15pm-5:15pm
Marcus Graham, Director of Community & Education at Twitch
Ernest Le, Director Publisher & Developer Partnerships at Twitch
Twitch is the largest live video platform and community for gamers with more than 100 million visitors per month. We want to connect gamers around the world by allowing them to broadcast, watch, and chat from everywhere they play.  In this session, learn how game developers are creating engaging experiences and reaching new customers via the Twitch platform.

Amazon Fire TV Games on Twitch

Garnett Lee and Tyler Cooper hosted a steam during GDC this year on Twitch. The guys were joined by representatives from 2K games for XCOM: Enemy Within, Tellate for Game of Thrones, Ep. 2, Tripwire for Killing Floor Calamity and ended the night with Hipster Whale and a Crossy Road competition! If you are a gamer interested in seeing first-hand what the current batch of Android games looks like on the big screen be sure check out the stream here. 

Ready to Submit Your App or Game?

For more information about getting started with the Amazon Appstore, Amazon Fire devices, or how to submit your game check out the following additional resources:

• Learn more about the Amazon Appstore
• Click here to submit your app
• Register for free as an Amazon Developer
• Amazon App Testing Service
• Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick SDK
• Amazon Fire Phone
• Amazon Fire Tablets
• Amazon Echo

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Here is a recap of new posts for the week of April 13^th on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

To help you stay up-to-date on the latest in the Android ecosystem, we've proactively tested many apps in our catalog and have compiled a Knowledge Base of articles with best practices and information to help make your apps compatible with Android 5.0 Lollipop.  

Here is a sample of the top viewed articles covering common Lollipop issues and offering best practices:

• Android security changes requires uniquely defined custom permissions
• Ensuring use of Canvas Restore does not cause an Exception to be thrown
• ActivityManager.AppTask has been Deprecated to Improve Security
• New features in the WebView Update
• Using Camera2 to replace Deprecated Camera API
• Replacing RemoteControlClient with MediaSession's Media Controls
• Ensuring that 3rd party cookies are enabled with Lollipop WebView changes
• Android Multidex library: preventing DX method limit errors easily
• Integrating Amazon Libraries with Android Studio
• How to fix library crashes with Aviary

We have also updated the App Testing Service to test your app compatibility with Android 5.0 Lollipop on Nexus 7 devices. You can simply drag and drop your APK to the App Testing Service and get compatibility results on Fire tablets, Fire Phone and now Nexus 7 in 90 seconds or less.

For more information about getting started with the Amazon Appstore and Amazon Fire devices, check out the following additional resources:

• Amazon App Testing Service
• Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick SDK
• Amazon Fire Phone
• Amazon Fire Tablets
• Amazon Echo

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

The Amazon Appstore now offers over 400,000 apps and games across 236 countries and territories running on Amazon Fire devices, BlackBerry and Android tablets and phones. With new devices like the Amazon Fire TV customers can now enjoy your mobile apps and game through a console-like experience on the big screen. With Amazon Echo, customers can ask for information, music, news, and weather with only their voice and get results or answers instantly.

Recorded live at MoDevCon 2014 during the holiday season, this free video introduced attendees to the unique opportunities for reaching new Amazon customers with their Android apps during the holiday. More apps are downloaded from the Amazon Appstore in the Holiday Shopping season than any other weeks during the year. Thanksgiving week downloads are 50% higher on average and sales during ‘Digital Week’ (the week after Christmas) are even more dramatic. This free video will walk you through everything you need to know to get started selling your apps and games in the Amazon Appstore and offer tips for success. It will cover getting your development environment set up for Amazon devices and exactly what you need to know to get published quickly with minimal code change.

For more information about getting started with the Amazon Appstore and Amazon Fire devices, check out the following additional resources:

• MoDevCon 2014
• Amazon Mobile Apps and Services Developer Portal
• Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick SDK
• Amazon Fire Phone
• Amazon Fire Tablets
• Amazon Echo

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Here is a recap of new posts for the week on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog.

Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our YouTube channel.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Amazon is hosting a Developer Day on April 25th at the Cross Campus in Santa Monica, California. Amazon Developer Evangelists will share industry best practices and help mobile developers learn how to grow their app business via the Amazon Appstore. Amazon technology leaders will be on-hand to answer developer questions and lead talks on topics such as building apps and games for Android devices, BlackBerry,  Fire tablets, Fire phone, Amazon Fire TV, and how to build voice controlled experiences for Amazon Echo. Attendees will also learn best practices around how to make fun games and to market your game to influencers and build a fan base.

The format of the workshop will be split between morning lectures and afternoon “App Hours.” The App Hours will allow developers to get 1:1 support to publish and tests their own apps and games to the Amazon Appstore, guidance around building apps and games with Android, Unity and Xamarin, and hands on experience with the Amazon Mobile App SDK, Fire Phone SDK, Fire TV SDK and Amazon Echo SDK code samples. Developers will also be rewarded with Amazon gift cards for successful app submissions to the Amazon Appstore during the App Hours’ time period.

Already have an Android app? Bring your APK for a chance to win cool prizes! Click here to register now!

Agenda

Check-in and Breakfast
9:30am-10:00am

An Overview of the Amazon Devices and Services for Mobile Developers
10:00am-10:45am
David Isbitski, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
We will start the day off with an overview of Amazon's current developer ecosystem. Learn how you can take advantage of Amazon’s Mobile Apps SDK, Amazon's Appstore and the new line of consumer Fire devices like Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick and Fire tablets, as well as monetization services such as in-app purchasing.

Building Spoken Language Apps and Experiences for Amazon Echo
10:45am-11:45am
David Isbitski, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
Echo is a new device from Amazon designed around your voice. It's always on—just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Tucked under Echo's light ring is an array of seven microphones. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where it leverages the power of Amazon Web Services to recognize and respond to your request. With the release of the developer SDK you can now build your own apps and experiences for Amazon Echo. This session will cover everything you need to know starting off with how to use the SDK, how to build your first app, and end with the app submission process.

Lunch
11:45am-12:00pm                       

How We Made a Game No Fun
12:00pm-12:45pm
Peter Heinrich, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
There are lots of suggestions about how to make a game fun.  Best practices are everywhere, but you can't just follow them blindly.  To create a fun game, you have to figure out how best practices integrate into your specific game.  Come see what we did wrong, and what we learned along the way.          

How to Evolve Players into Fans
12:45pm-1:30pm
Peter Heinrich, Developer Evangelist, Amazon
We’ve analyzed the top mobile games to see what best practices make them stand out from the crowd. Several trends emerging now will amplify those best practices, and games will have more opportunity than ever to excel. In the future, the top games will have fully realized fan bases that will drive their user acquisition and engagement engines. That fan base will include players but also content creators, advocates and potential new customers — this will open up a wider range of monetization options. Come see how top mobile games drive more engagement and revenue and learn how to you can do this with your own game.      

Break
1:30pm-1:45pm

App Hours
1:45pm-3:45pm
Get 1:1 support to publish and test apps and games to the Amazon Appstore. Learn how to build apps and games with Android, Unity and Xamarin. Get hands on experience with the Amazon Mobile App SDK, Fire Phone SDK, Fire TV SDK and Amazon Echo SDK code samples.

Raffle and Wrap-Up
3:45pm-4pm

Seating is limited so be sure to register for the event to reserve your spot. Hope to see you there!

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)