Delivering hyperlocal news on demand with ABC Emergency
ABC Developer Blog
by Michael Collett
1y ago
As of October 2021, you can listen to a freshly updated emergency news bulletin for any Australian town or suburb at any time of the day or night. If you’ve got an Alexa smart speaker, or even just the free Alexa app on your phone, all you have to do is ask, “Alexa, are there any emergencies near me?” It’s quick, easy, and hands-free, and accessible to people who have difficulties using graphical user interfaces. Compare the streamlined process for getting emergency information through our Alexa app versus our ABC Emergency website: We chose to make the ABC’s very first custom voice app for ..read more
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Content Management in a Personalised World
ABC Developer Blog
by Julian Fell
1y ago
Success on voice platforms is all about habit formation. The only way to get people coming back, day after day, is to always be offering something new. A 2017 report into the voice ecosystem by VoiceLabs found that retention is one of the greatest challenges facing voice apps.  When a voice application acquires a user, there is only a 3% chance that user will be active in the second week. There is still hope that we can do better though, as the report tells us that some exceptional apps have achieved greater than 20% on this metric. To become one of these outliers, v ..read more
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Digital Architecture at the ABC
ABC Developer Blog
by Nick McHardy
1y ago
Architecture can be nurtured in organisations in a myriad of ways and that’s one of the most interesting parts of being an architect. Today we’d like to share how we approach digital architecture in a way that supports ABC digital products right from high traffic websites like ABC News, to unique offerings such as triple j Unearthed and every product in between. Our team has been developing a Lean Architecture Playbook with techniques to guide ABC teams in navigating an often challenging digital environment. The approach to the playbook is to keep it pragmatic and approachable as much as ..read more
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A Framework for Conversational Apps
ABC Developer Blog
by Julian Fell
1y ago
From the #1 news website in Australia to ABC Kids, our much-loved brands are backed by websites and apps that Australians access everyday. It is important to ensure that our award-winning content continues to be accessible as new digital spaces emerge and media consumption habits shift. One pillar of this strategy is to germinate an ecosystem of apps for the emerging voice assistant technologies such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. It is still early days for conversational user interfaces (CUIs), but moving early allows us to set ourselves up for the day whe ..read more
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Migrating the platform that powers ABC sites to TypeScript
ABC Developer Blog
by Luke Clark
1y ago
Trusted and relied on by millions of Australians, ABC websites provide valuable news, entertainment, and education resources. The front end of the majority of these sites, which we call the Presentation Layer, is a key component to delivering a consistent, performant, up to date, and reliable web experience to visitors. Making sure that these sites are as error free as possible is critical. Having a predictable and trustworthy type system helps, and can also increase developer productivity tremendously. We’ve recently completed key development milestones where engineers can now build their ap ..read more
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Rendering XML with JSX Templates
ABC Developer Blog
by Julian Fell
1y ago
The architecture at the ABC for generating RSS and other XML feeds has historically been a little fragmented. Between podcasts, news briefings, video segments and articles, the variety of content needing to be published in machine-readable forms is increasing. Lately, we have seen more and more integrations with 3rd-party platforms requiring custom feeds, which is in turn putting more pressure on our ability to create and update them quickly.  For example, we need multiple custom feeds each for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant for their various audio and video products.&nb ..read more
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Error Logging and Custom Tracing
ABC Developer Blog
by Nishant Kaushish
1y ago
background At the ABC, we create and maintain a number of custom-built applications to deliver a variety of services that underpin our digital products. One such service had a basic logging setup and the team identified a simple technique that ensured the log messages that were captured are useful for tracing issues. The service backend was built using a serverless architecture with each API endpoint calling an AWS Lambda function. The code had Winston logger set up with each API sending log messages to Amazon CloudWatch in a standardised format. These logs would then be ingested by various t ..read more
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Aggregating Emergency Alerts
ABC Developer Blog
by Julian Fell
1y ago
In the wake of the Black Summer bushfires, one of the key findings of a Royal Commission into Australia’s emergency preparedness identified the lack of a national aggregator for emergency alerts. Australians already turn to the ABC during times of crisis as our broadcast stations and news teams launch round-the-clock coverage and ensure threatened communities have access to the information they need. The recently launched ABC Emergency website is an extension of our commitment to being Australia’s trusted source of emergency information and anticipated many of the Royal Commissi ..read more
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