Amazon Polly is an AWS service that turns text into lifelike speech. We’re excited to announce new Hindi language support and the release of our first bilingual voice. Aditi is a female voice that speaks Hindi and Indian English fluently.

At AWS re:Invent 2017, we announced AWS IoT Device Defender, a fully managed service that helps you secure your fleet of IoT devices. Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of AWS IoT Device Defender. You can use AWS IoT Device Defender to adhere to recommended security best practices, to continuously monitor device behavior, and to receive alerts so you know when to investigate and mitigate security issues.

You can now use Apache Flink 1.5.0 and Apache Livy 0.5.0 on Amazon EMR release 5.16.0. Flink 1.5.0 has several new features, including a new deployment model that supports dynamic resource allocation on YARN for efficient resource utilization, support for a broadcast state that allows replication of configuration rules and patterns to all parallel instances of a function, a new SQL CLI client to run ad-hoc queries on data streams, ability to store state information on local disks for faster and efficient failure recovery, and other performance and throughput updates for streaming jobs. Livy 0.5.0 brings in support for SparkSQL interpreter for running interactive SQL queries, ability to use multiple languages and share the SparkContext in a single session, ability to share variables across jobs, and other improvements. Additionally, you can now use the upgraded version of Apache Hadoop 2.8.4, Apache Spark 2.3.1, Presto 0.203, Apache Phoenix 4.14.0 and Apache MXNet 1.2.0.

You can create an Amazon EMR cluster with the release 5.16.0 by choosing the release label “emr-5.16.0” from the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or SDK. You can choose Flink, Livy, Hadoop, Spark, Presto, Phoenix, and MXNet to install these applications when you launch your EMR cluster. Please visit the Amazon EMR documentation for more information about the EMR release 5.16.0 , Flink 1.5.0 , Livy 0.5.0 , Spark 2.3.1 , Presto 0.203 , Hadoop 2.8.4 , Phoenix 4.14.0 , and MXNet 1.2.0

Amazon EMR release 5.16.0 is now available in all supported regions for Amazon EMR .

We are announcing two new Amazon Kinesis Data Streams features that boost the performance of your Kinesis Data Streams applications: a new HTTP/2 data retrieval API and enhanced fan-out.

Interested parties can comment on the second draft of the DLC’s horticultural lighting testing and reporting requirements documents that will ultimately lead to a QPL.

Amazon WorkSpaces now supports a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to help streamline user login workflows. With this release, customers automatically generate a simple, custom link for users to access their WorkSpaces that includes login information. This link can include login information such as the WorkSpace registration code, user name, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) credentials. With this capability, you can develop custom on-boarding and login workflows for users that eliminate the need for users to manually enter login information.

Starting today, the Amazon Chime web application supports video conferencing in the Google Chrome browser. When meeting in person isn’t possible, the high-quality audio and video available in Chime meetings optimizes communication and engagement with your meeting attendees. With this update, attendees can join your meetings using their browser and access the same high-quality video available in Chime’s downloadable clients. Additionally, because the web application is available across platforms, video conferencing is now available for your contacts on Linux and ChromeOS.

As a meeting attendee, you can start or stop your own video using in-application controls. You can also view up to to 16 video tiles in your Chime meeting window for participants sharing their video. Video tile layout is optimized depending on the number of tiles, the size of your window, and the presence of shared content. To learn more about the Amazon Chime web application, please visit the Amazon Chime Documentation page.

Amazon Chime is a secure, real-time, communications service that simplifies video conferencing, online meetings, calls, and chat. With Chime, there are no upfront payments, and there is no infrastructure to deploy. You can try Chime for free for 30 days just by getting started. For more information on our trial, visit the Amazon Chime trial page.

Starting today, AWS Config supports AWS PrivateLink, enabling you to route data between your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and AWS Config entirely within the AWS network.

Starting today, AWS Security Token Service supports AWS PrivateLink in the US West (Oregon) region, enabling you to route data between your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Security Token Service entirely within the AWS network.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 now supports Microsoft OneDrive for Business as a user storage option. You can integrate your OneDrive for Business account with AppStream 2.0, and your users can link their OneDrive for Business accounts to access their files in AppStream 2.0 like they would on a Mac, PC, or Chromebook. To learn more about using Microsoft OneDrive for Business with AppStream 2.0, read our blog post Amazon AppStream 2.0 adds support for OneDrive for Business .