Today, AWS launched Accelerated Transcoding, a new feature in AWS Elemental MediaConvert that increases the processing speed of file-based video encoding jobs by up to 25 times. With Accelerated Transcoding, you can meet the most demanding turnaround times for processing the highest quality video with confidence. MediaConvert automatically analyzes job characteristics and applies optimal processing to complete the job with maximum efficiency. Accelerated Transcoding is available in the on-demand professional pricing tier with no additional charge.

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) Private Certificate Authority (CA) is now available in Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), EU (Paris), US West (N. California), and EU (Stockholm). This regional expansion extends the availability of ACM Private CA across the globe increasing the number of regions from 10 to 15.

We are excited to announce that AWS DeepLens has a new project template for Bird Classification which enables classification of 200 species of birds.

This project yields the top 5 predictions on bird species from a static bird photo captured by the AWS DeepLens camera. The model uses ResNet-18 neural network architecture, and has been trained using CUB-200 dataset to identify 200 different bird species. To learn more, visit the AWS DeepLens documentation . To dive deep into another method on how you can implement ‘Bird Classification’ by modifying Amazon SageMaker’s built-in Object Detection algorithm to classify birds using AWS DeepLens, read this blog . 

Amazon Elasticsearch Service now supports open source Elasticsearch 6.5 and Kibana 6.5. The new version of Elasticsearch and Kibana offers several new features and improvements, including auto-interval date histogram, conditional token filters, and early termination support for min/max aggregations. 

The Zhaga Consortium and the IoT-Ready Alliance are combining their efforts to establish a standard for luminaire connectivity under the Zhaga program, while LightingEurope names a new president and the LIA announces a new approach to luminaire testing in the UK.

The AWS Amplify Console now has a ‘Deploy to Amplify Console’ button that allows GitHub users to automatically deploy fullstack serverless web apps with a single click.

A fullstack serverless app consists of backend resources such as GraphQL APIs and Lambda functions, and a frontend built with frameworks such as React, Angular, or Gatsby. On clicking the ‘Deploy to Amplify Console’ button, the Amplify Console first forks the repository into your GitHub account, then deploys the backend and frontend in a single workflow. The ‘Deploy to Amplify’ button allows you to share your web projects publicly or within your team so all contributors can deploy the app to their individual AWS accounts with a single click.

Visit our Getting Started page to deploy example projects or learn how to add the deploy button to your own project.

AWS Cloud9 is now available in the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) region. AWS Cloud9 is a cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) that lets you write, run, and debug your code with just a browser.  

You can now use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to encrypt session interaction data with your own encryption key, managed by AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS).

Starting today, you can tag Amazon WorkSpaces registered directories, images, custom bundles, and IP Access Control Groups, in addition to each user’s WorkSpace. These tags make it easy to organize your WorkSpaces deployments, create cost allocation reports for billing, and enable granular access control for your WorkSpaces resources.

Amazon Managed Streaming for Kafka (Amazon MSK) is now available in five AWS regions: N. Virginia (us-east-1), Ohio (us-east-2), Ireland (eu-west-1), Tokyo (ap-northeast-1), and Oregon (us-west-2).