I’m writing this edition of the blog from Las Vegas as IBM InterConnect 2015 enters its final day. It’s been a great week with lots of exciting news, and I can’t help but reflect how far we’ve come since Bluemix was first announced about a year ago at IBM Pulse. As Bluemix continues to mature and gain momentum, I’m excited to share details about the awesome Bluemix updates that went live in the UI this week.

We’ve got some exciting Bluemix updates to kick off 2015 which include 1) Integration of the IBM MobileFirst Platform for iOS, 2) Enhancements to the iOS Solutions page, 3) Ability to enable an existing Node.js app to serve as the backend for mobile clients, and 4) Addition of a simplified path for creating both web and mobile apps.

It's definitely pretty cool to be watching an NFL playoff game, then see a 30-second commercial for your product come on the screen. That was the case this afternoon when the new IBM Bluemix ad aired. And, more than just Bluemix as a whole — the Bluemix UI was also shown prominently!

Winter is ramping up here in the Northern Hemisphere, and we wanted to give you some year-end Bluemix updates to help you warm up by the fire. Our new features include translation of the Bluemix UI, addition of starter apps for three new runtimes, ability to easily restrict access to an app, improved getting started info for apps, increased limits for associating SSL certificates with your custom domains, documentation updates, and more!

Create an app that answers 'where' questions. You'll build and deploy a back-end Node.js application on Bluemix that provides a REST API to support client apps. Then you'll build two client apps: one for the web and one for the Pebble smartwatch.

We’ve got two big announcements for you in today’s blog. First, with the introduction of Bluemix London, you can exploit the power of Bluemix to deploy apps that run in the United Kingdom or the U.S. With your existing account, you can easily choose to work with either region. Second, as an alternative to our two public deployments, we’re also introducing Bluemix Dedicated. This is a private Bluemix environment managed and hosted by IBM. Keep reading for all the details.

Trick or treat! Halloween is here in the U.S., and we have a fresh round of Bluemix announcements and Bluemix UI updates. Keep reading for details on all of the new “treats” this month including: IBM and Twitter partnership, addition of Ustream service, introduction of new and updated IBM services, general availability of IoT Foundation, updated buildpacks for Java and Node.js, improved Catalog filtering, enhanced Pricing Overview, and more!

I'm a fan of the cfenv package for Node.js written by Patrick Mueller. It parses environment info in a Bluemix (or Cloud Foundry) application and provides functions to make it convenient to retrieve all of the service attributes you need from VCAP_SERVICES. I've written a simple wrapper to make local development of apps a little easier by parsing a local copy of your app's env.log file and initializing cfenv with that info. After this initialization, you can use the same cfenv interface just as if you were running in the cloud.

We’re pleased to announce another round of Bluemix UI updates. This refresh is especially exciting as we welcome IBM® Watson™ services to allow you to rapidly prototype and build cognitive apps in the cloud! Other major enhancements: GA of three services, updated Cloud Integration add-on with ability to create private services, tighter integration of orgs and spaces, addition of blog and Twitter feeds, more personalized code snippets in docs, and numerous usability improvements and bug fixes.

Some of my peers in IBM's Emerging Technology group have been creating some really cool Internet of Things (IoT) demos using IBM Bluemix. Two of them, HR Tracker and Race Tracker, are geared toward fitness and activity tracking. They are both capable of displaying the heart rate and geolocation of exercisers as the values change in real-time. In this post, I'll describe both sample apps and give an overview of the technology used to build them.