Reading Notes #44

They will bring you in the cloud.

Cloud

• “You Complete Me” Says SharePoint to Windows Azure (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Really nice post that just open the possibilities on how could be implanted Azure with other application and in this case with SharePoint.
• Services Hosted in Windows Azure Service Bus (Stephen Kaufman) - This is definitely something to remember... How to work with proxies and Azure.
• Cloud Computing is Designing For Failure - Nice short post about the why using cloud computing instead of the other more common web server developing.
• A world of pretty cloud drive icons - SkyDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, BitBucket and GitHub (Scott Hanselman) - Nice free icons for ours cloud storage.
• SkyDrive brings your personal cloud across devices (Steve Clayton) - Great new, it will become a lot easier to share or "backup" files with this new tool.
• Why Infrastructure As A Service Is A Bad Deal - It could be difficult to have a idea of the saving you could do going in the cloud. This post only looks the storage scenario. You could be surprise of the result, but I bet that the arrival of Google Drive and is aggressive pricing will makes thing moved.
• Using Windows Azure Caching for Session State can make the application slow if right programming practices are not followed (Farida Bharmal) - Nice tips. Simple once you know it.
• Five ways to reduce Azure Costs - Really good advice, this post is a must! It also contain ref to good tools or more detailed articles.
• Amazon: Cloud computing to be the norm in future - Nice post that show how easy and cheap to do a gigantic task using the cloud computing.
• Google Drive vs. Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, and others: a cloud sync storage face-off (Ellis Hamburger) - The most complete and detailed comparison ever. Really nice post. Pick the best tool(s) for your needs.
• Windows Azure Diagnostics–From the Ground Up (Greg Oliver) - Really nice post with a lot of good references and a lot of information. Perfect to get started or have a better understanding of Azure diagnostics.
• Fun with the Service Bus (Part 1) - What a great tutorial! This post is covering a lot a material by doing for a to z an application where the heart is Azure Service Bus.
• Announcing Windows Azure Achievements for Visual Studio (Karsten Januszewski) - Nice update even more since the achievements are good things.
• Auto-scaling Azure with WASABi–From the Ground Up (Greg Oliver) - Great tutorial about Wasabi framework.
• Greenpeace Cloud Protest: Do Amazon, Microsoft Deserve the Doghouse? - Those giants need to take care of the environment and also they need us to remember it.

Programming

• Code First model builder versions (Arthur Vickers) - This post explain how to configure EF code first to avoid any breaking code when updating the framework to a newer version. Nice work.
• Créer son propre Gem et le publier - Very nice tutorial (in French) that explain in detail with a simple case how to create and also publish a Ruby Gem.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Tricks for a Killer Company Blog - Five simple tips to get started blogging in a business perspective.
• Hit the Presentation Sweet Spot - Twenty minutes is very short. Maybe it is a good idea for a specific type of presentation... How do you plan a 2-3 formation?
• Your Personal Brand as a Developer: Implementing (Part 2 of 2) (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Part 2 on an unusual topic but important. Our brand, as a person. On the internet everything is amplified and could be seen by a lot of people very quickly. A post to read "before it is too late".
• Coping with Email Overload (Peter) - This could be a good advice for a lot of people. While I'm working on a project where co-workers are across the country I not sure I can do this but maybe tweaking it with rules for only those people.

Reading Notes #43

Cloud

• Readers: What’s Your Cloud Strategy? - Learn more about some cloud services offered and that are or will be open source.
• Return Empty Set Instead of ResourceNotFound from Table Storage (Wade Wegner) - Great catch. This little thing is easy to forget, but if you don’t want throwing exception when querying Azure Storage you should read this post.
• The Rising Value of Cloud Computing - Nice post that talk about the future of the cloud provider and what those companies needs to stay in the race.
• Microsoft's answer to Amazon's CloudSearch - The fight continue and this is good for the users. Its mean more products for cheaper.
• Outside-the-Box Pizza, Part 4: Social Integration with Twitter (David Pallmann) - I never thought that a pizzeria could be on Twitter or any social network. This post proved me wrong by explaining the why and the very simple how.
• Comparing IAAS and PAAS: A Developer’s Perspective - Nice post very clear. It explains all the differences between the two more popular cloud «as a service» model.
• What's New? Introducing AWS Marketplace - Nice this 1-click deployment button in the brand new AWS Marketplace.
• Logging in Azure: Part 1 (Tyler Doerksen) - Very nice post that show how to implement, with a simple twist, how to log with Log4Net (or transform an application using it) in an Azure Blob storage. Part 1 of a series.
• Logging in Azure: Part 2–Table Storage (Tyler Doerksen) - Second post of a series that explain how to implement a solution so that Log4Net write in an Azure storage table. This leverage the search for a particular type of error.
• Scale Data Applications with Sql Azure - Short post that hi-light the advantage of using SQL Azure and Sharding to scale out your application.

Programming

• Need A Cloud Monkey? Netflix Unleashes Simian Army - Monkeys is the name of all those programmes or applications that are used by Netflix to watch their system. This post report that Netflix announce they will give the code as open source.
• Outside-the-Box Pizza, Part 3: Mobility & Responsive Web Design (David Pallmann) - In this post all the CSS tricks to support the Responsive web design will be explains. The goal is to support the army of different mobile devices.
• Why you need to learn async in .NET (weblogs.asp.net) - Nice post with a code sample that illustrate the advantage of using the async framework. Let’s the code represents “the what” of what you want to do not “the how”.
• WCF-SQL Adapter and permissions - Well explain. I got this once, and I remember spending few minutes trying to understand this error message... It's a shame that it's not the good one that is display first...
• Lowering the Barriers to Code Generation with T4 - If you are not already using T4 or if you think code generation is only for "big project", this post is for you. This very nice tutorial shows how to use T4 to improve the quality, the stability and the readability of your code. A must for all serious .Net developer.

Miscellaneous

• Defining Your Personal Brand as a Developer (Part 1 of 2) (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Interesting, let’s see what append in part 2.
• Most Valuable Professionals? Give Me A Break. (Davy Brion) - It couldn’t be that bad! I agree that like in any sphere some people are lazy or surf on some appearance but I hope that not reflecting the majority.
• What Microsoft MVP means to me « Inviting Epiphany - I don't know if this post is the answer to the other one, but in my head this is more likely what is a real MVP.
• Introducing Iris: A Big Leap Forward in Drawing Meaning from the Web (Chris Dary) - I'm using Readability for a long time now. I but tools using their API. I ask them a lot of questions. And one thing keeps coming back: improved. They always answer my questions. They are listening the developers, trying to make the API or their tools better. A big thumb up to Readability. Try it by yourself you'll see.
• How to Attend a Conference as Yourself (Peter) - Interesting point of view. When you are at a conference, who are you?

Reading Notes #42

Cloud

• MCSE is Back–and Better Than Ever!! - Important new from Microsoft this week: certifications for the cloud. This post is a good summary of this new reality.
• An Up-Close Examination of the Microsoft RDP Vulnerability (Guest Author) - Important RDP vulnerability was fixed in the March patch. Since in Azure the remote is disabled by default and that some firewall rules protect some connections, if you use Azure you are now safe and probably you were never really in danger. But if you are using an image on AWS you probably should apply you Windows Updates...
• Announcing the Refresh of Service Bus EAI & EDI Labs (Harish Agarwal) - The Windows Azure team listened to our feedback and new features and a lot of performance improvements in the updated version of the EAI & EDI labs.

• Illustrating the CQRS Pattern with Windows Azure and MVC4 Web API (David Pallmann) - Nice sample to understand the advantage of the pattern CQRS over the more common CRUD.
• What The Cloud Doesn’t Do (Alexander Haislip) - Nice post explaining why on-premise computer are not obsolete since the cloud arrives. Nice comparison with the evolution of the radio and the TV.

• What is Azure Subscription and How to Setup a Windows Azure Subscription? (Arun Rakwal) - Nice post that gives a way to structures your Windows Azure subscription.
• Using the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network - This is the perfect post to get started with windows Azure CDN. It’s also providing some best practices when using Azure CDN.
• Let Power Users Create Their Own oData Feeds (Julie Lerman) - What a amazing tool! The Data Explorer is still in CTP but if you are like me go to Azure Labs and try it now.
• Azure Service Bus Pusher (Roman Kiss) - An amazing post from Roman. Everything is explained from the model to how to test your Azure Service Bus.

• Three cloud models; three very different risks - A different way to present the difference between SaaS, PaaS and IaaS: the security/ risk.
• Azure Deployment hangs with Status "Preparing to upload, please wait" (Arun Rakwal Arun Rakwal Microsoft MSFT 10 Points 2 0 0 Recent Achievements First Forums Reply New Blogger View Profile) - Good to know before we got this type of issue.
• There’s no need to be a one-cloud company (Switch Mark Thiele) - Nice post. Being in the cloud with one provider is easier but it's like putting all our eggs in the same basket. Do we have other options?

Programming

• Why NoSQL Equals NoSecurity - Great post with a lot of information about many different NoSQL databases. It also suggests some best practices to get a correct level of security on your NoSQL database.
• Dynamic Image Generation, ASP.NET Controllers, Routing, IHttpHandlers, and runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tips about the dynamic element generation in web development.

• A geek with a hat » What Refactoring is, and what it isn’t - Nice quick post that explain perfectly the difference between refactoring and ... other things ;)
• Becoming A Better Developer - This is definitely a good question and the author of this post takes the time to give a good answer.

[…] Are people who speak at conferences speaking because they are the best, or are they the best because they are speaking…[…]

[…]The best way to learn is to teach.[…]

• The Big Glossary of Open Source JavaScript and Web Frameworks with Cool Names (Scott Hanselman) - Wow so many open source projects that look awesome... take a peek.
• Professional WCF 4: Windows Communication Foundation with .NET 4 – With a lot of code samples this great book explain all the facets of the Windows Communication Foundation WCF. The authors put all pieces together so block by block we are prepared to build a Service Oriented Application SOA.

Miscellaneous

• Succeeding with Agile - Nice tip that look simple and efficient.
• My car ships with crapware (Scott Hanselman) - Hilarious and true, why we can have a super dual-core computer in our pocket but our car come with a so crap old "computer"?
• 5 Presentation Apps to Try - Quick list of nice tools helping us to pass through a presentation or after to share some files.
• 12 Ways to Attack Any Challenge - Facing difficulties is good. It's mean you are challenging yourself. That you try to become better. This nice post is refreshing your memories about ways to overcome those challenges.
• More of What You Came For (Michael Desmond) - The team of the MSDN Magazine are since ... forever trying to always offer more. This time is by giving more content (some exclusively) on their web site. Like the column Azure by Bruno Terkaly.
• 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (Peter Bregman) – A great book that explain a lot of little think that we could do every day to help to focus on the thing we want to accomplish. Nothing magic but it help to take better decision. Peter use a lot of personal story to explain is thoughts and that improve a lot the comprehension. It was my first experience with audio book, and I really like it. It was done by Peter Bregme himself.

~Frank

Reading Notes #41

Cloud

• Single-Tenant Vs Multi-Tenant SaaS Invoicing Models (David) - Describe both single and multi-tenant architecture and explain the real power of the multi-tenant in the cloud.
• Quantifying and Avoiding Risk on the Windows Azure platform (Richard S. Parker) - Great post that identifies different types of risk and help to understand each of them. It’s also explained how you should manage the risk by not being dependant of Microsoft SLA.
• HTML5, CSS and Browser Compatibility (David Pallmann) - Second of a series, this post describes the HTML structure of the main page.
• Microsoft Research and Windows Azure Partner to Influence Discovery and Sharing (Himanshu Singh) - Nice post that introduces three projects of Partners have done in Windows Azure.
• Microsoft offers free cloud backup beta for Windows Server "8" (Sean Gallagher) - Great idea. I hope this service could be used by the other windows version.
• Transactional Messaging in the Windows Azure Service Bus - Really nice post that explains how could works a resequencer, why one could be needed and how to test it.
• Windows Azure Dev Fabric (Rodrigo De Castro) - Good tips using a ip:port mapper tool to access remotely to a compute emulator.
• Protecting Your Data in SQL Azure: New Best Practices Documentation Now Available (Gregory Leake) - Well best practices are always welcome, a must.
• Cloud Tip #5-Secure your settings in Web.config with Encryption (mbenkov) - Nice quick tip! Add a little more security to your config file.
• Announcing SQL Azure Data Sync Preview Update (GregoryLeake) - This is a great news! not being able to update sync group was REALLY painful... Otherwise Azure Data Sync is a great application.
• How We're Using Amazon Web Services - Moustach.io is sharing their experience of the cloud by showing how they use the AWS. Nice true story.
• Exploring Cloud Architecture - A really nice recap of different architectures in the cloud. Putting them in context with cost efficiency.

[…]cost efficiency doesn’t equate to cheap or even free. You can determine the cost to be efficient when the equation can’t be changed to reduce cost without also reducing the services or functionality—meaning[…]

• 4 Cloud Computing Pain Points That Still Hurt - Interesting post. Contain other post references and important cloud facts.
• Why (or Why Not) to Migrate to the Cloud - Great post that hi-light the pros and cons of the cloud migration.
• Migrating an on-premise database from SQL Server to SQL Azure using SSIS (zafarx) - Really well done tutorial using SSIS instead of the other tools to migrate a database to SQL Azure. By doing it that way you have the possibility do more with your schemas before moving them.
• Getting Acquainted with NoSQL on Windows Azure (Bruce Kyle) - A real good post. It compares different noSQL databases and explains how they work. A lot of other good posts and tutorials are also referred. Definitely perfect to get started.
• Announcing SQL Azure Data Sync Preview Update (Gregory Leake) - This is a great news. Not being able to edit the sync group in my previous projects was really painful. I can’t wait to try the new version...
• Announcing New Datacenter Options for Windows Azure (Cameron Rogers) - Always good to have more and more options. Maybe, some day one will be in Canada. We have a good temperature and plenty of water...
• An Up-Close Examination of the Microsoft RDP Vulnerability (Guest Author) - Important RDP vulnerability was fixed in the March patch. Since in Azure the remote is disables by default and that some firewall rules protect some connections, if you use Azure you are now safe and probably you were never really in danger. But if you are using an image on AWS you probably should apply you Windows Updates...

Programming

• Why You Should Be Excited About Garbage Collection in Ruby 2.0 - Garbage collector is not the more glamour feature, but it's nice to go under the hood and see that some innovation are going on. Very well explain.

Miscellaneous

• I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code - Interesting, I didn't think our usual or natural sensor to estimate the complexity of something cannot be use when it comes to estimate software... but it makes senses!
• What geeks need to tell our parents about shopping online safely and securely (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post. read this post than go talk to your parent, uncle, brothers and sisters all those people that call you when they did nothing but the PC doesn't works anymore... ;)

[…]HTTPS (SSL) doesn't mean "I can trust this site," it means "this conversation is private." You still might be having a private conversation with Satan. - Scott Hanselman Trust[…]

Reading Notes #40

Cloud

• Best practices for migration to the cloud - Nice post that contain all the link you need in one place to read all the best practice and useful information on migration to the cloud.
• A Must-Have for Most Organizations (Gartner) - Learn all the benefits to have a cloud service brokered (CSB) in your cloud strategy.
• Take Your Cloud Like Your Coffee–Half and Half (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Good analogy between coffee and cloud solution. Different mixtures depending of the context.
• Windows Azure Storage Emulator or Service? - Useful tips to fix some problem/limitation when working locally with Windows Azure storage.
• How to Make the Private Cloud More Secure - Nice post that introduce some products to help maintaining the security of your cloud solution.
• A Social, Mobile, and Cloudy Modern Web Application (David Pallmann) - First of a series, this nice post present a well done application that combines HTML5, mobility, social networking and cloud computing.
• Inside SQL Azure – Self-healing, Self-governing, Massively Scalable Database service in the Cloud. (Cihan Biyikoglu) - A great presentation that explain a lot about SQL Azure.
• Microsoft Reinvents its Cloud Strategy (Martin Tantow) - Nice post comparing the new cloud positioning strategy o Microsoft with the majors players when looking for CRM
• Best practices for building Windows Azure service (Qingsong Yao) - Nice post with best practices to develop and to test. It also introduce briefly great MSTest framework.
• Protecting Windows Azure Web and Worker roles from malware (maartenba) - Not long time ago Microsoft release the Microsoft Endpoint Protection for Windows Azure Customer Technology Preview (EP for friends) and in this great post you will know how to install it, configure it and how to use it.
• Microsoft Endpoint Protection for Windows Azure Customer Technology Preview Now Available For Free Download (Elyasse_El_Yacoubi) - A vey complete post about the Microsoft Endpoint Protection for Windows Azure (MEP). Everything you should know about it, and even more.
• In cloud computing moves, money isn’t everything (Barb Darrow) - Explain the result of a survey about the reason why companies are moving (or not) to the cloud.
• An Amazon Web Services primer (Matthew Braga) - To know all Amazon Web Service AWS products this post is a must.
• A Comprehensive Introduction to Cloud Computing - I did already mention is great introduction post in some Reading Notes, but at this time the author was rebuilding is blog and the article was removed. So if you didn't have the time to read it the first time, here is your chance.
• Cloud Tip #1–How to set a connection string in Web.config programmatically at runtime in Windows Azure (mbenkov) - Great tips that will save times to many developers.
• Auto scaling and Endpoint Protection in Windows Azure (Wade Wegner) - This Cloud Cover Show Episode explain in detail the great Wasabi. Azure developer this is a must.

Programming

• A use of Enumerable#chunk - Explain with different examples the #chunk method that was added in Ruby 1.9.2
• How to Test External APIs (Jared Carroll) - Nice post that explain good strategies to execute unit tests on our code that is using external API.
• How to Use Bundler Instead of Rvm Gemsets (Stephen Ball) - Great post that show few tricks about the really useful bundler.
• Ruby Style guide - A good quick start to code respecting style convention.
• 10 Best Practices of Code Commenting & Formatting (Bio Website) - 10 simple tips to keep the code clean and clear. A good way to help the maintainability.
• ASP.NET MVC 4, ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages v2 (Razor) now all open source with contributions (Scott Hanselman) - Amazing news! All the details about the release of Asp.Net as open source project.
• ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Razor and Open Source (Scott Gu) - The post by The Scott Gu announcing the release of Asp.Net MVC as open source project and some features of the version 4.0.
• Introduction to Ruby code optimization - Nice post that present few tools to help when you need optimization. Those tools are good specially if you don't know where is the bottle neck.
• I wish I knew about string.Join a long time ago (Carlos Figueira) - Nice refactoring. As Carlos is saying looking into the code you write on year ago is good. Some mistake wear done, but at least we learn.

Miscellaneous

• 10 Good Reasons to Get a Mentor - Interesting thoughts. I'm sure a lot of people would gain a lot by having a mentor. Starting with me!

~ Frank