Reading Notes #83

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure IaaS Cmdlets Source Code is Now Available (Michael Washam) - Great! Really good code sample that implements a lot of functionality.
• Windows Azure Virtual Machine and Virtual Hard Disk Management Tool – Can save you Money! (Stephen W. Thomas) - Wow, that a great tool! This post tells you were to find this application, its features and how to use it. Good job.

Cloud

• Creating a Game for the Windows Store (Tyler Doerksen) - Great tutorial that explains how to write your first Windows store application.
• Publishing ASP.NET Web Sites to “Windows Azure Web Sites” Service - Quick overview of the new publish Web Site feature in Visual Studio.
• Global Windows Azure Bootcamp - april 27th (Maarten Balliauw)- Yeah! Are you free on April 27th?
• Want Better Personal Video? Think Underwater Tech And Free Cloud Storage (Michael Chang) - Interesting thoughts about today’s cloud business reality and the future of cloud platform applications.
• Announcing New AWS CloudFormation Deployment Enhancements – Major announcement from Amazon who is directly competing with Windows Azure PaaS.
• Microsoft DevRadio: (Part 11) Practical Azure with Jim O’Neil – Worker Roles (Jim O’Neil) - Nice short video that explains what is a worker role and his purpose.
• Amazon releases beta of application management solution called OpsWorks (Kenneth van Surksum) - Another post about the new AWS service OpsWork.
• Learn Windows Azure Cloud Services from Beginning: a Mini Online Course (Haishi) - Nice series of videos to get started with windows Azure.
• Improving Windows Azure Table Storage query performance (Ki Yi) - Quick post about best practices regarding querying Azure table storage.
• What's New? - Another release of AWS services this week; this one is about CloudFormation: a tool to enhance automatic task on EC2 instance to reduce the downtime when those tasks are to be execute.

Programming

• Why I Write Tests (Jason Whaley) - If you don't understand the benefice of working in TDD, or if you don't know what's the utility of those unit Tests, is post is for you.
• Getting Busy at Script Junkie (Michael Desmond) - Quick review of what have been done since the site has been moved "under" MSDN.
• Windows Store Apps: A Guide for WPF and Silverlight Developers, Part 1 - Nice post that explains the technical particularities and new concept of the "new" Windows RT platform.
• Using Markdown in Sublime Text 2 on Windows - It's nice to see that other people are playing around with these tools.
• You're just another carriage return line feed in the wall (Scott Hanselman) - This post talks about the issue with carriage return and line feed in merge tool... like github.
• Get Rolling With The Readability API (Richard Ziade) - Nice update for the developer's community.

Database

• Has the term "big data" completely lost meaning yet? - Thoughts about the buzz word Big Data.
• SQL SERVER - Shortcut to SELECT only 1 Row from Table - Good idea, I never think of that! So simple.

Miscellaneous

• Teach your kids to be fans (Scott Hanselman) - Good lesson. Today it's simple to send/ publish hard critics about anything... It is also that easy to congratulations... so do it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #82

Suggestion of the week

• Chasing an active Social Engineering Fraud at Amazon Kindle (Scott Hanselman) - Scary story... If you own a Kindle, you must read this post.
• Choosing between SQL Server in Windows Azure VM & Windows Azure SQL Database (Madhan Arumugam Ramakrishnan) - Great post to make your mind of the differences between the various scenarios and the pros and cons of each of them.

Cloud

• Three New AWS Reference Architectures for E-Commerce - Quick access to three good architectures using different AWS components.
• Windows Azure Virtual Machines - Common Questions (Narahari Dogiparthi) - Significant source of information important to know before planning to use IaaS.

This blog post summarizes the best practices to be used to protect Windows Azure Virtual Machines.

• All Things Distributed (Werner Vogels) - Good references on AWS Elastic Transcoder in video, perfect to make you a better idea of the beast.
• Windows Azure Powershell 0.6.10 is out and check out $DebugPreference feature to get Request and Response on PS console (Avkash Chauhan) - Great news! It's fantastic to see how active the Azure / PowerShell teams are.
• Windows Azure Guest OS Updates (Abhishek Anand) - Reference to stay updated on guest OS.
• Episode 100 - Introduction to the Windows Azure Service Bus Notification Hubs (Channel 9) - A lot of fun in this 100th show. Of course, it's not only about jokes since they are also doing a demo of Azure Service Bus Notification Hubs.

Integration

• How to Create your First SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Package - Part 1 (Md. Marufuzzaman) - For people who don't know SSIS, this is the perfect get started tutorial.
• BizTalk360 Windows 8 application is available in the app store (Saravana Kumar) - This great post announces not only the release of version 2 of BizTalk360 and it presence in Windows Store, but also describes most of its features.

Programming

• Unfortunate Things with JSON, jQuery UI Datepicker, and Dates - Because we all one day or another play with date and DatePicker, it's good to read what other have done.
• TFS, Automated Testing and Continuous Integration (Hamada Shather) - Interesting tutorial that explains how to use TFS as a test framework.
• PowerShell Remoting – The Double Hop Problem And A Solution - This post explains a solution to a problem when running remote PowerShell script using Credds.
• Elegant Code » It’s Markdown, no, PowerShell. Wait its Markdown formatted PowerShell. (Jason Jarrett) - Nice mix of Markdown and PowerShell.
• Update to VS Git tooling - Stay updated on Visual Studio add-ons.
• Responsive web design – Convertir rapidement un site web en une version mobile (lorys pognon) - Simple tutorial that shows how to use "less" (the language) to produce a Responsive We Design.
• Gérer les dépendances de vos librairies JavaScript avec Bower (Thierry LAU) - Great node.js tool that can simplify the JavaScript library management.
• jQuery Object Quacks like an Array Duck (Elijah Manor) - Interesting sharing about jQuery "inner code."
• Working with SqlBulkCopy - Nice async functionality in C# 5 and other great features of SqlBulkCopy class.
• Behind the scenes of PowerShell and SQL (Rob Farley) - Very interesting post that shows how PowerShell use SQL.
• Is Big Data the New Black Gold? (Arvind Singh) - Interesting thoughts about the value of Big Data and its future.

Miscellaneous

• Copy as path instead of a send to program - Cool tips. I didn't know that one.
• Markdown - I'm playing around for 2-3 weeks now with Markdown, and I thought of sharing this for those who like me, didn't know about it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #81

 
Suggestion of the week

• Make your own gem - Very useful post that explain very clearly, with code sample, what need to be done in order to create a Gem (...in Ruby).

Cloud

• Cloud Latency Issues? Dedicated Network Connections Will Help (Jelle Frank van der Zwet and David Strom) - Good post to understand why some latency is to be expected in the cloud and what to do to keep it at the minimum.
• SQL Reporting Services Pricing Update (Steven Martin) - Woohoo 82% less, that’s something!
• Powershell script to detect the Windows Azure SDK in Azure Cloud Service VM and fix the Powershell execution issue (Avkash Chauhan) - A script to keep for sure.
• A Helping Hand Through the Building An App Maze (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Learn more about this great opportunity for developpers to get help and finally start the new pet project there thinking about...
• Windows Azure and VM Depot – Better Together (Craig Kitterman) - Aaah that great. Nice new little add-on to the windows Azure portal.
• IAAS Preview – Unable to delete VHD, “There is currently a lease on the blob…” - Simple steps, but SOOO useful...
• [Sample Of Feb 6th] Azure WebRole for frontend + backend work (Philip Fu) - Very good idea. It's always nice to have those code sample to see how other did things. Or just to speed-up some POC we are doing. A site to subscribe, or bookmark.
• Three New AWS Reference Architectures for E-Commerce - Quick access to 3 good architectures using different AWS components.
• What's Coming in the Command Line Tools for Windows Azure with Glenn Block – Great great show… Looking forward to have more cmdlets!

Integration

• Service Bus Notification Hubs-Part 4 The Solution (Kent Weare) - Last post of a great series that conclude how you could enhances BizTalk BAM Alert with a toast notification using Azure service bus notification hubs. If you missed this series here the other posts:
• Service Bus Notification Hubs – Part 1
• Service Bus Notification Hubs–Part 2 Improving Customer Engagement
• Service Bus Notification Hubs–Part 3 My Solution Overview

Database

• Why you should be Using SQL Prompt! - I agree with the author of this post give it a try, you will wonder how you got along without it.

Programming

• Testing Browser Compatibility Made Easy (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Great post that introduces a nice wizard and some even nicer offer. Something definitely to try.
• Turn Your Future into a Hobby (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Great post. Read it and jump on some ideas of yours... start coding!
• Simultaneous Editing for Visual Studio with the free MultiEdit extension (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that introduces a useful add-on to Visual Studio.
• Publishing your gem - Perfect post to get started about publishing in Ruby. This post gives different options that are easily available.
• Productivity Add-Ins: Bruce Lee vs Batman (Erik Dietrich) - Interesting thought about productivity tools and black-belt coder.
• Automating ClickOnce Deployment (Joe Wrobel) - Great tutorial (and rare) that gives all the details you need to build outside VS.

Miscellaneous

• 10 Apps for Creativity - Nice tools... more to come.
• A Helping Hand Through the Building An App Maze (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Learn more about this great opportunity for developers to get help and finally start the new pet project there thinking about...
• Are you having fun? (futureperfectenglish.blogspot.ca) - Motivating post that gives some ideas to set motivated when learning a new language.
• 4 Ways to Train Your Brain for Positivity (Jessica Stillman) - Nice post that suggests simple exercises to improve our brain and gives more references for a dipper knowledge.

~Frank

Reading Notes #80

Suggestion of the week

• Cross Browser Debugging integrated into Visual Studio with BrowserStack (Scott Hanselman) – Wow! Wow! Wow! Great addition to Visual Studio. That the first thing I will do next time I 'm opening VS. And just when Expression suite is going down. Hum…

Cloud

• Windows Azure VM Development: Part 1 (Bryan Bolling) - Great post about how to get started working with VM in Azure. First post of a promising series.
• YouTrack — Agile Issue & Project Tracker - Great tutorial that explains a steps from A to Z how install YouTrack in an Azure VM to enjoy Agile project tracking.
• Access SQL Azure Data Using Java Script (Angshuman Nayak) - Interesting exercises. It could be used in a local web page.
• Announcing Amazon Elastic Transcoder - Amazon is replying to the Windows Azure Media Services that was releasing last week by announcing a service of the same kind.
• Startup Accelerator for Windows Azure: Demo Day (Scott Gu)- Exiting program for start-ups. See what you did missed and how you could jump-in.
• Maarten Balliauw {blog} (Maarten Balliauw) - Get tutorial for continuous development. I'm looking forward to see more tools/framework from .Net that will be supported.
• Using Fiddler to decipher Windows Azure PowerShell or REST API HTTPS traffic (Avkash Chauhan) - Great use of PowerShell to deploy.
• 39 design patterns to boost your cloud architecture (Joe McKendrick) - Post to bookmark, it contains also SOA references.
• “Key not valid for use in specified state” exception when working with the Access Control Service – Great tutorial/ workaround to manage issue with the certificate when deploying with Azure.

Database

• Backup TO DISK, TAPE and now URL - Backup On-Premises SQL Server Databases to Azure Storage - Enjoy the new way to do your on-premise Sql database backup.
• Build better VHDs with expanded SQL SysPrep support in SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU2 - A lot of information about the SysPrep tool and the new feature to get more control on your Sql Database VM. These prepared VM are supported on-premise or in Azure.
• How Does the Cloud Change a Database Administrator’s Job? - Excellent post if you are DBA or even only database related. This post gives a good summary of the cloud database ecosystem and a lot of other good references.

Programming

• TFS and VS 2012 Update 1 Released (Bryan) - Announce of the new update in Visual Studio 2012 and is correlation with TFS... update now.
• TFS Power Tools Issues (Dustin Metzgar) - Little tips to be able to enjoy TFS PowerShell cmdlets.
• Developer Movement Windows Phone App Challenge (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Developers you have until end of February to take this challenge!
• Git support for Visual Studio - Git, TFS, and VS put into Context (Scott Hanselman) – Woo hou! Great news! I now a lot of friends that will be really happy of that... If they believe me.
• Learning JustMock for Working with Nasty Dependencies(frazzleddad) - Good post that compare rhino mock and justmock with some code samples.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Tactics to Breed Innovation - Easy rules to stimulate new ideas and creativity in your team.
• Executing Powershell commands in Windows Azure Web or Worker Role VM Instance return exception (Avkash Chauhan) - Nice tips!
• Plex is the media center software ecosystem I've been waiting for (Scott Hanselman) - Plex was a big discovery for my in the holidays. Since then I can’t imagine how I could do without it.

~Frank