Reading Notes #109

 

Suggestion of the week

• 10 Easy Steps to Azure Web Site Custom Domains (Bret Stateham) - The best tutorial a saw on this topic, very clear, with screenshots and tips.

Cloud

• Delivering push notifications to millions of devices with Windows Azure Notification Hubs - Create post that explains push notification and notification hubs in Windows Azure.
  
• Windows Azure: New Virtual Machine, Active Directory, Multi-Factor Auth, Storage, Web Site and Spending Limit Improvements - Okay! That a big release a new VM type, some new feature in the billing section (I known a lot of people that will be very happy) and new more convenient maintenance features.
  
• Important: Update to Default PHP Runtime on Windows Azure Web Sites - Nice post that explained how to keep control of the PHP version running on our website in Azure.

Programming

• Generically Implementing the Unit of Work & Repository Pattern with Entity Framework in MVC & Simplifying Entity Graphs - Nice tutorial about some really useful pattern.
  
• Power Tools and other Extensions for VS/TFS 2013 RC - Nice update!
  
• Visual Studio Tips: Starting to code your class project in TFS (Susan Ibach) - Great post whit a lot of tips, the perfect get started post to use TFS as source control.

Database

• Auto-delete Azure SQL Database Servers with no databases - Nice catch! Be aware that this can append to you.

Miscellaneous

• Developer – Best Practices for Daily Stand-Up or Daily Scrum – Rules and Regulations (Pinal Dave) - Quick recap of what should be a SCRUM meeting. Team...
  
• Sometimes You Have to Slow Down - Interesting post that talks about how to improve the comprehension of the students into a class room. But it's true for all kinds of audience.
  
• Sit, Stand, Walk, Type - Using a Treadmill Desk (Scott Hanselman) - At the beginning, I found this concept funny, but while reading the post the idea makes is way in my head, and finally, I think it's a great idea! Good job!

~Frank

Reading Notes #108

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure IaaS Deployment Methodology with PowerShell Part One (YungChou) - First of a very promising series, this post explains that basic of a good Azure deployment.

Cloud

• Don’t Budget for Cloud (Jason Bloomberg) - Nice post that helps to understand how to budget for the IT future of companies; It could be in the cloud, could be not, and it could be a mix...
  
• Connecting Clouds – Creating a site-to-site Network with Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure (mwasham) - Great post! A post to bookmark, that a nice tutorial to build a fail over solution cross cloud provider.
  
• Dell mantra: one cloud, not even Amazon’s, doesn’t fit all - This post explained how deferent Dell wants to be in his cloud services.
  
• Architecture, Agile and Cloud Challenges - Good post that explains how we should analyses changes in our project architecture when deploying in the cloud. (Here it's Azure but it could be all other providers).
  
• Inside Dropbox’s Quest to Bury the Hard Drive (Marcus Wohlsen) - Interesting post to know more about what's planning this big player.
  
• WordPress with SQL Azure on Windows Azure Websites (mksunitha) - What1? It's that easy? No more excuse.
  
• Delivering push notifications to millions of devices with Windows Azure Notification Hubs - Create post that explains push notification and notification hubs in Windows Azure.

Programming

• Internal tools – cheap and tasteless? - DevOps definitively worth more of our attention.
  
• Top 10 ASP.NET MVC Interview Questions (Imran Abdul Ghani) - If you eared about asp.net mvc, and want to know more about it, here's the post for you.
  
• Book Review: Building Interactive Queries With LINQPad (Latish Sehgal) - Interesting book that introduces the very useful linqPad and the omnipresent LinQ.
  
• New Online Course: TDD and BDD in Ruby - 5 days to be up to speed with testing, mocking in Ruby... or get your money (35$) back.
  
• 30 Days of TDD: Day Three – Your First Test (James Bender) - Third post of a very promising series to learn from nothing how to build our tests (unit tests, integration tests, etc.) in a .Net environment. The tools used in the series are nunit, justmock, justcode and nuget of course.

Miscellaneous

• 10 Web apps to help you plan and promote a great event (Brinda Ayer) - Nice tools to know.
  
• Scott Hanselman - Interesting post, it's nice to see explication of what I though was happening.
  
• It’s not Scrum if… (Mark Levison) - Nice post that helps us to get back on the good path.
  
• Keeping Your Life Synced Up - Nice recap of the most popular tools to help us.
  
  

~ Frank

Reading Notes #107

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure IaaS Deployment Methodology with PowerShell Part One (YungChou) - First of every promising series, this post explains that basic of a good Azure deployment.

Cloud

• Losing the Remote Desktop (RDP) connectivity with Cloud Services targeting Window Azure SDK 1.7/ SDK 1.8 (Pradeep Kumar C[MSFT]) - Nice catch! Very simple to if when you know what to do.
  
• Windows Azure for Research (Microsoft Research Connections Team) - Learn more about new program Azure Research.

Programming

• How to Run Grid-based Web Applications and Databases at Scale in the Cloud (BrunoTerkaly) - Great tutorial, all you need to know to get started developping a grid apps.
  
• Announcing the Visual Studio 2013 Release Candidate (S.Somasegar) - Get a pick of what is waiting for you in the next Visual Studio 2013 and some news about Windows 8.1.

Miscellaneous

• Hate your job? Here’s how to fix it. - Interesting thoughts.
  
• 10 things you should NEVER say during presentations (Boris) - Good reminder of best practices for a speaker

~Frank

Reading Notes #106

Suggestion of the week

• Easily Copy Files from One Cloud Service to Another (Amit Agarwal) - Really useful tool and it looks so easy to use.
  
• Windows Azure: New Distributed, Dedicated, High Performance Cache Service + More Cool Improvements (Scott Guthrie)- A lot of brand-new features as just been release again. Learn more about the super easy to use cache services and all the new possibilities to scale and log and more in this post.

Cloud

• Opinari - Interesting point of view, where SLA match more with price than quality.
  
• Have You Met The Canadian Windows Azure Community Experts? - You may recognize some of them...
  
• Why is The New Windows Azure Cache Service Important? - This post explains why we should care about the new Azure cache services, and the difference between the old and the new version.
  
• Backup WordPress Site to Windows Azure Storage using “BackupToAzure” Plugin (Gaurav) - This post introduces a great free and open source to backup your WordPree.
  
• Public vs. Private Cloud: No Comparison - Interesting point of view about private cloud.

Databases

• Friends Don’t Let Friends use Lazy Loading on Windows Azure! - Very nice post that describes how to avoid big database issue on the cloud, but also in other situations.

Programming

• Are you missing an assembly reference? Why, yes I am. So kind of you to ask. (Bill Wilder) - Discover how NuGet could be so good that it will solve this problem for you.
  
• Jon Galloway - Interesting post that explains asp.net MVC routing. Most of the time MVC Routeing is just magic and easy, but it could be also a bit tricky.
  
• Claims-Based Authentication and Authorization (David Rogers Dev) - Really interesting tutorial on how to build a claims-based authentication and authorization for a website. All the code is available online.
  
• Coding for Domain-Driven Design: Tips for Data-Focused Devs - After reading this post, if you didn't know about Domain-Driven Design (DDD), good chance are that you want to know more...

Integration

• Collection of Visio 2013 Stencil for BizTalk Server updated with new stencils - Great, let's refresh our Visio's shapes.

Miscellaneous

• Scott Hanselman - It so easy and convenient that we sometimes forget how "dangerous" it could be...
  
• The Power of Habits (JD) - About the strength of habits versus knowledge.
  
• Four Areas Where Senior Leaders Should Focus Their Attention - Interesting post to help us on improving a meeting efficiency.

~Frank

Reading Notes #105

 

Suggestion of the week

• Create Single Use URIs to Protect Your Resources! - Great tutorial. I like the idea of "real" scenario.

Cloud

• Keep Your Privates Private! - Nice post that shows an elegant way to solve a security topic.
  
• A Cloud and Azure Glossary for the Confused (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that explains very well all the cloud buzz words.
  
• Windows Azure: General Availability of SQL Server Always On Support and Notification Hubs, AutoScale Improvements + More (Scott Guthrie) - Even during summer (read vacation period) the Windows Azure Team delivery a lot of new amazing features. Read more about it in this very complete post.
  
• Push Notifications made easy: Using Windows Azure Notification Hubs with Windows Phone (andywigley) - Great post to get started with Azure Push Notification. The article contains a sample before using the hub and after.

Programming

• Am I really a developer or just a good googler? (Scott  Hanselman) - Good question... and nice answer.
  
• Today's ideal developer - In this nice post, Jeff is giving his opinion to answer a post published earlier this week about developers vs. Googlers.
  
• AutoMapper 3.0 released (Jimmy Bogard) - Definitely a great tool, now that it's a PCL it will be even easier to use.
  
• The Magic of using Asynchronous Methods in ASP.NET 4.5 plus an important gotcha (Scott Hanselman) - Nice explication about where async could and should be use in web development.

Miscellaneous

• The Impact Of A New Developer - Often overlooked, these easy rules could lower the bad impact of a new member arriving in your dev team.
  
• Write the Story for Your Project (JD Meier) - Nice little "game" to get all team members in the spirit.
  
• Do Interruptions and Productivity Rhyme With Compatibility? (Alexandre Brisebois) - Ah ah! It's or it will append to each of us... It an important discovery to do and most important is the way we react...
  
• The 5 Must-Have Qualities Of The Modern Employee (Jacob Morgan) - I totally agree. Many times I read post about how a manager should change, but it's not only them who needs to adapt.
  
• **Saving and Retrieving Browser (and other) Passwords - It so easy and convenient that we sometimes forget how "dangerous" it could be...

~Frank

[Image from sxc.hu]