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 #66

Cloud

• Announcing: Improvements to the Windows Azure Portal - Great news! Nice features that will facilitate the resources management.
• Windows Azure REST API Sample and Tool – GET, POST, & DELETE with One Click - Great tool, even more since it is embedded in visual studio. For quick and easy stuff. For more advanced stuff SoapUI remains.
• What PartitionKey and RowKey are for in Windows Azure Table Storage (Maarten Balliauw) - Very well explain. The best post on partition a read.
• Windows Azure Disk Partition Preservation - Quick post that show what append with disk partitions from PaaS stateless VM when different events append in a nice table view.
• Online Data Storage: Is it okay to Move to the Cloud? - Nice post that should be share and re-post to reach the maximum of people. Backing up the cloud is easy and safe. But off course it's not THE solution, but part of the solution.
• Website Pricing, Shared or Reserved (Tyler Doerksen) - Short post that explain very clearly the difference between the Windows Azure Website options.
• BlogEngine.NET and Windows Azure Web Sites - Good news, BlogEngine.Net is finally available in the Windows Azure Website gallery and configured to not be using a SQL database.

Programming

• Help your users record and report bugs with the Problem Steps Recorder (Scott Hanselman) - How could I didn't know this application!?
• Booleans are Baaaaaaaaaad - Nice tips about how you should build your data, illustrated with a Ruby sample.
• Get In on the Action: Start with Your Windows Store Developer Account (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Everything you need to know to get ready and publish your apps thru the Windows store.
• Why Mocking Matters - Nice explanation of what the differences are between fakes, stubs and mocks.

Miscellaneous

• Why you can’t focus on a single great idea - Interesting thoughts.
• Top 10 Ways to Make Yourself Look (and Be) Smarter (Whitson Gordon) - Some of these tips makes you smarter, not only look like.
• Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3G/Wi-Fi Review (Scott Hanselman) - I like sooo much my Kindle. With is keyboard so I can take my notes. When I read about the Paperwhite I thought it was perfect. But since my use of this device is very similar to Scott... I will pass.

Reading Notes #59

Cloud

• Fault-tolerance in Windows Azure SQL Database (Himanshu Singh) - Really nice article that explain the fault-tolerance, why it is needed, how it is done (replication, redundancy, detection, etc.).
• Do you know your PaaS from your IaaS? (Marc Gagné) - Nice post that differences the PaaS, SaaS and IaaS of Windows and also talk about the Azure DevCamp that is coming to Montreal at beginning of September.
• Using a naked domain with a Windows Azure Web Site (David Ebbo) - Something it's good to go and to think differently, to understand how things work. This post is about one of those try.
• SQL Azure – Disaster Recovery (Iain Hunter) - This is a mandatory post to read. The solution expose in this post is so simple to do. Everyone who use Windows Azure database should do it.
• What is Cloud computing? – Public Cloud v Private Cloud - Nice post that explains what is cloud computing and highlight the difference between private and public cloud.
• Azure Howto: Programmatically modify web.config on WebRole Startup - Great tutorial that show very clearly how to modify web.config in a startup task and why it should be done only at time.
• Time for a Second Look at Windows Azure? | Cloudline - I agree it's definitely time to look again Azure. With all the new features that just arrived, Windows Azure is a very complete product.
• Windows Azure Cloud Cover Show Episode 86 - Windows Azure Active Directory with Vittorio Bertocci - Learn more about Windows Azure Active Directory, look the demonstration of  the Graph API and the new Windows Azure Authentication Library. [video]
• Windows Azure Table – Simple Approach (Wriju Ghosh) - Nice demo that show in few minutes what you can do with the Windows Azure table storage.[video]

Programming

• Meilleures pratiques au niveau infrastructure pour une performance optimale de BizTalk Server (Marc-André Dufresne) - Interesting post from my colleague about how to fine tune the performance on a BizTalk server and about the tool BizTalk Benchmark a CodePlex project that could help you.
• How to get Windows 8 Pro from MSDN Subscriptions : Don't Be Iffy (Julie Leman) - Nice tips that will help more than one of us.
• Releasing Microsoft ASP.NET Universal Providers Core 1.2 - That a great news. A new version of a so useful tool!
• Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Refactor Your Code - Good post. Everyone should agree with those ideas of good code. More often, the problem come from determining how much effort and time to get it done that way.
• Announcing SonicAgile – An Agile Project Management Solution - Wow take a look to this great tool! I sure that SonicAgile is waited by the developers since long time.

Miscellaneous

• Three cool things to try with your old netbook - Good idea that I also try with my Asus EeePC 701. The Ubuntu Netbook is also a really good option, you will be able to watch all the movies you want, have access to your Wi-Fi network and browse Internet.
• Your words are wasted (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that nails the idea where all developer should have a blog, blog more and doing it on their own controlled domain.
• Scrum in 5 Minutes - Really nice post that describe very clearly the basic concepts and roles involve in Agile. It also suggests a book for more detailed explanations and a tool AgileSonic that looks gorgeous. A post to read.

“The problem is that writing code is much more like Finding a Cure for Cancer than Building a Brick Wall.”

• 10 Steps to Creating Your Freelance Brand Personality - Interesting post not only for freelancer but also for more public people, I mean developer who have a blog.
• Be More Productive. Take Time Off. (JASON FRIED) - That a nice idea! This post is about a company that try uncommon thing to boost productivity, and it works more than expected!
• How Often Should You Blog? (Hint: The Answer Might Surprise You) (Ali Luke) - Since more and more developer a blogging now (and this is a good thing) founding your prefect sequence is important. For you and your readers.

Reading Notes #49

 

Cloud

• IaaS and PaaS Are Merging – Thoughts on CloudFoundry, Microsoft, Amazon (Xath Cruz) - Windows Azure, Amazon Web Services, VMWare Cloud Foudry are figthing to have the biggest part of the cake... good for us, but it is harder to keep track of all those new services/products.
• Using the Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket (and Codename “Data Hub”) Add-In for Excel (CTP3) - Nice tool and great idea. Take the well-known tool and extended it with that cloud.
• Managing session state in Windows Azure: What are the options? - This post is answering a very popular question about what is is best way to manage my sessions state... answer it' depends.
• Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration (Neil Mackenzie) - I also read the preview of this book and I remember it was very promising. It is close to the top of my to-read stack and I will not let go "deeper". I'm happy to found someone else confirm my pre-evaluation.
• Update Your Windows Azure Website in Just Seconds by Syncing with Blob Storage - Great idea! By thinking outside of the box you can do nice things and here a good sample.
• Architectural Patterns for the Cloud (Channel 9) (Anthony de Bruyn) - I know 56 minutes is a bit long but this is a good one. Maarten is doing a nice recap of what is Azure, what working or not working in the cloud and how it's working. The slides are also available to download.
• Think You Know Windows Azure? Think Again (Jonathan Rozenblit) - A lot of new things are coming for Windows Azure in June. Learn all the dates and the details here. The spring is finish in beauty.

Programming

• Quick Status of Your Windows Azure Apps with PowerShell - Really nice script. Thanks Steve!
• Awesome use of AND operator - Be aware of the risk of brain melting. This post explains a clever JavaScript loop.
• OData soumis à l’OASIS pour standardisation (OGDI France Team) - The version 3 of oData will be release soon. This post is an invitation to participate to the standardisation of this great protocol.
• Goodbye Photoshop, Hello Cloudinary (techcrunch.com) - I like the API idea .You can have more functionality in your own application without having to code them.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Ways To Prep For Your Next, Better Job (Alice Korngold) - Nice post, however I would change the title for 5 ways to prep your working life.
• Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously - Good comparison between workout and working. it is not because someone famous is doing something that doing this thing will make you famous.
• Programmers are optimists - Funny and completely thru... What do you think?
• She let me take the computer home. - How did you get started in computers and programming? (Scott Hanselman) - Amazing story about Scott techno-birth. The force was strong in this one.
• 8 Great Twitter Tools You Aren't Using - Great tools to maximize your twitter experience. And some that I didn't know about...
• How to Speak More Strategically (Peter) - Nice post and nice reflection too.

~ Frank

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 #21

Cloud

• New Article: Managing and Testing Topics, Queues and Relay Services with the Service Bus Explorer Tool (PaoloSalvatoriMS) - Definitely a good tool to have. More details in here.
• Windows Azure Load Balancer Timeout Details (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - Good links references and workarounds to avoid the fatal 60 sec timeout of the Azure load balancer.
• Hosting WCF Service in Windows Server AppFabric (DotNetCurry.com) - A quick and simple tutorial to host WCF service in Azure each step is well explain with screenshots.
• Moving Channel 9 to Azure (Rodrigo De Castro) - Quick review of the full article.
• Field Note: Using Windows Azure Connect to Integrate On-Premises Web Services (Microsoft.com) - Nice speed test comparing azure connect and port bridge to access a web service.
• How to encrypt passwords in Web.confg (MBenkov) - Very useful quick tips.
• Focused on Emerging Technologies for Microsoft (Neilhut) – Wow, a lot of really good improvement. We can now do mostly everything from VS2010.

The Windows Azure HPC Scheduler also allows for job scheduling and resource management, web-based job submission, parallel runtimes with support for MPI applications and WCF services and persistent state management of job queue and resource configuration.

• Ten Basic Troubleshooting Tips for Windows Azure - Good advices.

  Check the status of the service at Service Dashboard.

  Invest in a diagnostics data viewing tool, such as Cerebrata, or grab a free trail of ManageAxis by following the rabbit hole from the Cloud Cover Show.

• What the heck do IaaS, PaaS and SaaS companies do? (Sean Ludwig) - Info about ClouBeat 2011 (nov.30-dec.1), and excellent comparison between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.
• New Article: Best Practices for Performance Improvements Using Service Bus Brokered Messaging (blogs.msdn.com) - Quick summary of MSDN article about best practices...

  Read the full article on MSDN. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/11/09/new-article-best-practices-for-performance-improvements-using-service-bus-brokered-messaging.aspx

• Wade Wegner - Some good tips about how to use some of the new feature in the azure SDK 1.6
• Cloud Cover Show: Episode 65: New Windows Azure SDK and Tools with Scott Guthrie (Wade Wegner) - Again a great show. new ways to create or deployed azure project are presented. those one are the new features of the recent release of the azure SDK 1.6
• Fleeting Thoughts - What is azure? How big and complete it is? This post try to pass-through all important knowledge that you should have before jumping... A good starting point.

  The elastic nature of Windows Azure makes it suitable for generating load for a stress test. One such test setup is proposed in a series of blog posts by Ricardo.

Programming

• Solving the Shakespeare Million Monkeys Problem in Real-time with Parallelism and SignalR (Scott Hanselman) - A nice demo from Handselman (code available here)
• Should I use HTML5 or Silverlight? One man's opinion. (Scott Hanselman) - A good way to start your reflection on this important topic.
• Free .NET Decompiler - A great tools. the new reflector, review and better... and also free.
• Five Absolutely Essential Utilities that make Windows better (Scott Hanselman) - A preview of the Handselman tools list...

Miscellaneous

• 5 Tips to Help You Get Up Earlier - I knew it was not that difficult. ;)
• D&D; Zombie Apocalypse, Part 2 (Chatty DM) - I like zombies in video game... what if they spread in other kind of game, hum?
• Free Tool: Easily Test ASP.NET Pages in Different Browsers - Still not perfect, because you cannot test with different version but very useful and it's free.
• Why do Programmers get paid less than PMs and BAs (Dodgy_Coder) - Good question... logic answer.

~Franky

Reading Notes #18

Cloud

• Windows Azure: Startup task or OnStart(), which to choose? (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - Know the difference between starup task and onStart()
• Can Cloud Computing Reduce IT Cost Complexities?
• Packaging an Executable as a Windows Azure Application From the Command Line – Quick way using programEntryPoint of worker role
• New Article: How To Integrate a BizTalk Server Application with Service Bus Queues and Topics - This is looking promising, need to read the full article.
• Four key reasons to include cloud computing in your business strategy - To help some client to find if the cloud is good from them
• Cloud Cover Show: Episode 62 - Marketplace with Christian Liensberger – Great info about Marketplace.
• Cloud Cover Show: Episode 63 - Securely Sharing Files with Windows Azure – Really nice introduction of the BlobShare. 
• Six Reasons to Use Cloud Services for Small Business - Another list of arguments of why you should go in the cloud

Programming

• Bodega Sale Blog - A kind of American idol for developer... not a bad idea.
• Engine Yard Platform-as-a-Service – Difference between concurrency and parallelism by type of ruby
• Sandro Pereira BizTalk Blog - When an image IS thousand words
• Fire and Ice: David Pallmann's Web and Cloud Blog: Adventures in HTML5: Bouncy Bar Chart (David Pallmann) - If you're looking for a nice way to learn HTML5 then this how-to make a htmk5 version of Jelly bars is perfect for you.

Miscellaneous

• An analysis of four lazy years with an Amazon Kindle and no dead trees (Scott Hanselman) - Understand why you should go with a e Reader
• I know apps - Interesting point. Next time keep that in mind.

~Franky