Reading Notes #243

Suggestion of the week

• IaaS isn’t your only path to outsized gains (James Staten) - Excellent post full of true and interesting facts that, at a very high level, explains the real power of the cloud.

Cloud

• Azure Advanced Data Center Bootcamp class now available (mwasham) - Great opportunity to pass at the advanced level.
  
• Azure PowerShell support for Enterprise Integration pack features now available (Jon Fancey) - Quick tutorial that uses PowerShell to create LogicApp.
  
• Getting to Know Actors in Service Fabric - This is the post is about all we need to know about microservices with actors. Even few patterns are described.
  
• Why Does My SQL Server Availability Group Need a Load Balancer in Azure? (Paul Burpo) - This post is the answer of a very common question and also explains how to do it correctly.
  
• Introducing Microsoft Stream: the secure destination to manage and share videos for businesses of all sizes (James Phillips) - Really exiting news, get started in less than 5 seconds and share video only for the viewer(s) you wish, on any devices, and securely.

Programming

• Exploring a minimal WebAPI with ASP.NET Core - Interesting new series that explores the possibilities with dotnet and different component.

Miscellaneous

• Azure Logic Apps Reaches General Availability (Jeff Hollan) - Exiting news, the availability of so many great features and tool like the LogicApp editor inside VS.
  
• Stop the madness! Ridiculous security scare tactics revealed - Like always, by being informed half the problem is already solved.

Reading Notes #240

Cloud

• Azure App Services - Using Azure App Services to Convert a Web Page to PDF - Great tutorial and even more because it’s useful.
  
• Connect to your on-premises data sources from Logic Apps (Jeff Hollan) - That’s a really useful connector.
  
• Everything you need to know about loading a free Let’s Encrypt certificate into an Azure website - Nice tutorial on how to create a certificate in Azure.
  
• New Application Insights metric widget for Visual Studio Team Services (Mike Gresley) - Cool another great tile to add in our VSTS project page.
  

Programming

• Simplifying Technical Presentations with Docker - Interesting idea, definitely something to keep in mind when I do my next presentation.

Data

• DocumentDB protocol support for MongoDB (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Woooo. That huge! We can now swap any mongodb for a documentdb and your tooling or app will continue to work.

Miscellaneous

• Automation Showdown: IFTTT vs Zapier vs Microsoft Flow - Interesting comparison of three power tools that don’t exactly target the same users but that are similar.
  
• Evernote is crippling their free service, here’s how to move to OneNote - Interesting to know, and the timing is good me, I was just asking myself he same question…
  
• Is your stuff backed up? Recovering from a hardware failure - A good backup plan is crucial, the drive my old server died recently, and it saved me a lot of pain.
  
• Microsoft shows how bad Chrome is for your laptop’s battery (Tom Warren) - Wow when a friend of mine shared me that post, I didn’t expect Edge to be that good. And with the new release that is bridging back add-ons… Does Microsoft just came back in the race to be the best web browser?!
  

Reading Notes #234

Suggestion of the week

• Observations and thoughts on the LinkedIn data breach (Troy Hunt) - These data breach posts are always very interesting but also a bit scaring.

Cloud

• Logic Apps: How to add several actions inside a Logic App condition branch (Sandro Pereira) - Nice little trick with Azure Logic App.
  
• Announcing general availability of Azure DevTest Labs (Xiaoying Guo) - Wow that's great, if you still not have tried it, the dev test is really good for any temporary environment, or that have a short live.
  
• Azure Marketplace: WordPress - Yep! Another great application that is available in the Azure Marketplace.
  
• Easily bring your SQL Server licenses to Azure VMs (Khalid Mouss) - Great news that announces a much simpler way to see licensing.
  
• Check out Azure Test Drives in preview (Bryon Surace) - If you wanna test an application on Azure without subscription or anything... Look at test drives.
  
• Diagnose and resolve issues with Azure Troubleshooting (Ritesh Garodia) - Nice post that helps us to know the troubleshooting tools available in the Azure portal.

Programming

• GitHub Pages now runs Jekyll 3.1 - Good news, Jekyll is a really nice generator what works with Marrkdown.
  
• Developer Tools Benchmarking 2016 survey (Cliff Simpkins) - Still a chance to win.
  
• Continuous deployment/delivery with Jenkins and VS Team Services (Anand Gaurav) - Jenkins doesn't need more introduction. This tutorial explains how to get setup in VSTS step by step.

Miscellaneous

• OneDrive and OneDrive for Business now MERGED into ONE CLIENT (Nazmus Khandaker) - Good news less app running in background and better user experience.

Reading Notes #233

Cloud

• Map storage scenarios to services in Microsoft’s cloud (Joe Davies) - Cool gigantic pdf that contain all the information about cloud storage.
  
• How to turn cloud economics to your advantage (James Staten) - Nice post that asked important questions. Did you ask to yourself these?
  
• Announcing collaboration with the Jenkins project (Corey Sanders) - Great news about Jenkins. Now with the Microsoft's teams involved, we can expect only the best.
  
• Detecting threats with Azure Security Center (Tomer Teller) - Interesting post that explains fundamental difference between servers and individual attack and introduces briefly Azure security center.
  
• Troubleshooting Azure Stream Analytics jobs with SELECT INTO (Ken Wang - MSFT) - Fantastic debug session that explains how, with streamanalitics we can debug a query.
  
• HowTo: Purge an Azure CDN endpoint using Azure PowerShell v1.x (Stéphane Lapointe) - Useful piece of script that will save us time.

Programming

• Upgrading from ASPNET Core RC1 to RC2 Guide (Steve Smith) - Nice tutorial that covers all pieces of the puzzle.

Miscellaneous

• Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people - Wow... And we thought using a strong password was safe enough. Great text.

Reading Notes #232

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Cloud accelerates in Canada and expands to South Korea (Takeshi Numoto) - Finally, the Canada has is own datacenter where office365, ARM, and most Azure features are supported already at day one.

Cloud

• Breaking change with Get-AzureRmStorageAccountKey in AzureRM.Storage v1.1.0 - AzureRM v1.4.0 (Stephane Lapointe) - Nice catch! Check your script you could be impacted.
  
• Accelerating the Canadian Cloud with Microsoft - Big announce for all Canadian business.
  
• Introduction to Batch Processing with Azure Batch Services (David Tessier) - Nice tutorial hat explains a great tool that a lot of us still ignore... Azure Batch.
  
• Azure Site Recovery now has a simplified experience plus support for ARM and CSP (Manoj Kumar Jain) - Nice questions/answers post.

Reading Notes #231

Suggestion of the week

• Introducing docs.microsoft.com - Great post that explains all the nice features of the first glimpse of the new Microsoft documentation. They did a fantastic work, a post to read; a site to remember.

Cloud

• Why Service Fabric? - You heard about the buzz word your tech guys are exited, but you would like to know why service fabric could be good for your business? This post is for you.
  
• Azure Active Directory – Why You Should Care - Nice post. It's all in the title...

Programming

• Simplifying API documentation for a great first user experience (abhinav) - Nice post that touches a very important point... docs.

Data

• The 95th Percentile - Like they say the devil is in the details.
  
• Using The R Visual in Power BI - Interesting usage of two powerful tool.
  
• 10 things to know about DocumentDB Partitioned Collections (Aravind Ramachandran) - Perfect post to stay up to date with the latest DocumentDB features.

Miscellaneous

• How does criticism hit your brain? (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Interesting thoughts, loaded of wisdom.
  
• Here's how I verify data breaches - Interesting post, because even hacks must be validated.

Reading Notes #230

Suggestion of the week

• Data Locality - Great troubleshooting session explained, definitely a post to read.

Cloud

• A first look at Azure Functions (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Nice little post that demystifies Azure functions.
  
• Azure Gives Storage the Cold Shoulder! (Dan Patrick) - Now Azure has is own long storage for a very little price. Learn more in this post.
  
• Data Locality - Great troubleshooting session explained, definitely a post to read.
  
• What is Azure Resource Manager? - Very nice post that clarifies what's ARM where it comes from and witch gap it comes to fills.
  
• Introducing Azure Cool Blob Storage (Sriprasad Bhat) - Everything about the new Azure storage option.

Programming

• Getting Angular Intellisense in Visual Studio Code (Laurent Duveau) - Nice reminder how great is vscode and how easy it could become even better, just for you.
  
• Visual Studio Code Snippets - Another quick tip to customize your vscode.
  
• Simplifying API documentation for a great first user experience (abhinav) - Nice post that touches a very important point... docs.

Photo credit: Claus Tom via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Reading Notes #229

Cloud

• Live Metrics Stream in Application Insights (Beckylin Orooji) - Wonderful, I'm looking forward to testing it.
  
• Create a Service Bus namespace using an ARM template - Awesome news! The service bus was expected in Azure Resource Manager for a very long time.
  
• Logic Apps: Tips and Tricks about the “new” Logic Apps Designer (Sandro Pereira) - This post introduces the great features brought by the redesign of the Azure Logic App designer.
  
• Logic Apps: How to add several actions inside a Loop (Sandro Pereira) - Another great post about Logic App. This time it explains how to do looping and other actions that were done differently in Biztalk.

Data

• Azure Stream Analytics and Power BI general availability (Ryan CrawCour) - Good news, having meta-data it's really nice but being able to see what it contains that's fantastic!

Programming

• Become a Visual Studio 2015 Power User (Allison Buchholtz-Au, Andrew Hall) - All Visual Studio developers must watch this video, big chance you had a d in your hand and didn't know about it.

Miscellaneous

• It's a new blog! (Troy Hunt) - A delicious post, thanks Troy to share that with us.

Reading Notes #227

Suggestion of the week

• Secure Authentication of Azure Resource Management Deployments (John Kirkham) - Nice tips about security, true all the time but they take all their sense in a context of continuous deployment.

Cloud

• New diagnostics and analytics capabilities in Application Insights (Merav Davidson) - This post is a great tour of the nee features of Applcation Insights.
  
• Planning and creating Azure Search indexes - | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog (Gunnar Peipman) - A fantastic tutorial about all the thinking we need to do before creating Azure Search index creation.
  
• DocumentDB goes planet scale with global databases, new pricing and more developer choices (John Macintyre) - Perfect post to be up to date with the latest DocumentDB: availability, prices, new compatibility.
  
• Using SOAP Services with Logic Apps (Jeff Hollan) - Interesting tutorial that gives all the details about how to configure SOAP Services with Azure LogicApp.
  
• Global Azure BootCamp 2016 - The global event is planned for next week, did you reserved your seat?

Reading Notes #221

Suggestion of the week

• Why You Should Learn JavaScript in 2016 (Ken Powers) - I eared a lot of people complaining about Javascript, this excellent post explains why you undeniably, we should all know it, an if it's not the case why 2016 is a great time to learn it.

Cloud

• Azure Logic Apps : Orchestrating business processes and systems integration (Carey Payette) - This is a very nice tutorial that shows how to build an Azure Logic App with twitter and Sql Databe's connector.
  
• How to Setup Application Insights in an Azure WebJob (Jon Gallant) - Nice quick post that will make you save a lot of time.
  
• Azure IoT Hub general availability overview (Nayana Singh) - IoT Hub is finally GA, get to know all included components in this nice overview.
  
• Azure Search indexer for Azure Blob Storage now in public preview (Eugene Shvets) - This excellent tutorial explains how we can benefite of all the magic in this azure search preview.

Programming

• VisualStudio Code v0.10.8 (January 2016) - Learn more about what's new in this latest release.
  
• Search now available on Visual Studio Marketplace (Harysh Menon) - Did you know you can add extension to visual studio team services (vsts) and code (vscode)? This is the perfect post to get started.
  
• Chris Pietschmann - Nice post that explains very clearly why we really soundn't be writing none tested code.

Data

• Power BI Service February Update (Amanda Cofsky) - Fantastic! This update will give us the possibility to share outside ou organization... And many other things.

Miscellaneous

• What Does a Petaflop Look Like on Azure? (Alexandre Brisbois) - Interesting dive in the supercomputer universe.
  
• ASP.NET MVC: Keep Private Settings Out of Source Control - Simple an efficient.
  
• Multitasking is Killing Your Brain — Life Tips. (Larry Kim) - Really interesting post that comment on a very popular debate: Can w multitask?

~Frank

Reading Notes #218

Suggestion of the week

• Open Source tools to kick start your Xamarin Projects (Guy Barrete, Erik Renaud) - Awesome video where Guy and Eric show many powerful tools to get stated with our project... the good way.

Cloud

• Freeing your Azure data with F# Type Providers - This nice post regroups good Azure storage tips, enough to make you fall in love with F# right await.
  
• How to refer an Azure Key Vault secret in an Azure Resource Manager deployment template - Nice post that shows some security best practices with ARM.
  
• Microservices in Azure (Jon Hilton) - Excellent post to get started and do you first Hello word micro-services application.

Programming

• .NET Rocks! vNext (dotnetrocks.com) - Another great show... And so happy about Glimpse.
  
• Tips for Deploying your .Net project (Gregor Suttie) - Looking for some quick suggestion from some on with experience? Here is the perfect post for that.

Data

• How Halo 5 implemented cloud scale telemetry using Azure Event Hubs (Dan Rosanova) - Inspiring post about scaling and the data platform.

Reading Notes #216

Cloud

• Best practices: How to handle sensitive data in Azure Resource Manager templates using Key Vault (Stephane Lapointe) - Good first post of a very promising series about Azure Key Vault.
  
• Azure Automation: Graphical and textual runbook authoring (Chris Sanders) - Nice post that shows th nice graphical interface available to edit our Azure cookbooks.
  
• New book: Modern Authentication with Azure Active Directory for Web Applications (Kim Spilker) - Another book that goes on my to read stacks...

Programming

• What’s New in Fiddler 4.6.2 (Eric Law) - In today's world of connectivity, a tool like Fiddler is a must. This post shared the features of the last release, and what need to be done once you upgrade.
  
• 10 Visual Studio tips to improve your development productivity - This post group 10 useful article that explain ho to can customize VS to be more productive.(or at least more comfortable).

Data

• Introducing a simplified configuration experience for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines (Ninar Nuemah) - Wow, this is very convenient upgrade... Really cool.

Podcast

• .NET Rocks! vNext - Really interesting podcast episode. I think it's the clearer and more comprehensible explanation of Git I have ever eared.

Miscellaneous

• No, you can’t join my wifi network (Troy Hunt) - Just after the holidays, after a lot of people visit others to their houses... This is a scary but really interesting post to read.
  
• It’s 2016 already, how are websites still screwing up these user experiences?! (Troy Hunt) - Nice post about the not so nice reality of today's internet.
  
• Join us in congratulating MVP awardees! - Congratulations to all of you.
  
• A Project Guide to UX Design And Content Strategy - Very nice document that tells us how a team organizes their work to create a great user experience. Step by step, we pass what look like a real case.
  
• New Year, new Git release - Can an awesome tool become even more amazing? Learn how Git did it.

Reading Notes #213

Cloud

• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.8.1 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - Great new feature and improvement in this last SDK release..
  
• General availability of Premium tier (Pranav Rastogi) - Great announcement, plus details about the difference between the regular and the premium version.
  
• Azure Resource Manager Authentication In PowerShell (Scott) - Interesting sharing... It doesn't work always on the first try.
  
• Azure Container Service preview (Ross Gardler) - Get ready to play with Linux container... And soon Windows one.
  
• Continuous Delivery of Azure WebJobs via Git (Jan Hentschel) - Great tutorial that gets us started with Webjobs and continuous deployment.
  
• Partner Incentives – the move to Active Usage - Very interesting post that explains why Microsoft has changes their way to look at their Azure metrics.
  
• Announcing Azure Portal general availability (Leon Welicki) - The portal finally gets to the quality level that was targeted by Microsoft... well, long time ago. The portal will still continue to evolve, but it's now a full fledge product.
  
• Things to remember when you work with Azure and the new Team Build (Matteo Emili) - Nice post that gives us a little more depth about get ready to use build in the cloud.

Programming

• Application contracts with Swagger powered APIs for .NET or Why SwaggerProvider - This post explains how swagger can simplify our Api coding time.
  
• Glimpse at Application Insights Telemetry (Beckylin Orooji) - Awesome news, the great tools that or now integrated together. I'm really looking forward to trying that.
  
• PowerShell Tests released on GitHub (Karol Kaczmarek, Steve Lee, David Wilson) - Nice announcement from the powershell team that shared on github their tests' strategy... Expect some Pester!

Databases

• Transactional Replication to Azure SQL DB now in public preview (Jean-Yves Devant) - Since most of the time the first project is a migration, this new tool, will be very useful.

Reading Notes #211

Cloud

• Azure Mobile Apps November 2015 Update (Matthew Henderson) - Great news features are all explains in this post.
  
• Microsoft at Supercomputing Yes, we support Linux (Alex Sutton) - Azure is a very good place to do your supercomputing whatever is your targeted OS, this post explains why.
  
• Announcing API Management and Event Hubs integration (Steve Danielson) - Great new features announced.
  
• On & Off - Done Right on Azure - This post shows how to manage Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Where we preserve networking, security and state while temporarily removing compute. When the time comes, we restore the compute resources and operate normally.

Programming

• Visual Studio Code - NEW RELEASE: v0.10.2 (6 bug fixes) (Ed Price - MSFT) - You saw the notification, but wonder what was inside this update, then this quick post is for you.

Miscellaneous

• I’m sorry, but your email address is not as valuable as you think it is - Interesting thoughts about sharing our email address or not.
  
• The piracy paradox at Udemy - Very interesting post about security and the Internet.

Reading Notes #191

Suggestion of the week

• Free recorded webinar on Pluralsight: Why SQL Injection Remains the #1 Web Security Risk Today - Security is so important. This video helps us to remember and shows us some simple attacks.

Cloud

• Azure DSC Extension v2.0 released (PowerShell Team) - Details about the new version and how to upgrade.
  
• Calling Logic Apps from an HTTP Action (Jeff Hollan) - Very interesting post that shows a powerful and flexible scenario with the Azure Logic Apps.
  
• New Azure Billing APIs Available - Wow very useful API, looking forward to try it.

Programming

• How to use Process Monitor and Process Explorer - Great video that explains a lot. We often learn more than what we expect in a debugging session.
  
• Why TDD for PowerShell? Or why pester? Or why unit test a "scripting" language? - Very interesting thoughts... I wonder what is the opinion of my heavy script coder friends...
  
• Docker and Microsoft announce more innovation to cross platforms and win hearts (Corey Sanders) - This post resumes some key things that happen at DockerCon. Really interesting.
  
• Visual Studio Code and Docker (Chris Dias [MSFT], Mark Rendle, DvdBrink Sean McBreen [MSFT]) - Nice post, I am happy to see that great plugin are coming.

Miscellaneous

• Stop Worrying About How Much You Matter - Interesting thoughts in a world of instant gratification...

Image by FutUndBeidl / Flickr

Reading Notes #190

Suggestion of the week

• Cloud Success Comes in Completing the Cloud Handshake (James Staten) - Great post that places different tools or services in context one to the other, that helps to get a better view of the big picture.

Cloud

• Testing Visual Studio on Azure (Alexandre Brisebois) - If you need to deploy a dev environment, this post explains how to leverage the AMR to do the quick and smart way.
  
• Locking a Virtual Machine Resource - Azure Resource Manager Template (Alexandre Brisebois) - A post to read, period.
  
• Azure Bits #3– Adding a Message to an Azure Queue (Rik Robinson) - Nice tutorial that shows how to interact with Azure Queues from an Asp.Net MVC web site.

Programming

• Visual Studio Online Wunderlist extension on GitHub (Clemens Reijnen) - Interesting idea of a VSO extension.
  
• Deploying an Azure Web Site using the new build system in Visual Studio Online (Charles Sterling) - This post shows ow easy it is to build & deploy a simple website using VSO.
  
• Visual Studio Web Development Tip - Add Chrome Incognito Mode as a Browser (Scott Hanselman) - The great tips are often the simpler! That should be in by default.
  
• Why to avoid fat controllers (Gunnar Peipman) - Interesting thoughts about different types of architecture and their testability.
  
• Historical Debugging, Profiling, New Diagnostic Tools in Visual Studio 2015 (Scott Hanselman) - Another good reason to start using VS2015.

Miscellaneous

• Write Once, Publish Anywhere (Jonathan Rozenblit) - An energizing post that shows here to find writting oportunities
  
• How to Build Your Blog’s Audience with Long Form Evergreen Content (Darren Rowse) - Interesting reflection on how the length of our post affects the traffic of our blog.

~Frank

Reading notes #183

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing Azure Service Fabric: Reducing Complexity in a Hyper-scale World (Mark Russinovich) - A very exiting news. I am looking forward to play with that Azure Service Fabric.

Cloud

• Think #Microservices - Very interesting post that explains why microservices are so promissing.
  
• BizTalk in Azure Infrastructure as a Service - Nice post that shares all kinds of scenario for BizTalk in an Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) context.
  
• UPDATED for 2015: How to install the nodejs Ghost blog software on Azure Web Apps (and the Deploy to Azure Button) (Scott Hanselman) - It can be that easy, right? Well, it is!
  
• With Machine Learning, Amazon Wants to Multiply the Power of Big Data (Saroj Kar) - Amazon is joining the machine learning market. the future promise to be interesting.
  
• Tutorial: Using Ant and Jenkins to automate the deployment of Java projects from the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse - MS Open Tech (Martin Sawicki) - Very nice tutorial when java is your thing and Azureyour destination.
  
• Announcing General Availability of Azure Premium Storage - Good news, now we can get more performance from our storage.
  
• Azure PowerShell 101 - Managing the Cloud from the Command Line (Channel 9) (Scott Hanselman) - Great video that shows few tricks to get started with Azure powershell commands.

Programming

• Mobile app privacy insanity – we’re still failing massively at this - Interesting and scaring post about the lack of security in mobile apps.
  
• IoT: Do you really should have knowledge in electronics? (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - Interesting thoughts about how to get started.

Databases

• MongoDB vs. Azure DocumentDB - Interesting post that compares the new kid on the block with an older one.

Miscellaneous

• Windows 10 - The Fast Ring and BUILD 10061 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice video that shows us the evolution of the very processing windows 10.

Reading Notes #172

Suggestion of the week

• Using #PowerShell to Upload Content to #Azure Storage - Very useful script here that will save you a lot of time more than once… A post to bookmark!

Cloud

• Starting with Continuous Integration in the Cloud with Steven Edouard - Very interesting podcast episode to learn all about CI. I like the compilable resume.
  
• Security and Performance Tips for Azure Storage Queues - This post is a great list of tips, and you will also find answers to frequent asked questions about security.
  
• Free ebook: Microsoft Azure Essentials Fundamentals of Azure (Jan Kim Spilker) - Fantastic, all that in one book…a free book!
  
• Announcing Azure Preview Portal Improvements (Leon Welicki) - Wow! This preview portal is was nice, but with all those little tweaks… It a great tool.
  
• Azure vs Amazon vs Rackspace vs HP vs Google - Interesting infographic that compares some major cloud providers.
  
• Continuous Delivery on Windows Azure Websites using Visual Studio Online (VSO) - Great tutorial about doing continuous integration using Visual Studio Online. A must to all .Net developer.
  
• Azure WebJobs are awesome and you should start using them right now! - Everything is said in the title, Azure Websites are awesome.
  
• Securing Production #Azure SQL Databases - This post if the perfect security checklist.

Miscellaneous

• Automating Azure Virtual Machine Deployment with Chef (Diego Viso) - This post is a quick introduction about how Chef could help you in your automation.
  
• 10 Ways to Improve Your Pairing Experience - Interesting post to read before your next team work.
  
• VIDEO: Do you really know how to use Microsoft Word? The Power of Tabs and Indents (Scott Hanselman) - Awesome video. you must watch this.it for everyone!

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #166

Suggestion of the week

• Unit Testing Asynchronous Code - This post is a wonderful source of information about how to test ascyn code following the best practices.

Cloud

• Security and Identity Management with Azure Mobile Services - Great article from MSDN Mag that provides important information.

• Comparing Clouds : IaaS Scalability Options (Richard Seroter) - Very interesting article that compares one the key feature: scalability between the biggest cloud providers.

• Scaling a Multi-Tenant Application with Azure DocumentDB (John Macintyre) - Very good post that reviews and explains different scaling strategies in the NoSql context.

• Applied Azure: Infographic of how “Have I been pwned?” orchestrates Microsoft’s cloud services - One year after the launch of Have I been pwned, see what this service has become, and what was learned during this journey.

Programming

• 5 Incredible Features in the Visual Studio 2015 Preview - (Michael Crump) - Still didn't try visual studio 2015? This post will describe so of his greatest new features.

• ASP.NET 5: Using POCO controllers - Very interesting tutorial that explains some functionalities of Asp. Net MVC 5.

• 3 Useful Tools for Local Development & Testing - (Brian Rinaldi) - It's always nice to find new toys.

• Getting ready for the future with the Microsoft .NET Portability Analyzer (Scott Hanselman) - So many great tools that can help us are available easily and for free.

Miscellaneous

• How to Use Google in the Most Unusual Way to Make Your Self-Editing Faster, and Better (Guest Blogger) - Nice and very clever tips.

• 5 Quick Questions with Robert Scoble: What Makes a Great Tech Blog? (Stacey Roberts) - Everything about how to have a good tech blog.

• This is your bank, please verify your details – No, you verify YOUR details! - This situation arrived to frequently. I got in the same situation and mostly at the equivalent conclusion... how about you?

• The Small Personal Risks That Actually Change Behavior - Interesting post where the author shares his life, experience, inspiring.

• Is Blogging Dead? How Blogs are changing and How You Can Stay on Top (Stacey Roberts) - Very interesting post about the evolution of the blogging platform as medium and suggestion n how bloggers should be adapted to today's reality.

• Top Blogging Tools For the Blogger’s Soul (Matt Banner) - A nice list of online tools.

• The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD? (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that removes the voile on a great "mystery".

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #164

Suggestion of the week

• How Microsoft Is Taking Over The Cloud (David Thielen) - Very inspiring post about why choosing Azure for our cloud computing is a good decision.

Cloud

• Azure SDK 2.5 and Cloud Service Diagnostics (Gaurav) - Nice post that explains what changed in the Azure SDK.
• Azure Fridays - A Powershell script to Download RSS Videos (Marc Gagné) - Hum. What a create tool!

Programming

• Universal Windows Applications Across Multiple Form Factors Devices: From 4 to 82 Inches: - This post gives some keys things to remember when designing UI with Windows8.
• Does an insecure website compromise the security of a payment system in an iframe? - An interesting post that explains some of the myths security in an e-commerce web site.

• DevOps style deployment in Visual Studio 2015 preview - A detailed look (Derek M Muthukumaran) - Nice post that explains how to enjoy this new feature.

  Brian Keller’s Channel9 Video is a great place to start to learn more about this feature.

• ASP.NET 5 (vNext) Work in Progress - Exploring TagHelpers (Scott Hanselman) - Wow very interesting feature. An invite to get involve.
• Post-Release Goodies (Lucian Wischik,, John Dan) - This post helps us to get started with the .Net.Core open source project by listing some links.
• Introducing Smart Unit Tests (Pratap Lakshman) - This post is perfect to get started with the new unit test features. It contains also a link to a quick introduction video.

  If you have not already seen the brief video on the Smart Unit Tests feature , I urge you to do so;

 

Miscellaneous

• How to Overcome the 5 Biggest Distractions at Work (and Life) (Erik Sherman) - This post remembers us some simple things to stay more focus.
• 3 Qualities Every Leader Needs to Succeed on a Team - Interesting thoughts that an enterprise is in fact, a team of teams, and that the need to work together.
• “Have I been pwned?” – now with RSS! - It's all in the title...;)

~Frank B