Reading Notes #331

Cloud

• Advanced Architecture for ASP.NET Core Web API (Chris Woodruff) - Nice and detailed post that describes the architecture pattern.
• Analyzing images using Azure Cognitive Services (Gunnar Pei[man) - Cool post that introduces the API and shows some examples.
• Cloning Azure Logic App to create a new one (Abhijit Jana) - This is soooooo sick! (In a good way)
• Getting Started with Azure Container Instances (Mark Heath) - Nice new course available on Pluralsight.
• Quickly rollback Azure Logic Apps to the Previous Version (Abhijit Jana) - Really cool!

Programming

• Carriage Returns and Line Feeds will ultimately bite you - Some Git Tips (Scott Hanselman) - I didn't know that what I'm doing (coding CLI) was weird... But yeah I can feel the pain.
• How I Increased My Productivity With Visual Studio Code (Michael Hoffmann) - Nice little post, learn how to get better with VsCode.
• Microsoft + GitHub = Empowering Developers (Satya Nadella) - This was a big news this week. I profoundly think its for the best.

Books

• Wait, What?: And Life's Other Essential Questions (James E. Ryan) - Simple, short, but very interesting book.

Miscellaneous

• When Do People Read Blogs? The Best Times to Post (null) - Looks like timing may not be everything... But it's a big part of the equation.

Reading Notes #328

Cloud

• 10 Reasons to Use Durable Functions (Mark Heath) - To celebrate his new course about durable function, Mark shares with us his top10 of the best reason with should use durable functions.

Programming

• Advanced Raspberry Pi traffic lights simulator (Gunnar Peipman) - This Windows IoT project looks really awesome! Let's have a threat...
• Creating NuGet packages in Docker using the .NET Core CLI (Andrew Lock) - A useful tutorial that explains how to use .Net CLI with Docker commands.
• Why should we care about containers for development (Shayne Boyer) - Another nice Docker post this time focus on the continuous integration and deployment.
• Creating PDF on ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - Am bookmarking this one. Creating PDF is a common task and that code look "simple".

Data

• Power BI Desktop May Feature Summary (Amanda Cofsky) - The monthly updates is always a great new. This month shows more about that new Q&A feature... You may not know about it, but you really want to use it...
• Data Encodings and Layout (Clemens Vasters) - Very useful and deep article that provides the best practices for data encoding for different type of situation.

Books

Exactly What to Say, The Magic Words for Influence and Impact
(Phil M. Jones)
I listen to this audio book and really enjoy it. Simple powerful key works selection tat helps us to get where we want to go. It was only about two hours long and I listen to it in one shoot. And I’m mostly certain I will listen to it again.
ISBN 9780692881958

Miscellaneous

• The Next Time You Want to Complain at Work, Do This Instead (Peter Bregman) - We all did it at least once… Should we do with again... This post explains why we shouldn't.

Reading Notes #317

Suggestion of the week

• Migrating to Azure SQL Database with zero downtime for read-only workloads (Joseph Sack) - Learn the best practices and more about the tools available to you in this great post.

Cloud

• Analyzing a karting image with Azure Cognitive Services (Vivien Chevallier) - It's time to play with these Cognitive services. This post is a nice quick start.
• Microsoft updates Cognitive Services terms (Microsoft Azure) - Good to know.
• Oops! I Deleted My Blobs! What Can I Do? (Gaurav Mantri) - A nice new feature! Is it time to upgrade all our cloud solutions to use it? It could be a good idea.

Programming

• az webapp new - Azure CLI extension to create and deploy a .NET Core or nodejs site in one command (Scott Hanselman) - Azure CLI is a super handy tool. New commands are being created, it's time for us developers to get involve read this post and clone that GitHub repo!

Miscellaneous

• 10 Characteristics of a Successful Internal IT Champion (Richard Seroter) - Awesome post! Next time changes are in the pipeline, you should think about these 10 little things.
• Azure Cosmos DB training webinars | Azure Roadmap | Microsoft Azure (Microsoft Team) - Fantastic news, I know a lot of people were waiting for this kind of training.

Reading Notes #308

Suggestion of the week

• Serverless^2 - Azure Logic Apps and Azure Container Instances (Michal Smereczynski) - Great news! So much simpler than installing Azure PowerShell into the Function App... I'm starting to use it right away!

Cloud

• Continuous Deployment of Azure Functions with Slots (Thomas Ardal) - Nice tutorial that explains how to deploy Azure functions and why doing it that way.
• Azure Application Architecture Guide (Mike Wasson) - A free book (pdf only) with all the best of the AzureCAT team? You really don't want to miss that opportunity.
• Azure Cloud Shell (Scott Hanselman) - Ooooooh, I love it!
• Running the Azure Functions runtime in containers on Kubernetes and more (Shayne Boyer) - Very cool update that opens many possibilities.
• Serverless^2 - Azure Logic Apps and Azure Container Instances (Michal Smereczynski) - Great news! So much simpler than installing Azure PowerShell into the Function App... I'm starting to use it right away!
• Understanding Azure Event Grid ( Jason Roberts) - Nice little post that introduces event grid, differentiate it from the service bus, and quickly go over the pricing.
• Cloud en 5 minutes (Frank Boucher) - If French is your primary language, I just start a Youtube channel where every Wednesday I will publish a new video. // Si le français est votre langue première, je viens de lancer une chaine Youtube où à chaque mercredi je publirai un nouveau vidéo.

Programming

• Introducing metaparticle.io - making Kubernetes and Docker idiomatic for developers (Shayne Boyer) - Wow.pretty cool idea, I like it. It looks so simple.

Miscellaneous

• How to download embedded videos with F12 Tools in your browser (Scott Hanselman) - Very useful hack to build your airplain mode video Playlist.

Reading Notes #303

Suggestion of the week

• Writing tests in Postman (joyce) - With all the connected things and all the API in our system, this post shows a brilliant and simple way to test all those external calls.

Cloud

• Benefits of using the Azure IoT SDKs, and pitfalls to avoid if you don’t (Yi Zhong) - All open sources and packed of good stuff thus post shares all these goodies and some best practices if you decide to go without it.
• Container Orchestration Simplified with Managed Kubernetes in Azure Container Service (AKS) (Scott Hanselman, Rob Caron) - Great video that shows us how simplified our work could be.
• How we set up daily Azure spending alerts and saved $10k (Mike Larah) - Cloudyn is definitely a must in many cases. I need to see how it manages CSP subscriptions and limited access for clients. This post also shared how to integrate it in Slack, pretty cool.
• One-click replication for Azure Virtual Machines with Azure Site Recovery (Sujay Talasila) - Fantastic! It couldn't be more simple.

Programming

• Miniblog.Core is a new blog engine built using ASP.NET Core 2.0 (Mads Kristensen) - This post is not only about a sweat new blog engine, but also a call for coders. Everything is available on GitHub.
• Server-side charts with ASP.NET Core, Node services and D3.js | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog (Gunnar Peipman) - D3 is an amazing and very popular library, this post shows a very nice project built with it.
• Create a .NET Core 2 application on Linux with Visual Studio Code (Benjamin Perkins) - Nice quick tutorial to quickly get started.
• How to install NuGet Package in Visual Studio Code Linux Ubuntu (Benjamin Perkins) - Quick and easy.

Data

• What is Power BI Embedded? (Guy in a Cube ) - A quick video that explains perfectly the purpose of The embedded offer.

Miscellaneous

• What’s Your Project Problem? (Johanna) - Interesting post of view and many good references about time and resourceful people management.

Reading Notes #297

Suggestion of the week

• How to uninstall Scrum (Erwin Verweij) - When you will read that post (because you must read it... Seriously), you will smile, giggle and maybe even laugh.

Cloud

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell was published on September 11, 2017.) - Doing a remote desktop on a Windows VM is trivial, but doing the same thing on a Linux machine required just a little more. After reading this post will be a walk in the park.

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 16 - Deploy Jekyll Site Hosted on GitHub Pages to Azure (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 16 - Deploy Jekyll Site Hosted on GitHub Pages to Azure was published on September 13, 2017.) - I use Jekyll on Azure, and I love it. If you would like to try it, this post is all you need.

• Getting Started with Windows Containers (Alina Popa) - A cool tutorial that uses a few popular tech these days.

• Keep credentials out of code: Introducing Azure AD Managed Service Identity (Stuart Kwan) - Great post that explains what the new service is, and how it works.It also suggests a tutorial to learn how to implement it. Awesome!

• Why is Serverless Extensibility better than Webhooks? (Bobby Johnson) - A useful post that jumps right in the middle of the debate about the Webhook and serverless. Both are good but planning (as usual) is worth it.

Programming

• API Versioning with Azure API Management (Darrel Miller) - Great post that helps to find the peace, or at least make your ideas, about what kind of rules, you should follow.

• Microservices: The Good, the Bad and the Hype (Jennifer Riggins) - Nice post that explains some challenges when doing serversless. Because yes, it's a great architecture plan, but it's not magic.

• Microsoft Tech Summit is back – register for a free event near you! (Microsoft Azure team) - A big tour around the globe, check when they visit one of the fourteen cities near you.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Selling to Small Businesses - Microsoft Partner Network (Carol Roth) - Interesting points to improve our skills.

Reading Notes #280

Cloud

• Announcing AzCopy on Linux Preview (Sercan Guler) - Fantastic news! One tool for everywhere.
  
• At Build, Microsoft expands its Cognitive Services collection of intelligent APIs (Microsoft Azure) - The Microsoft Build is always full of announcements, and this year wasn't an exception. Many novelties in the world of AI from new services to a new MVP category.
  
• Build a Serverless MBaaS with Azure Functions (shellmonger) - Nice tutorial that shows how to leverage Azure function with DocumentDB and node.js.
  
• What’s new for Serverless at Microsoft Build 2017 (Raman Sharma) - Another post that shares the novelties announced at Build, this time with serverless in mind.

Miscellaneous

• Login and Authentication for your ASP.NET Core Web API – The Big Picture (Jon Hilton) - Nice quick post about the different options regarding authentication and authorization for our API with also an explanation of the difference between them.
  
• Microsoft Flow + Azure Storage + WebJobs + MailChimp + Outlook (Troy Hunt) - Great post about a real life integration story.

Reading Notes #279

Cloud

• 5 Tips for Successful Azure App Development (Alex Bennett) - Nice simple tips to get started on th good foot and get the best of cloud architecture.
  
• Deployment made easy with Zeit (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting podcast. I will definitely try both hyper console and that new deployment tool.
  
• Enabling Azure CDN from Azure web app and storage account portal extension (Manling Zhang) - Configuring a CDN as never been that easy. Awsome.
  
• In-order delivery of correlated messages in Logic Apps by using Service Bus sessions (Aprana Seth) - This post explains all the details on how to respect the message's publishing order when using LogicApp in your integration solution.
  
• Tactical Integration with Logic Apps (Michael Stephenson) - Interesting post about the advantages of doing integration using PaaS on Azure.

Programming

• Contributing to .NET for Dummies (Rion Williams) - Another post where the author shares his experience (I love those. That's the real life); this one about participating in an open-source project.

Databases

• Introduction to Azure PowerShell Modules for the SQL Server DBA Part 4 (Edwin Sarmiento) - Of course, things could be created outside of the Azure portal. This last post of the series puts all the pieces together... and even gives us the full script.
  
• Mashup: SQL Server on Linux in Docker on a Mac with Visual Studio Code (Julie Lerman) - Cool post where Julia shares with us the results of her "database in a container" experience.

Miscellaneous

• Reckon you've seen some stupid security things? Here, hold my beer... (Troy Hunt) - Ouf..... I'm not sure if I'm more scared or shocked.

Reading Notes #277

Cloud

• Azure Functions Tools Roadmap (Andrew B Hall) - Interesting post that explains why we should prefer the Azure function template over the VS2015 tooling.
• Monitoring errors in Azure WebJobs with the ErrorTrigger extension (Vivien Chevallier) - Nice tutorial, with the full solution available on Github, that explains how to catch the error in our Azure webjobs.
• Unmasking your swagger with proxies in Azure Functions (Shayne Boyer) - This post explains how to use Azure functions Proxy to improve the developers' experience.
• Use a container to show your function swagger (Shayne Boyer) - Nice quick tutorial to get a more professional structure easily.

Programming

• Dockerizing Nerd Dinner: Part 1, Running a Legacy ASP.NET App in a Windows Container (Elton Stoneman) - Interesting walkthrough where a legacy application is packaged in a Docker container.
• Dockerizing Nerd Dinner: Part 2, Connecting ASP.NET to SQL Server (Elton Stoneman) - Second step in a great tutorial that goes further than the usual hello word, showing how to migrate an application into a multi-container solution.
• Easy data generation with Faker.Data (Guy Barrette) - A quick introduction to a nice little gem that saves us a lot of time.
• Getting Started With Chart.js: Line and Bar Charts (Monty Shokeen) - I've use Chart.js in a project recently, and should I had this great tutorial would have saved me a lot of time.
• Using memory cache in ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - Great quick tutorial to know how to setup cache and distributed cache (required in cloud solution).

Miscellaneous

• Bots are the new Apps – Part 2 (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post asks a lot of questions. .Bots are could be very powerful but are they easy to build? Iterate, test, fail, learn, and try again.

Reading Notes #275

Cloud

• Do more or less with default values in the Azure CLI (Shayne Boyer) - That clever! Great optimization of the CLI.
  
• HTTP-triggered Azure Functions (Gunnar) - Azure functions are such a powerful tool. This post explains how to use them with a Http endpoint.
  
• How to send emails with SendGrid in Azure WebJobs using the SendGrid extension (Vivien Chevallier) - Nice tutorial that explains very clearly how to use SendGrid in our solution. All the code is also available.

Programming

• Microsoft + Docker – Investing in the future of your applications - It's a very exciting time to build an application. This post lists the Microsoft-related talks at the DockerCon.
  
• Testing Azure Functions with Postman and Swagger (Shayne Boyer) - Great update to an already awesome tool.

Miscellaneous

• Shutting down CodePlex ( Brian Harry) - If you have a project sitting at Codeplex, don't panic. This post explains what will happen, and if you would like to migrate, what are your options.
  
• Password managers don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than not having one (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post about password managers. Are you using one? Learn here why you should.

~Frank

Reading Notes #267

Cloud

• Announcing custom domain HTTPS support with Azure CDN (Manling Zhang) - Great new! Now https is supported end to end.
  
• Announcing general availability of Managed Disks and larger Scale Sets (Corey Sanders) - Wow! The world of Virtual Machine just got a fantastic push. It's now much easier than ever.
  
• Automating Azure Analysis Services processing with Azure Functions (Orsolya Gal) - Awesome tutorial that explains how to use Azure function as a real-live cron job.
  
• Getting Around Blocked Ports (Alexandre Brisebois) - Cool tutorial on how to configure our jumpbox in Azure using PowerShell and ARM.
  
• Preview the new enhancements to Azure Security Center (Sarah Fender) - Wow, so many new tools to helps us to detect security attack on vNets, VMs and databases.

Programming

• Introducing Docker Secrets Management - Docker Blog (Ying Li) - Thus post introduces the great new secret manager of Docker.

Miscellaneous

• 10 GitHub samples with Azure DocumentDB you shouldn’t miss! (Rimma Nehme) - Nice list where everybody should find something interesting in favorite code language.
  
• Trying out 'dotnet new' template updates and csproj with VS2017 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice update on both VS2017 and .Net Core.
  
• Ultimate Linux on the Desktop (Jessie Frazelle) - Interesting point of view about running a laptop all in containers and the structure it required.

Reading Notes #261

Suggestion of the week

• Pragmatic Web Error Handling in ASP.NET MVC - Simple Talk (Dino Esposito) - Another great article from Dino Esposito that explains his thoughts about exception and error in a pragmatic way.

Cloud

• Advanced Azure Resource Manager template patterns – t-shirt sizing and optional resources | endjin blog (Richard Kerslake) - With ARM gaining in popularity, it's importNt to get some best practices and patterns in mind. T-Shirt size is a must.
  
• Azure Subscription Spending Limit Reached! Now What? (Chris Pietschmann) - A classic mistake. Read this post before being part of the statistic.
  
• Docker for Azure Public Beta - Docker Blog (Michael Friis) - Docker contain now supported on two big cloud provider. They may only support Linux-based container but surely windows bases are coming too.
  
• New Azure Logic Apps innovation – general availability of cloud-based Enterprise Integration Pack (Frank Weigel) - Until the last days of the year, the Logic Apps team have provided multitudes of new features, see the detail of the latest release in this post and important milestone reached.

Programming

• Convert ASP.NET Web Servers to Docker with Image2Docker - Docker Blog (Elton Stoneman) - With the growing desire of containers, this tool looks perfect to do the rough job and get us started.
  
• Exploring Wyam - a .NET Static Site Content Generator (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting project. something to follow on github and keep in mind.
  
• Tips for Troubleshooting Apps in Production with Docker Datacenter - Docker Blog (Andy Clemenko) - Great source of wisdom, because who want to screw something in Prod?!

Miscellaneous

• Slack on the Commodore 64 thanks to Raspberry Pi - Raspberry Pi (Lucy Hattersley) - Aaah the C= 64.... Cool project.

Reading Notes #259

Cloud

• 'But it works on my cloud!' – are your developers still making the same mistakes in a world of DevOps and PaaS services? (James Broome) - This post shares an interesting thought about the new situation of developers, who works with the cloud.
  
• Announcing Azure DevTest Labs support for creating environment with ARM templates (Xiaoying Guo) - Never heard of Azure Devtest lab? Well, you should! Now all your best formulas will be deployable with ARM, that's even better.
  
• Announcing general availability of preview features and new APIs in Azure Search (Liam Cavanagh) - Even if the 2015-02-28-preview is still supported, it will now be safe to change for something more ...recent.
  
• Azure App Service is really 2 services, not 4 (Chris Pietschmann) - This is an interesting post that explains how and why the Azure Apps are packages that way. Once you understand that you see that you will not be limited by your initial pick.
  
• Introducing: Time picker in Application Insights Analytics (Noa Kuperberg) - Nice little detail that will simplify our queries.
  
• Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer: November update and summer recap (Cristy Gonzalez) - Learn all the details about the new features and the old bug fixes in this post.
  
• Migrate a Storage Account to ARM (Alexandre Brisebois) - Important PowerShell tooling that we should ALL have... A least if you've been doing some Azure for a little while.
  
• Static Website Hosting in Azure Storage (Chris Pietschmann) - A website for 1$ by month yes, it is possible on Azure, but with some limitation.
  
• Step-By-Step: Multi-Site Azure VPN Revisited (Pierre Roman) - Great re-design of a network/ infrastructure in the cloud.
  
• Visual Studio Tools for Azure Functions (Andrew B Hall) - Since the day one of Azure Functions, this tool is requested by the community. The early adopter can now start using this first preview.

Programming

• Use Visual Studio Team Services As A Continuous Integration Platform for GitHub - These great tutorial shows how to realize a perfectly integrated CI solution between Github and VSTS.

Reading Notes #257

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Connect(); 2016 Recap (Joseph Hill) - Three full day of great content. However, if you are like me, you didn't that much free time. Fortunately, all the presentations are available in video on demand. You need a summary because even if the keynote was really good... it is still 2h30, this post is the place to start.

Cloud

• .NET Web Development and Tools Blog (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - Really cool tutorial with Visual studio, Docker, and Azure that repeat the Connect keynote demo.
  
• Five Days of Azure Functions (James Chambers) - Nice post to know more about these Azure functions that everyone is talking about.
  
• Azure App Services Continuous Delivery (Gopinath C) - This post explains how easy it is to setup a continuous integration with Azure.

Programming

• Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate (John Montgomery) - More details about all the new stuff announced this week related to VS.
  
• The expanding Visual Studio family of products - Another post that lists all the new Visual Studio's news for the week.
  
• Using MongoDB with Web API and ASP.NET Core (Mahesh Sabnis) - Dotnet core is now much more stable and so much more performant. It worth to try it.
  
• Visual Studio Code just keeps getting better - with extensions (Scott Hanselman) - Visual Studio Code is awesome; get a list of some cool extensions in this post.

Miscellaneous

• 8 million GitHub profiles were leaked from GeekedIn's MongoDB - here's how to see yours (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post about a leak of information related to Github account.
  
• Reconnect Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2013 to Outlook.com to fix issues after Outlook.com upgrade - Outllook.com is doing a facelift. That an important upgrade could impact your access to it. If you are syncing it from Outlook on your desktop. This post explains what to do, when to it, and how to proceed.
  
• Docs.microsoft.com - I didn't have the chance to look yet, but now that have done it... Wow great job, and well organized.

Everything we Should Know About the new Azure Usage And Billing (AUBI) Portal

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français.)

If one image is worth a thousand words, then it's incredible the amount of information you have in Azure Usage And Billing (AUBI). This portal is a open-source project that has been announced a few weeks ago. In this post, I will share my first impressions about it.



The project is still young, but every alive. When I installed it, I had one or two minor issues, but by the time I wrote this post all of them were already fixed.

Where it is?

The Azure Usage And Billing site is not a website like portal.azure.com; it consists of a solution you need to deploy in an Azure subscription. It doesn't require to be the subscription you wish to monitor, just a subscription you have access. The solution contains: two web sides with both Application Insights and one also with webjobs, an SQL Database, a storage account and you will also need to deploy a Power BI report.



All of it can be easily deployed using the PowerShell script and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template included. Only a few manual steps will be required. Hopefully, a very clear and completed documentation is available in video or written. Both present on the Github project page.

What can I do with it?

Once fully deployed, you will need to navigate to your instance of the Registration portal (ex: http://frankregistrationv12.azurewebsites.net) and register all the subscriptions you want. After the webjobs are finished bringing all the data, they will all be available in the Power BI Reports.
Power BI does an incredible work by showing all the information about your subscription(s). A very useful point here is that all information present in the dashboard is interactive! Whatever you select simply one or many subscriptions or only a specific category of Azure service, all the other tiles will be automatically adjusted.

What's Next?

If it's not already done, I highly recommend installing the AUBI portal and start enjoying the detail of all that information available to you without any effort, and presented in such a beautiful way. For all the details about the prerequisites or the install procedure got to the Github project page.

Reference:

• Announcing the release of the Azure Usage and Billing Portal
• Git AzureUsageAndBillingPortal

Reading Notes #241

Cloud

• Announcing the release of the Azure Usage and Billing Portal (Chris Risner) - I have been waiting long time to get a tool like that. I will definitely clone it this week.
  
• Azure Infographic: Cloud Design Patterns - Wow! A fantastic infographic that shows many different patterns that should be used when developing with Azure.
  
• Azure Search Suggesters: Helping users to find search keywords - Nice demo that shows the power of suggesters and how to implement them.
  
• Create your first botframework bot in Azure! (Robin Osborne) - This post is a nice tutorial that gives a lot of ideas about what you could do with the botfrmework.
  
• Writing simple REST-client for Azure Search (Gunnar Peipman) - Quick demo to show how developing with Azure Search is easy.

Programming

• 5 Impeccable Reasons Node.js is Great for Startups (Keval Padia) - It all makes sense, but I didn't think about it before reading those five reasons.
  
• Visual Studio Code, your new Markdown editor - Another post that affirms how VisualStusio Code is great. It must be true... ;)

Miscellaneous

• 3 Significant Flaws in the Concept of Googliness (Melissa Burns) - Interesting point of view about what look first as good idea that could turn out as bad ideas...
  
• New Microsoft and Open Source Partner Community (Openness Team) - Nice ne community that just begins.
  
• The Anti-Meeting Culture (James Whittaker) - Very interesting thoughs about meetings and an even more interesting ways to make them more productive.

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 #220

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure IoT Reference Architecture - Great post that explains part in IoT and micro-services with their respective roles.

Cloud

• Azure Search .NET SDK roadmap (Bruce Johnston) - All in one post, the list of new features and the ones coming next.
  
• What is Azure Stack? - Usually, we refer to the stack as a group of products from the same provider. Azure stack is a little of that, but with a little twist... it's on-premises! This post explains it all.
  
• Azure welcomes Parse developers (Glenn Gailey) - Interesting server who is now well supported in Azure.
  
• Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – January 2016 (Sriram Hariharan) - Nice summary of the Logic App team's January video updates.

Programming

• Application Insights announces availability of Release Annotations (Mike Gresley) - A useful feature that is explained in this post.
  
• Why I No Longer Use MVC Frameworks - Very complete and moreover, very interesting article about strengths and weaknesses of different patterns and frameworks.
  
• Introducing Insiders Builds (Chris Dias [MSFT]) - The Insider's previews are back in a more convivial structure.

Data

• General availability: Azure SQL Database Query Performance Insight - What an awesome tool that gives us the ability to get the biggest resources consumer over a long period... and that, without redeploying.
  
• Queries To Debug SQL Server Replication Issues (Tim Smith) - If you are using database synchronization in your system, you should definitely bookmark this post that provides nice tools to us to diagnose problems.

Book

• Software Development Book Giveaway! - Cool! A great opportunity, 3 free books are given: Building Microservices, Working Effectively with Legacy Code, and Javascript: The Good Parts.

Miscellaneous

• GitHub Pages now faster and simpler with Jekyll 3.0 - Important changes announced for github and Jerkel users. And alternatively an important note to al Markdown users.

Reading Notes #214

Suggestion of the week

• Express - This is the perfect post to get started with node.js with Azure. This post starts with you step by step from a vanilla computer running OS X or Linux to your first App.

Cloud

• Troubleshooting – ma llowedContentLength Exceeded - Useful quick post for all the none asp.net user on Azure.
• September update for Web Apps and App Service environments in the Azure Preview Portal (ron Tardif) - Nice post that lists the September features of the new (not preview anymore). Azure portal.
• Microsoft Takes Azure Portal out of Extended Preview (2015 | Richard Seroter on Dec 14) - It's all in the title, but since the devil is in the detail .... that the post to know about it.

Programming

• Setting up Continuous Deployment for Android with VSTS and HockeyApp - HockeyApp is definitely a must for all mobile develpment teams. This post is a nice intro to it and also to VisualStudio Team Services.
• What I Learned After A Week of Visual Studio Code and ASP.NET 5 - I've been too busy (or lazy) to do that test myself and try to do my next project on a Linux machine only with VSCode as tools... that post was a real pleasure to read of that.
• Exploring Azure DocumentDB in Visual Studio (Andrew Hoh) - This post reveals all the feature of this very powerful addition the already great cloud explorer, VisualStudio add-on.
• Visual Studio Code: PowerShell Extension (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - Nice post of a series and cool introduction to a useful vscode extension... if you still don't have already installed it yet.

Data

• Power BI Desktop Custom Visualization (Scott Murray) - Learn more about how Power BI let you expand the Wow effect of your data in this nice post.
• Reading Your Way Into Big Data - Perfect post to get started to the data platform and build your ready queue.

Miscellaneous

• “Fixing” Windows Live Writer’s NotFound - Open Live Writer… - The brand-new Open Live Writer is still very young, this is how walkaround one of the frequent problems.
• Announcing Open Live Writer - An Open Source Fork of Windows Live Writer - Great newsthis llong time amazing tool will probably get a lot of improuvement in the next months.
• Get more awesome Pluralsight content than ever for zero dollars! - That news was the sunshine of my day, now we don't have any excuse not to get our subscription in Plurasign.

Reading Notes #182

Suggestion of the week

• Orchestrating massive parallelisation of Azure WebJobs for fun and profit (Troy Hunt) - An awesome post. I really like those post where we learn step by step what has been tried and failed, and how to move from point A to Z.

Cloud

• Azure Mobile Services and APIs – RESTful and Custom (Adarsha Datta) - Nice tutorial about how to use Azure service Api and customizes it.
• How Azure Web Apps Hosts an ASP.NET 5 Application (tugberkugurlu.com) - Interesting post th0at shows how aspnet works with Azure under the hood.
  
• NoSQL database service Azure DocumentDB now Generally Available (John Macintyre) - Know everything you need to get started on DocumetDB, now in GA. Nice free import tool was also released.

released the DocumentDB Data Migration tool, an open source solution that imports data from a variety of sources, including JSON files, CSV files, SQL Server, MongoDB and existing DocumentDB collections.

• Mostly Cloudy - April 14th - This post is a nice overview of the Azure actuality for April.
  
• Think #Microservices - Very interesting post that explains why microservices could be so promising.

Programming

• How to Update a Forked Repository (blog.falafel.com) - Nice little how to for Github and sourcetree.
  
• Understanding Internationalization in ASP.NET MVC (About the Author) - Nice tutorial that explains the difference between: Internationalization, localisation, globalisation and how to use them to build a nice app.net website.
  
• New book: Node.js for .NET Developers (KimSpilker Kim Spilker) - Today nodejs is an unavoidable language, this book explains how it works from a c# point of view.

Miscellaneous

• Free ebook: Managing Agile Open-Source Software Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Online (KimSpilker Kim Spilker) - A free book, that's always welcome.
  
• Avoiding Common Executive DevOps Mistakes (Ericka Chickowski) - Interesting post about common mistakes when people are trying to do agile methodology.
  
• Microsoft BUILD Announces #BuildTour (MVP Award Program) - Great news!
  
• Dropbox can now open documents straight into Microsoft Office Online (Dave Yin) - Now that what I call a reel int0egration, and a great feature!

~Frank B.