Reading Notes #157

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure Web Site Cheat Sheet - Wow! I really think that ALL the information about Azure website is on this page, and it's super clear. Amazing job.

Cloud

• Soup to Nuts: From Raw Hardware to Cloud-Enabled Device - Excellent article that shows very exiting Raspberry Pi projects with Azure Services.

• Cloud, cloud, everywhere - This post makes me realize how many different cloud solution I'm using.

Programming

• Three steps to use jQuery UI in ASP.NET MVC 5 (Dhananjay Kumar) - Direct to the point. This is a good tutorial to not losing time and gets our solution correctly configured the first time.

• 3 Essential Sublime Text Plugins for Node & JavaScript Developers (Scott Smith) - Great! Life is so beautiful when we have the right tools.

• Inception-Style Nested Data Formats (Scott Hanselman) - What seem to be a good solution at one point could put you in a big problem tomorrow. This post explains one possible cause.

• WordPress -> Ghost -> Harp (Remy Sharp) - Great post about customizing a Harp blog (node.js).

• **The Ajax Control Toolkit are now maintained by DevExpress - Good news for a very nice library.

• Visualizing Security Information with Fiddler (Eric Lawrence) - This post explains how to customize the view in Fiddler to see security information.

• I was wrong about AngularJS - In this post, the author explains why after a difficult start, he now prefers AngularJS to BackBone.

• Implement Step-by-Step Generic Repository Pattern in C# - Nice post to know more about howto implent this important pattern.

Database

• Azure SQL Database Point in Time Restore (Tony Petrossian) - Nice post to know more about Azure SQL database backup.
  
• Let's play with Azure SQL Database backup and the Point in Time Restore (Frank Boucher) - A simple post to demistify the new Backup/Restore service in Windows Azure. ;)

Miscellaneous

• The most marketable skill in the job market: communication! - Nice advice for all new people on the market.

• Markdown Style Guide - This post gives some simple tips to keep our Markdown document easy to read when not converted.

• Announcing Windows 10 (Terry Myerson) - Great news about features in the next Windows...

• Windows 10: First Impressions - Get some idea of how it feels..
• How to create a Virtual Machine for run Windows 10 Technical Preview (Sara Silva) - This post is perfect if you want to try by yourself the new Windows 10, it will guides you to be all set.

~Frank

Reading Notes #155

Suggestion of the week

• Azure: SQL Databases, API Management, Media Services, Websites, Role Based Access Control and More - Amazing new features that j4ust arrives in Azure!

• TIP: Lazy Code Snippets in Visual Studio (Jonathan Rozenblit) - OMG this post just makes my day!

Cloud

• How Azure Mobile Services enable your Cloud First Mobile First World (AdarshaDatta) - Nice post to get started on Azure Mobile Services.

• Automating Integration Testing with Microsoft Azure - Great post that explains how to use Web Plaform Installer to leverage our unit tests.

• How to host a ClickOnce deployment in Azure Blob Storage - This post is a nice crossover with ClicOnce and Azure, it's explained how to prepare our deployment to do it.

• Troy Hunt: 10 things I learned about rapidly scaling websites with Azure (Troy Hunt) - Another great post about scaling in Azure; how much it cost, how to manage it, etc....

Programming

• Integrating OneDrive into Your Windows Store Apps - Excellent post that gets us started with the Live SDK, so we can add One Drive capabilities to all our applications.

• Revisiting - how to make your EF queries testable (tilovell09) - Interesting post about testing our EF query.

• Automatically strong name signing NuGet packages (Maarten Balliauw) - Who never needed to fight to include an unsigned DLL to a project?! Here is nice to that will help to do it.

• 5 skills every programmer needs in 2014 - This post is a good place to start if we are looking to learn a new language.

• Git: It’s Just Data! - This post shows us Git from a database point of view. Julie also gives really good reference for tool and book.

• Choosing a JavaScript Framework with Craig McKeachie - Really interesting episode talking on key features of your projects or code that you like to pick a Javascript framework.

Databes

• What is new in RavenDB 3.0: Client side (Ayende Rahien) - This post explains the major improuvment the the last RavenDB release.

Miscellaneous

• Upgrade to BlogEngine.NET 3.1 (rtur.net) - Time to upgrade your blog engine.

• Lineup of Windows books and ebooks (Kim Spilker) - Nice windows books list.

• How do you deal with anxiety when Live Coding in Technical Interviews? (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tips, a post to share.

• Authoring Markdown - What, Why, How - Interesting post to introduce markdown.

~Frank

Reading Notes #83

Suggestion of the week

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

Cloud

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

Programming

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

Database

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

Miscellaneous

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

~Frank

Reading Notes #82

Suggestion of the week

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

Cloud

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

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

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

Integration

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

Programming

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

Miscellaneous

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

~Frank