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 #80

Suggestion of the week

• Cross Browser Debugging integrated into Visual Studio with BrowserStack (Scott Hanselman) – Wow! Wow! Wow! Great addition to Visual Studio. That the first thing I will do next time I 'm opening VS. And just when Expression suite is going down. Hum…

Cloud

• Windows Azure VM Development: Part 1 (Bryan Bolling) - Great post about how to get started working with VM in Azure. First post of a promising series.
• YouTrack — Agile Issue & Project Tracker - Great tutorial that explains a steps from A to Z how install YouTrack in an Azure VM to enjoy Agile project tracking.
• Access SQL Azure Data Using Java Script (Angshuman Nayak) - Interesting exercises. It could be used in a local web page.
• Announcing Amazon Elastic Transcoder - Amazon is replying to the Windows Azure Media Services that was releasing last week by announcing a service of the same kind.
• Startup Accelerator for Windows Azure: Demo Day (Scott Gu)- Exiting program for start-ups. See what you did missed and how you could jump-in.
• Maarten Balliauw {blog} (Maarten Balliauw) - Get tutorial for continuous development. I'm looking forward to see more tools/framework from .Net that will be supported.
• Using Fiddler to decipher Windows Azure PowerShell or REST API HTTPS traffic (Avkash Chauhan) - Great use of PowerShell to deploy.
• 39 design patterns to boost your cloud architecture (Joe McKendrick) - Post to bookmark, it contains also SOA references.
• “Key not valid for use in specified state” exception when working with the Access Control Service – Great tutorial/ workaround to manage issue with the certificate when deploying with Azure.

Database

• Backup TO DISK, TAPE and now URL - Backup On-Premises SQL Server Databases to Azure Storage - Enjoy the new way to do your on-premise Sql database backup.
• Build better VHDs with expanded SQL SysPrep support in SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU2 - A lot of information about the SysPrep tool and the new feature to get more control on your Sql Database VM. These prepared VM are supported on-premise or in Azure.
• How Does the Cloud Change a Database Administrator’s Job? - Excellent post if you are DBA or even only database related. This post gives a good summary of the cloud database ecosystem and a lot of other good references.

Programming

• TFS and VS 2012 Update 1 Released (Bryan) - Announce of the new update in Visual Studio 2012 and is correlation with TFS... update now.
• TFS Power Tools Issues (Dustin Metzgar) - Little tips to be able to enjoy TFS PowerShell cmdlets.
• Developer Movement Windows Phone App Challenge (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Developers you have until end of February to take this challenge!
• Git support for Visual Studio - Git, TFS, and VS put into Context (Scott Hanselman) – Woo hou! Great news! I now a lot of friends that will be really happy of that... If they believe me.
• Learning JustMock for Working with Nasty Dependencies(frazzleddad) - Good post that compare rhino mock and justmock with some code samples.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Tactics to Breed Innovation - Easy rules to stimulate new ideas and creativity in your team.
• Executing Powershell commands in Windows Azure Web or Worker Role VM Instance return exception (Avkash Chauhan) - Nice tips!
• Plex is the media center software ecosystem I've been waiting for (Scott Hanselman) - Plex was a big discovery for my in the holidays. Since then I can’t imagine how I could do without it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #79

Suggestion of the week

• A personal approach to organizational time management - This is the most realistic and logic time management idea I heard from long time.
• Using the VM Depot - Get started with VM Depot.

Cloud

• The Right Way to Handle Azure OnStop Events (Craig Kitterman) - This post contains a lot of details information about the Azure stop event.
• All Your Base Are Belong To Us - Create example of what can be done using Windows Azure Media Services.
• Find, deploy and share images for Windows Azure - Learn more about VM Depot this brand new community-drive web catalog.
• Broadcast push notifications to millions of mobile devices using Windows Azure Notification Hubs (Scott Gu) - Great addition to the Windows Services, this post explains how to get started.
• How to redeploy a deleted Windows Azure Virtual Machine - Good catch!
• ‘Pay for what you use’ cloud services may change the culture of IT project management in small businesses, for better - See how Windows Azure could help you in your next project by reading this true story about Datownia the winner of the UK Government Technology Strategy Board research and Development grant.
• The truth about PaaS vertical scaling and why you are being “oversold” (Ruslan Synytsky) - This post introduces Jelastic PaaS. A cloud solution for Java and explains how it is elastic.
• Windows Azure Store: New add-ons and expanded availability (Scott Gu) - Great new features! Learn everything about the newly available Windows Azure Store.

Database

• SQL SERVER – Select the Most Optimal Backup Methods for Server - While I was looking for backup detail in the cloud I found this article. It is a good review/explanation of all on-premise possibilities.
• SQL Server Backup and Restore to Cloud Simplified (Craig Kitterman) - This post explain how to backup our on-premise database in Azure. This way you have easily a backup offsite. Even more, since this backup can be restore on premise or directly in the cloud!

Practice

• All Effective Enterprise Architects Are Agile - Interesting post about the strength of Agile methodology.

Integration

• Windows Azure Service Bus EAI EDI Labs April Release – How can I Get Start - If you didn't have the chance to try Windows Azure Enterprise application Integration (EAI) part, this is your chance.

Programming

• The Mobility Iceberg (David Pallmann) - Interesting post that describes what is a superior mobile application.
• Build Yourself a Windows 8 App Dev Lab (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Perfect post to get started and build your first Windows 8 app.
• 10 Bonnes Pratiques JavaScript (Christophe Porteneuve) - A must to read. 10 simple best practices to improve your code.
• éco-conception logicielle : 10 fois moins de serveurs pour LinkedIn - Very interesting article about the design of LinkedIn and why it is so performan.
• Things I learnt creating a jQuery Plugin (Part I) - First post of a series, this post get you started with the best practice of a jQuery plugin structure.

Miscellaneous

• Managing Programs With Agile and Traditional Projects (Johanna) - Good tips about how we could manage a mixte of agile and no-agile projects.
• How to Refresh Your Brain--in 10 Minutes (Francesca Fenzi) - 10 minutes that's easy!
• You are not your code. (Scott Hanselman) – Nice pep-talk that motivate us to share. I can agree more.

~Frank

Reading Notes #77

 

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure 1.8 SDK– Queue to Queue Transfers (Kent Weare) - Very interesting post that uses one of the new features available in Windows Azure 1.8 SDK to illustrate the Fan In pattern.

 

Cloud

• Table Storage 2.0 – Queries (Tyler Doerksen) - Understand the power of the table storage library version 2.0, by seeing all the query capabilities.
• Migrate a Virtual Machine to Windows Azure with PowerShell (Michael Washam) - Nice script very useful to save time or in automating processes.
• Working with Windows Azure command line tools from within Visual Studio (Maarten B) - Nice post that explains who to use two great tools together.
• Using your free Azure VM to host Visual Studio 2012 - Two short video show how to install a full legit version of Visual Studio 2012 Express on Windows 8 VM for free.
• 10 Considerations When Transferring Enterprise Applications to the Cloud - Nice list of questions you should ask before going to the cloud. And one that is often forgotten: the licensing.
• Automating the cloud with Windows Azure Command Line Tools - Great scripting references sources.
• Using OS disk VHD to create a new Virtual Machine if OS VHD is still on lease in Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Avkash Chauhan) - Good catch! This is a recurring question. Here are all the solutions depending of what you’re trying to do.
• Upgrading Windows Azure Cloud Services to Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 (Michael Washam) - Nice walkthrough that explains how to upgrade your cloud services to a more recent version of the OS family and .Net framework.

 

Programming

• Fix for WordPress Plugin Update Issues on Windows Azure Web Sites (syntaxc4) - Clear explication of how the thing works and why the issue appends... and how to fix it in one click.
• How to keep your ASP.NET database connection strings secure when deploying to Azure from Source (Scott Hanselman) - Quick tip about protecting your connection string.
• Public service announcement: time to update your CSS3 (David Storey) - Be aware web developers and bloggers, it's time to check your css. And once it's done don’t forget to minify it...

 

Integration

• Error while deleting send port from party (Dieter Gobeyn) - Very useful fix method, but for advice users only.
• Parser Optimization in a Flat File Schema (Mathieu Vermote) - Good tips to be ready to write your next flat file schema in Biztalk.

 

Miscellaneous

• Backing Up WordPress? Don’t Make These 9 Mistakes - If you are a developer, you probably backup your machine and your code. That's good. Do you do the same for your blog? You should, here is how to do it the good way.
• iPad, Surface, Ultrabook: Are we there yet? (Scott Hanselman) - The comparison we were all waiting for. A MUST READ post. I’m a little sad that no Android device has been included. I think the Asus transformer could be confederates. a bit sad that any Android device was included. I think the Asus Transformer could be ferly confederated.
• 10 Easy Ways to Get More Done (Geoffrey James) - As always how achieve more with less.

~Frank

Reading Notes #74

Cloud

• Windows Azure Mobile Services: A Robust Back End for Your Device Applications - Great article that explains how Windows Azure Mobile services work through a nice tutorial. You must read that.
• Provisioning a MySQL Database from the Windows Azure Store (SyntaxC4) - Learn how to get add-on like a MySql database with the Windows Azure Store (currently only available in US).
• iOS Support with Windows Azure Mobile Services – now with Push Notifications (Scott Gu)- Another great news for iOS developers who want to use Windows Azure.
• Doctrine supports SQL Database Federations for massive scalability on Windows Azure - Great news for PHP developers since Doctrine is now supporting Azure SQL Database Federation. Note that other than Doctrine PHP developers can also use Symfony to code with Azure.
• Windows Azure now supports federation with Windows Server Active Directory (Alex Simons) - Amazing post. First, it shares some great identity-related improvements made to Windows Azure that leverage the capabilities of Windows Azure AD. Then a tutorial that explains how to do it.
• Windows Azure SQL Database Backup and Restore - A must. If you have data in Azure, then you must read this post.
• Introducing the AWS SDK for Node.js (Developer Preview) - Good news for Node.js developers.

Integration

• BizTalk Mapper Patterns: How to Map Name Value Pair to a Hierarchical Schema - Very interesting post that explains how to do this type of mapping with functoids and by XSLT script.
• We are presenting BizTalk360 at – BizTalk Summit 2012 (Saravana Kumar) - Nice event that is coming soon. I would love to see the Biztalk360 presentation by myself, but I will need to relay on my coworkers’ story.

[…]The session is going to be 100% technical, without a single sales slide. The session structure is going to be 15 minutes slides (intro/background) and 45 minutes demos. […]

• Setting Up BizTalk Server 2013 Beta on a Windows Azure Virtual Machine (Stephen W. Thomas) - This post is a little older(1 month), but gives more details. Since new Windows Azure images are available in the gallery, I think it should work better now.
• New minor release of BizTalk Scheduled Task Adapter for BizTalk Server 2010 is now available - Announce a new release of BizTalk Scheduled Task Adapter that fixes some minor issues.

Programming

• Resolving “certificate for the given thumbprint could not be loaded” error with Azure Tools for Visual Studio - Nice catch! With so many different account and development vm, I’m sure that this situation will append. Then I will know what to do.
• Web Essentials nightly builds - That tool looks awesome I'm looking forward to trying it.
• Tis the season (Tyler Doerksen) - Multiple web camp are coming soon and this week it was VS 2012.
• My collection of favourite TFS utilities - Great list of tools that can make our TFS better.
• Building Beautiful, Interactive, and Fast Web Sites (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Web developer this was a great web camps! In case you missed it, stay tuned for the video on-demand that should be publish sonly.
• AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell - AWS is finally let us use PowerShell to manage our environment. Over 550 cmdlets.

Miscellaneous

• 15 Super Useful Apps for Busy Entrepreneurs (Kevin Smith) - SwiftKey, Evernotes and a lot more of these applications that help us.
• When I’m most productive - Nice post that could help to find why we are more profitable sometimes and not that much on other.
• If You’re Afraid of Your To-Do List, It’s Not Working (JD Meier) - Nice quick tips to be productive.
• My next PC will be an Ultrabook (Scott Hanselman) - Didn't know that ultrabook could be that powerful. This type of PC starts to be really interesting then.
• Don’t let IT ground your company - Interesting article that explains the importance of planning and to have plan B... If you want to stay in business.
• Your Emails Are Too Long: Here's How to Fix Them - Interesting sharing.
• How to be a Consultant, Part 6: Effective Presentation Content (David Pallmann) - Nice post that explains what good presentations look like and what are the rules to create them.
• How Big Data and the Cloud are Changing Customer Service Solutions - Very interesting thoughts about what should be "smart application" today since the so much information is easily accessible through Big Data.
• Windows 8 Shortcuts (Lee Stott) - How to be quicker with a keyboard on Windows 8

 

~Frank

Reading Notes #68

Cloud

• Getting Database Connection Information in Windows Azure Web Sites - Great clarification about how to access connection string in Azure using PHP or Node.js
• Node.js specific diagnostics for Windows Azure - Great source of detailed information that will speed-up your next bug investigation.
• How To Create a Base Disk or Image in Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Share It Across Accounts (Stephen W. Thomas) - Great tutorial to prepare a master custom virtual image for Azure.

[…]Shan McArthur has a great blog post on the difference between an Image and a Disk. […]

• Trying Out the New Windows Azure Portal Support for Relay Services - Nice walk around of the new Windows Azure features focusing on the service bus capabilities.
• Jolicloud Pivots Again, Now As A Start Page For Cloud Services — Have they Cracked It This Time? (Mike Butcher) - I really like the idea being Jolicloud. I'm not sure I will use it that often, but it's a good idea.
• Readability Comes to Jolicloud (David Sleight) - Nice! Jolicloud is useful when on the road. Now I can keep track of me reading too.
• Announcing Public Availability of Service Bus for Windows Server (Service Bus 1.0) (Himanshu_Singh) - Great news. We will now be able to develop with the Service Bus for Windows server than switch, if we want, to Windows Azure Service Bus on prod, transparently!

[…]APIs exposed for developing applications are consistent with those of the public cloud service, making it easy to develop applications for either and switch between the two. […]

• Exporting and Importing VM settings with the Azure Command-Line Tools - Great idea! Very useful! I can easily see one or two script staying on my desktop waiting to be double click...
• .NET 4.5 now supported with Windows Azure Web Sites (Scott Gu) - Perfect timing, ready to upgrade and be able to use the last version of EF.
• Using Trace in Windows Azure Cloud Applications (Himanshu Singh) - Useful tips to get easily a nice trace from Windows Azure project.
• Windows 8 and Windows Azure: Convergence in the Cloud - Nice article from MSDN Mag. This tutorial explain how to build a windows 8 application that pull data from Windows Azure.

Integration

• BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP: Azure Service Bus Integration–Part 5 Sending messages to Service Bus Queues using Sessions (Kent Weare) - Nice demo using session, I like this alternative.

Programming

• What is SSDT? - Since I try this tool I can’t live without.
• Analyse : Différentes façons d'intégrer un script Javascript - Nice analyse I will bookmark it to use it as reference.
• CoffeeScript 1.4.0 Released, No Sign of Source Maps - Good news for Node.js user.
• Welcome to Windows 8! (Paul Laberge) - Know your options as developer.

Miscellaneous

• Bounce Rates High? Why? (Darren Rowse) - Nice post that explain how to understand your blog bounce rate.
• 3 Characteristics of Amazing Presentations (Margaret Heffernan) - Quick tips to improve easily your presentation.
• The Undercover Interview Technique (Jeff Haden) - Interesting point of view but I prefer the coffee meeting, where you meet few co-worker in a relax context.
• 5 Goals Every Blogger Should Set Up in Google Analytics - Nice post that explain clearly how to setup goals and their utility.
• Book review: Think Like a Programmer - <sigh> So let ready only the chapter one than...

~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 #65

Cloud

• Cloning Windows Azure Virtual Machines - Nice post. Very well explain through the Azure portal.
• Microsoft Cloud Analysis Tool and Infrastructure Optimization Tool (JD Meier) – Nice presentation of the tool all in image.
• Use strategy pattern to support cloud storage (Henry He) - Interesting pattern to support both on-premise and cloud storage. A demo is available.
• Using Azure Web Sites to market your Windows App - Good sample of how Windows Azure Website can be used. Quick, easy and free!
• Why Hyper-V? (New Whitepaper) - Short introduction about hyper-v and reference on good link.
• AWS Free Usage Tier Now Includes Amazon RDS - Nice news, a relational database for free!
• 5 things healthcare organizations must know before moving to the cloud - Nice checklist before left-off
• Startups, BizSpark & Windows Azure – Better Together! (Marc Gagné) - Details about who can be in BizSpark and how.
• Windows Azure In-Role Caching - Great article that that dive dipper than usual post about Azure Cache.
• What’s the benefit of the cloud? - Quick opinion post about what the "real" benefit of the cloud and I agree.... but I still think that you can save money, gain speed and stability.

Programming

• You Can Tell a Lot About Developers From Their Scratchpads (Erik Dietrich) - Interesting post about what your dummy application can tell about you.
• Enabling code coverage on TFS 2012—it’s easy (David Scruggs) - Nice quick tip.

• Five Things to Know When Designing a Windows 8 App - Interesting post that review some of the change brought by windows 8 and is wind of change for developer mainly for UI.
• Difference Between IEnumerable and IQueryable (Nischal Bhatt) - A very nice tutorial that explain simplify the difference between those two important interfaces.
• A Few New OData Things of Interest (Glenn Gailey) - New features of oData and reference link to get started.
• The Art of Unit Testing Reviewed - This book is in to read stack and just get bring back to the top. Good review.
• Amazon Simple Email Service Announces Mailbox Simulator - Could be very useful.
• New SSDT Power Tools! Now for both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012 - Wow a must for all developers. This update is really nice and it will save a lot of trouble.
• Web Page Redirects on Amazon S3 Hosted Websites - Good idea.

Integration

• Opinions about BizTalk360 from the experts (Saravana Kumar) - Great way to learn more about how nice is Biztalk360.

Miscellaneous

• Rise to the Modern App Challenge - So much event across all the Canada in English AND French!
• Good Blogs Take Time (Darren Rowse) - Oooh I known. But it's also fun!
• The new Microsoft (Eric Brec) - A very enthusiastic opinion from the inside about the new Microsoft.
• 3 Signs That You Are Stressed Out (And How To Fix It) (Tom Searcy) - I lithe quote.

[…]"When my sock drawer is perfectly folded, sorted and lined up, I know that I am out of control in my life." […]

• Picture This (Simon) - Great application available on all mobile device and desktop.
• Brain Droppings - A lot of funny thoughts that make my morning...
• 9 Things You Wish Job Candidates Knew (Jeff Haden) - Great tips to be prepare at you’re next interview. This post gives useful information to be reading winning a job, a contract, a fun project, etc.
• Dropbox Now Helps Team Admins Get Everyone To Turn On Two-Step Verification (Drew Olanoff) - Great news from Dropbox. And a new Rss feed to add to my list.
• The Story of the New Microsoft.com - Good ready it's nice to follow how those great projects become what they are.

~Frank

Reading Notes #62

Cloud

• David Pallmann Demonstrates azureQuery (Channel 9) (Brady Gaster Cory Fowler) - Nice video where the project azureQuery is introduced. A project to follow.
• Max Pool Size Setting and Federations in Windows Azure SQL Database - Nice quick tips with Azure Sql connection.
• Best Ways to Optimize Diagnostics Using Windows Azure – Part 1 - 5 tips from experimented user.
• Windows Azure Mobile Services Preview Walkthrough–Part 2: Authenticating Windows 8 App Users (C#) (Roger Jennings) - Nice demo in 2 parts with code and a lot of screenshots.
• Getting Started with SendGrid on Windows Azure - Well done tutorial. Building an application that send mail never locked that easy.
• Running a Windows Azure Virtual Machine Locally with Hyper-V or VMware 8 / VMware 9 (Stephen W. Thomas) - Nice... Exactly what I was looking for.
• Importing Azure Marketplace Data into Excel 2013 with Web Queries - Great tutorial that build a dynamic url to fetch data in Azure Marketplace.
• Cloud - Interesting post about the security of the data in the cloud.
• The Windows Azure Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Windows Azure Training Kit (WATK) (Buck Woody) - It's true that some people were mix matching those two. Re-share...

Programming

• EAI Bridge Message Sender and Queue Message Receive tool - Nice tool.
• Introducing ASP.NET FriendlyUrls - cleaner URLs, easier Routing, and Mobile Views for ASP.NET Web Forms (Scott Hanselman) - Gorgeous! Wow you can now so easily in web form do the routing like in Asp.net MVC only with one NuGet call!
• 5 points developers should know about WinRT / Windows 8 - Now that Windows 8 is there developers are starting to do more code using WinRT. So here some quick things about it.
• How to migrate your TFS Repository to GitHub - Nice, simple and quick tutorial to start using git and in the meantime try Chocolately. (a kind of NuGet but for Windows instead of Visual Studio)
• Your Colorful Visual Studio 2012 with the Color Theme Editor (VS2010 colors, too) (Scott Hanselman) - Great add in to Visual Studio that gives... Nothing except happiness.
• FREE: Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop (Scott Hanselman) - Ye! Visual Studio gets free for all kind of project! It makes more sense to do this when supporting open source community.
• ScottGu's Blog - Good promo, no obligation, no credit card, good product... until the September 18.

[…]Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “To-do List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services. Or watch this video of me showing how to do it step by step.[…]

• Stop Validating Email Addresses With Your Complex Regex - I agree 100% I don't remember how many site told that my e-mail was invalid because tagged: frank+tag@sample.com.
• When Is a Set Better Than an Array in Ruby? - Great post, the Set are very useful and powerful but are also under know.

Miscellaneous

• Escaping from Desktop: Online Document Editing Tools for Bloggers (Guest Blogger) - Interesting review of different online text editor that compare the pros and cons of each of them. Check TeamLab.
• 10 free tools for admins on a tight budget (Jack Wallen) - Even if you may now some, you can also find a new precious tool.
• Automatically Backup your Gmail account on a schedule with GMVault and Windows Task Scheduler (Scott Hanselman) - Nice advice. The power of task scheduler, ignore you should not.
• Goodbye Fax, Hello Personal Cloud | Cloudline - A real nightmare, but do you think it will be ending soon? I hope so.
• 10 Tips for Giving a Kick Ass Keynote (Mitch Ditkoff) - 10 good tips that I will practice in my next presentation.
• Your resume vs. your LinkedIn profile (Thomas Wolff) - Nice advice about how we should use LinkedIn with our resume. They should complement each other not be the same.
• Turns out I’ll be writing a book - Nice idea. I hope this book will be published. I will love read this book.

Reading Notes #61

 
[This week, the image is provided by Marc Gagné @marc_gagne, a Windows Azure Ninja.]
Cloud

• Amazon AWS is the Cloud (for now anyway) (Ofir Nachmani) - It is true, Amazon web services is a strong well establish cloud provider. And big players like Google and Microsoft will force it to always improve the quality of their services.
• Cloud Fundamentals Video Series (Alfred Thompson) – Wow! 25 good reasons to bookmarks this posts... if you want to get started on Windows Azure.
• Importing and Exporting Virtual Machine Settings (Michael Washam) - A post to bookmark. Very useful cmdlets that will save you a lot of trouble... and money.
• To TechDays 2012 and Beyond (Jonathan Rozenblit) - A lot of possibilities to learn more great Windows technology are coming, here is a sneak peak.  
• Connecting to the Cloud–Part 1 (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice post that explains at high level two ways to connect the cloud with a on premise solution: data synchronisation and application layer.
• Connecting to the Cloud-Part 2 (Tyler Doerksen) - In this second post learn more about two other way to connect Azure with both on-premise or another cloud provider (like amazon or Rackspace): machine to machine and network layer.
• How does Hyper-V compare to VMware? - The main idea is this: Windows Azure is no longer running to catch up there has leapfrogged the competition. Download the entire whitepaper.
• Episode 89 - Windows Azure Mobile Services (Channel 9) – Great demo in this episode about the brand new Windows Azure Mobile Services.

Programming

• Custom jQuery UI Draggable bounds (Name) - Great demo of JQueryUI Draggable. I will surely you this in a future project.
• What is GOOD software design? - I would add that a good design is not always easy to do.
• Traffic Technique 6: Backlinks (Darren Rowse) - Today's website/blog are prettier than in the past with all the bling-bling. So the to increase the traffic you need to play in subtlety. A good series to learn more on those basic rules.
• The best way to manage Ruby applications - Everything is in the title, and now it's even better...
• ASP.NET MVC DisplayTemplate and EditorTemplates for Entity Framework DbGeography Spatial Types (Scott Hanselman) - Really nice sample that leverage the axp.net mvc scafolding complex type with EF. And nice trick with NuGet when compiling.
• WebMatrix 2 is Released! + New Windows Azure Features (blogs.msdn.com) - WebMatrix is a great tool now with this new version it's even belter! From Windows Azure Portal you can download your web site edit it and republish it in few clicks... that only one thing among the things WebMatrix can do to simplify our lives.
• The Hanselminutes Podcast - Very nice, I cannot wait to try the update database feature with the code first...
• EAI Bridge Message Sender and Queue Message Receive tool - Great tool! It will be very useful for demo, debug and for quickly see some under the hood code.

Miscellaneous

• The Right Way to Speak to Yourself (Peter) - Nice reading that can to be more efficient with yourself.
• Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged (Scott Edinger) - Nice post that explain how today with all the alternative we have to communicate that the distance is not a factor anymore. In business at least...
• Cost Comparison: Amazon Glacier vs S3 - Quick post that shows the advantage of going with AWS Glacier from S3 from a money perspective.
• Unofficial Amazon AWS Glacier Calculator - Nice initiative. A calculator is always welcome.
• The price of textbooks is ramping up far faster than inflation, and with good reason, say publishers (Danielle Kurtzleben) - Interesting topic. I thought that with all the options available today all students can found their way to get all theirs books at a price they are willing to pay.
• Shifting Blog From WordPress to Bloggers (gotchacode.blogspot.in) - I did the same choice for mostly the same reason few years ago. But now that you can host Wordpress in Windows Azure... maybe ;)
• The Dew Review – Intel Next Generation Ultrabook™ with Windows 8: Initial Impressions - Review of a dream machine... thin, fast and light.
• Pro tips: 20 steps to the perfect website layout - Nice tips that should be considered not only for website but for any user interface.
• Cloud Computing: Start with the problem (BuckWoody) - Interesting exercise to do... and you WILL be surprise.

Reading Notes #54

Cloud

• Windows Azure - When do I use What? (Andrew Coates) - Nice quick post that demystify when it's the time to use a Azure website, a webrole or a VM.
• Update on the Windows Azure Accelerators (Nathan Totten) - Important notice that explain why the Windows Azure Accelerators project is has become depreciated to be replaced by Azure Website.
• Run your blog on Windows Azure (Brian H. Prince) - Quick tutorial to create a Wordpress blog with the new Azure Website services.
• Windows Azure Web Sites vs. Cloud Apps (Brian H. Prince) - This post explain the differences (pros and cons) about Azure website, cloud apps and VM.
• Windows Azure is a 3-Lane Highway: How to Drive It (David Pallmann) - Great post that clarifies how each parts of Azure service are working. Amazing works and the reference to the highway make it even clearer. Put it into your to read list.
• Hadoop on Windows Azure - Wow, a fantastic post/tutorial that explain how Hadoop is working and how do some task with it.
• Mixing Node.js into Your Windows Azure Solution - Real nice article that show how to manage files with Node.js using shared access signature.
• Monitoring your Windows Azure Web Site (Brian H. Prince) - Nice post that explain how to see the statistics of your servers with the new Azure graphic interface.

Programming

• Creating Inheritance Relationships in Entity Framework - Nice tutorial about improving your entities generated by EF.
• 5 ways to roll out a product faster - Nice article that gives 5 tips to focus and delivery a prototype as quick as possible.
• Create and Consume JSON-Formatted OData - Great article that introduce a tool / framework call datajs. With datajs you can manage easily your oData directly in JavaScript.
• Python on Windows Azure – a Match Made in the Clouds! (Shahrokh Mortazavi) - Nice post about tools needed to get started using Python with Azure. A lot of options available.
• Windows 8: Top 10 Reasons why I choose XAML over HTML5 - Nice post that put the emphasis on the top 10 strength of XAML.
• Windows 8: 15 More Reasons why I choose XAML over HTML5 - Great post that add some key features support by XAML to the previous top10.
• DNC Magazine for .NET Developers - Launch Edition – Nice free magazine with a lot of content.

Miscellaneous

• Defend Your Sweet Spot (Peter) - Interesting post by Peter Bregman, the author of 18 minutes, that explains why finding and keeping your sweet spot is important.

[…] time management isn’t primarily about using minutes well, it’s about using yourself well.[…]

• 7 Things You're Doing Wrong on LinkedIn (Tom Searcy) - Nice tips that will help you (or confirm you) how to use LinkedIn in the best way.

~Frank

Reading Notes #53

This post is an important milestone for this blog. It completes the first year of Reading Notes, since a year as 52 weeks and it’s also the 100th post!

Thanks for being there and continue reading, a lot of good stuff is coming…

~Frank

Cloud

• Cloud Strategy Begins with Value and Balances Risk (Microsoft Enterprise Team) - Nice post that help to identify risks. The information is display in tables that helps.
• Windows Azure Performance: Best Practices (Rick Saling) - Good reference to more detail video on the topic.

[…]great video of a presentation on Federations by Cihan Biyikoglu at the 2012 US Tech Ed conference in Orlando. […]

• Windows Azure PowerShell and Ruby Cloud Services - Great post where updating is RubyRole project the author make interesting discovery. Learn more about some new functionality available in the Azure SDK 1.7.
• Deploying Windows Azure Website using Visual Studio Web Publish wizard - Nice quick tip to use Visual Studio with the new Azure website.
• Data Series: SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machine vs. SQL Database - Great big post that cover every difference between those two Sql database. Perfect reading to stop being confuse.
• Windows Azure Websites, Virtual Machines, and More « Jonathan Rozenblit - Great! If you missed the conference at Toronto on June 20th this is your chance to catch-up. The full conference is available to watch by steaming or offline by downloading.
• 10 Questions to ask when Outsourcing to Azure (Surf4Fun) - Good questions.
• Data Synchronization using SQL Azure Data Sync (Félix Martínez Retama) - Nice post first of a serie. This one is illustrating few possible scenarios of synchronisation with Azure Data Sync.
• Data Series: Exploring Windows Azure Drives, Disks, and Images (BradCalder) - Amazing article that pass throut all details about Azure drive, disk, image and cache. A must to all cloud developer.
• New Article: Windows Azure Queues and Windows Azure Service Bus Queues (Valery Mizonov) - Very good article that perfectly summarises the content of the longer MSDN article about the difference between Azure queues and Azure Service Bus Queues. Simple easy to read and accurate.

[…]Following is the high-level technology selection considerations section from the full article on MSDN. […]

• Windows Azure - When do I use What? (Andrew Coates [MSFT]) - Nice quick post that demystify when it's the time to use a Azure website, webrole or a VM.

Programming

• JQuery 1.8 beta 1: See What’s Coming - Wow, a lot of things are coming with the next version of JQuery. This a good post to catch the big picture.

[…]new build system based on Ben Alman’s awesome grunt tool. […]

Miscellaneous

• Reminder, basic quick fixes for troubled gear - Nice check list for no-technical people of what they can do by them self before calling you to rescue when they computer/gadget stop working. ;)
• ScrumMaster Tales – Learning How to Estimate (Mark Levison) - Interesting post that relates the experience of an Agile team. Also refers some other post of that still.

~Frank

Reading Notes #51

The Cloud Storage

Cloud

• Setting up a webfarm using Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Maarten Balliauw) - Nice post that explains how to build a web farm with a free load balancer using the brand new Windows Azure. This post pass-through all steps putting the emphasis on important notion to have a nice web farm up and running.

[…]Sysprep ensures the machine can be cloned into a new machine, getting its own settings like a hostname and IP address. A non-sysprepped machine can thus never be cloned.[…]

• GitHub for Windows Azure Websites (Maarten Balliauw) - This tutorial is very easy to follow and will help to to setup a Windows Azure Website that will use Git as sources instead of regular package.
• Windows Azure Service Management API Cheat Sheet with PowerShell (Michael Washam) - Nice PowerShell script sample that show how easy it is to manage the new Azure capabilities thru the API.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 1: The New Management Portal (David Pallmann) - Nice first post of a series of four this one introduce the new Azure portal with also a quick recap of the "stuff".
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 2: Windows Azure Web Sites (David Pallmann) - This second post of the nice series presents all the new features around the Windows Azure Websites. Enjoy!
• Microsoft Gives Windows Azure Amazonian Facelift (Cade Metz) - After June 7, Windows Azure is definitely a cloud platform or cloud infrastructure or cloud... something that must be considerate if you planning to go in the cloud.
• Episode 83 - Windows Azure June 2012 Release - This is the longest episode of the Cloud Cover Show, but a great one! It talks about so many things... Find the time, it's a must.
• Updates to Windows Azure Storage – Reduced Transaction Pricing and Geo Replication (Gaurav) - Everything you need to know on Azure Storage and is geo replication feature (this post as been updated).
• 10x Price Reduction for Windows Azure Storage Transactions - Nice recap of all the novelties about Azure Storage.
• Thoughts on AWS (Arthur) - Nice post. A real AWS environment is break down to expose every part and the author gives is opinion about it.
• Can you use BizTalk in Azure Virtual machine for production use? (saravana) - Nice post that explain the details that you must know before using the cloud for your production environment. This is following this one.
• The cloud will cost you, but you’ll be happy to pay (Service Mesh Dave Roberts) - Very interesting post that explain the Jevons paradox and is application the cloud computing.
• Loading data to SQL Azure the fast way - Incredibly complete post. The perfect post to before you get started with massive data import into SqlAzure.
• Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Michael Washam) - Amazing post that wrap-up everything about the brand new Azure virtual machine and virtual network. All the features are deeply explains. A must for all it peoples.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 3: Virtual Machines (David Pallmann) - Third post in the series this one focus on windows VM. How to create, configure, connect and use them.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 4: Linux Virtual Machines (David Pallmann) - Same thing as the previous one except this one is about Linux VM.
• Windows Azure SQL Reporting is now available - That great news a good reporting tool is always important. More to come.

Programming

• Marked As Pertinent - The perfect post to read when looking for a NoSql (or a key/value store), because this post compare a lot of them.
• Nuno Filipe Godinho - Very nice feature. You don’t need any more to uninstall Azure SDK to install a new one! Even more you have a new dropdownlist that will act as a filter in visual studio when creating your new project.
• DFW Ajax Users Group - Nice post that presents the characteristics of the two main architecture of site (with sample) and explains why most actual sites are in fact hybrid.
• Using the Windows Azure Cache Preview with SDK 1.7 - Nice demo of Azure Cache preview and a quick fix on a potential problem you could have trying it with the emulator.

Miscellaneous

• 4 Things Great Leaders Do Better Than You (Les McKeown) - Inspiring post.
• What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast (Laura Vanderkam) - Nice post. I'm a morning guy since I was a teenager and I kept this morning habit. It’s incredible how many things we can do!

[…]Come up with a plan and assemble what you need, but whatever you do, don’t label this vision as impossible[…]

• How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead (Jeff Atwood) - Seriously not serious. download the slides...Awesome.

~Frank