Reading Notes #22

Cloud

• Creating and Publishing a Web Application to Windows Azure in 15 Minutes (PubSec) - See how the last update really did boost vs2010.
• How to consume RESTful Services using jQuery and/or Javascript (BrunoTerkaly) - Nice sample/code snippet of JQuery to call a service using RESTful
• A few tips to get up and running with the Azure AppFabric Access Control Service - Save some pain, here are great tips about using AppFabric ACS.
• Sticky Azure WCF service roles (SailingRock) - Nice work around to connectivity issue when using Azure.
• Azure Service Bus Tester (Roman Kiss | 20 Nov 2011) - An amazing demo very well explain and detail about Azure Service Bus.
• Moving Channel9.msdn.com to Windows Azure - A real case: moving to the cloud. A great story.
• Securing AppFabric Service bus with ACS - Quick introduction to the new Access Control Service (ACS).

  Clemens Vasters recorded a great video describing all these capabilities in details.

• Resources to run Open Source Stacks on Windows Azure (blogs.msdn.com) - You can use many different languages with Azure (that why it's so great) here some resources for: java, apache. php. node.js  and ruby.
• Basic Patterns for Everyday Programming (laktek.com) - Five bests practices that should be in your day to day.
• What the Heck Are Document Databases? - Really interesting article, that explain not only what are NoSql database but what you can do with it and some differences between them.
  

  • MongoDB (mongodb.org)
  • CouchDB (couchdb.apache.org)
  • RavenDB (ravendb.net)

  An Alternative, Not a Replacement, for Relational Databases

• Federation Metadata in SQL Azure Part 1 – Federations and Federation Members (Cihan Biyikoglu - SQL Azure) - Great post to start to demystify where is the metadata when using federation with Azure Sql. sql code.
• Communication between Windows Azure Roles (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) – Links on other nice post about communication in Azure. 

  Only role instances that are part of the same Windows Azure application can communicate with each other

• New Azure SDK, JLint, TFS, and guest host Martin Woodward - Nice podcast that review the actuality
• Partitions in Windows Azure Table - Good starting point to learn the basic and some best practices about partitioning.
• BlobShare Sample: ACS-Protected File Sharing (Vittorio Bertocci - MSFT) - Nice complement to the Cover Cloud Show (episode 63). This post explain how the access control service works with BlobShare by following a scenario.
• Implementing 5 important principles of REST using WCF Services (Shivprasad koirala) - Good post about the REST base.

Programming

• Ajax Control Toolkit November 2011 Release - Nice tooltips balloon and featured tabs are presented in this post.
• Ruby Golf - This post give some tricks to shortened your code, and introduce a competition... Dare you?
• Manage Project Libraries with NuGet - Everything you should know (and more) about the great NuGet
• Devenez un ninja avec Ruby #1 (SANCHEZ Benjamin) - Quick tips how to play with operators || and &&. In French.
• 6 Cool #VS2010 Quick Tips you should know when working with Visual Studio 2010 - VS2010 is a great tools, this post will show some great feature. May be like me one that you didn't know about!
• Introducing gem_git: tiny tools for working with gems’ code via Git (omgbloglol) - Really nice idea.

Miscellaneous

• Nico and Rory’s Stories (Chatty DM) - This is how we all should do. Bravo Chatty!
• 5 Unusual Ways to Become a Better Speaker (Jeff Haden) - How to level up your “preacher” skill

~Franky

Reading Notes #21

Cloud

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

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

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

  Check the status of the service at Service Dashboard.

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

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

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

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

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

Programming

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

Miscellaneous

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

~Franky

First step with Ruby: Kindle Clipping Extractor

In this post, I'm sharing my last (and first) Ruby script. The script is available on bitbicket here, and you can see the output result on any Reading Notes posts on my blog here: Reading Notes.  I’m still learning Ruby, so feel free to leave me a comment.  I will continue to update the script as I’m getting more comfortable with my new skill.

Starting Idea

If you are reading this post there is a good chance you already know that I’m posting every weeks a post about my weekly reading notes.  I use Instapaper to bookmark all my reading stuff and send it to my Kindle.  So order to make my weekly post I need to pass-through the “My Clippings.txt” file on my kindle, than go back on Instapaper, found the link to this article then put all this information together in a nice readable format. 
So the idea was to speedup this process.

Kindle part

First thing first I need to retrieve all my notes in the “My Clippings.txt” file.  I start trying to do it my self and the result was… not good.  Then I found the really nice gem kindleclippings that was doing exactly what I want: parsing the file and give a array of all the notes with all the information about this note well organize with properties.  So my job was to use it correctly… not to bad.

require 'kindleclippings'

parser = KindleClippings::Parser.new
clippings = parser.parse_file('My Clippings.txt')

#== Build the Html list ==
resume = "<ul>"

clippings.notes.each do |note|
  resume << "\n<li>\n<b><a href=\"#\">#{note.book_title}</a></b> - #{note.content}\n"

  resume << "#{GetBookHightlight(clippings.by_book(note.book_title))}\n</li>"
end

resume << "\n</ul>"

puts resume

As you can see nothing complicated, looping in the notes building a unsorted list (UL).

Instapaper part

Getting the reference link of the article is a little need more work. I need to login into Instapaper with my account, then found the matching bookmark.  Once the good bookmark is found I need to extract url to the full article.  In the same time I will move this bookmark to another folder to keep my “Unread” list short.

I'm using Watir to do my web scraping.  This nice gem is very well done and can be use for testing user interfaces, but this will be in another post.

So first thing first I need to login. Here again nothing complexes get username and password and using it to login.

def InstapaperOpen()
  browser = Watir::Browser.new
  browser.goto 'http://www.instapaper.com/user/login'
  
  puts "What is your Username? "
  username ||= gets.chomp
  
  puts "What is your Password? "
  password ||= gets.chomp

  browser.text_field(:name => 'username').set(username)
  browser.text_field(:name => 'password').set(password)
  browser.button(:type => 'submit').click
  
  abort("Cannot login in Instapaper.") unless browser.link(:text => "Log out").exist?
  
  return browser
end

def InstaPaperClose(browser)
  browser.link(:text => "Log out").click
  browser.close
end

Next, I need a method to search and return the bookmark matching my Kindle note.

def SearchTitle(browser, title)
  rgTitle = Regexp.new Regexp.escape(title)
  
  if browser.link(:text, rgTitle).exist?
    anchor = browser.link(:text, rgTitle)
    return anchor
  end
  
  if browser.link(:href, /\/u\/\d+/).span(:text => "Older items").exist?
    #puts "... Searching older..."
    browser.link(:href, /\/u\/\d+/).span(:text => "Older items").click
    anchor = SearchTitle(browser, title)
  end
  
  return anchor
end


def MovePaperTo(paper, destinationFolder)
  #puts "paper: " + paper.id
  aDiv = paper.div(:class, 'secondaryControls')
  #puts "div: " + aDiv.id
  aLink = aDiv.link(:text,'Move')
  #puts "a: " + aLink.title
  bntMoveTo = paper.link(:text, destinationFolder)
  #puts "link: " + bntMoveTo.id
  bntMoveTo.click
end

So in SearchTitle method using regex I’m looking for an anchor <a> matching the title.  If I didn’t found it I check if I found the “Older items >>” button to search deeper. I doing this calling recursively the method, until I found the matching bookmark or that no more “Older items >>” is present. 

In MovePaperTo I click on the Move link in the context menu of the bookmark.

Finally putting all this together (with some improvements) and I got my final script!  Nice way to practice the basic rules of Ruby. Of course it could be more clean more "rubist", but at least it works and I now I have something to practice my refactoring skill…

Feel free to leave me your comments or suggestions here on this blog or on Bitbuket.

~Franky

References

• The Book of Ruby
• Watir
• kindleclippings on Github or rubygems
• Instapaper
• bitbicket

Reading Notes # 20

 

Cloud

• Hybrid Reference Implementation Using BizTalk Server, Windows Azure, Service Bus and SQL Azure - A nice sample of using Biztalk with Azure
• Practical Development - Introducing unit of scale. very clear post
• An HTML5-Windows Azure Dashboard, Part 1 - In this post David Pallmann is starting a new project that will integrate HTML5, Javascript, JSon, JQuery and Azure
• Minimizing Connection Pool errors in SQL Azure - Here goes a best practices
• Windows Azure Drive Snapshot and Updating Azure Drive - Definition and description of Azure snapshot drive and it’s features, in a easy to read bullet form.
• Windows Azure for Social Applications - This post is about high level communication between cloud instance.
• A Comprehensive Introduction to Cloud Computing - This is a good introduction to what is the Cloud computing, using a real life analogy as starting point. (Unfortunately because of a blog restructuration the link is currently broken, but Wely did tell me that he will but it back soon.)
• Cloud Computing and the Reason for Hybrid Versions - A lot of good stats about the cloud computing, but I'm curious to see their sources...
• How To Easily Enable Windows Azure Diagnostics Remotely - Amazing post with a lot of great PowerShell script. Bookmark this one...
• A Game of Risk- Explain about WinRT

  Microsoft announced the Windows Runtime (WinRT) stack at the heart of Windows 8 during the BUILD conference keynote in September, everyone in the room knew the game had changed.

• How To Clean up old Windows Azure diagnostics - Another amazing post that merite to be bookmarked.
• Your users don't care if you use Web Sockets - Most user don't care about the tech used. They care about the result. Here and example.

  You can use the lovely CanIUse web site to find out if you browser supports something

• How to access Service Configuration settings in Windows Azure Startup Task - Good code snippet if you need to check config
• Azure Storage Analytics - A good list of links to code post.
• Deploying Node.js Applications to Windows Azure via Blobs or Git Sync - Quick explanation of the use of nodeRole project. Thanks to Steve Mark how made great tools projects.
• Le Bulletin Azure - épisode 1 - First video podcast in a series about Azure's actualities in french.

Programming

• Web Essentials from Mads Kristensen - This is definitely a most. Even more for people our doing not so often web development.

• SQL in the Wild - I didn't know about this "filtered index" feature available in MSSQL 2008. Really nice feature.

Miscellaneous

• Profanity doesn't work - Does swearing is a good thing in a technical presentation, or in a blog? S. Hanselman answer the question in this post
• Your images are a virus. They are EVERYWHERE on the Internet - 1 image, 227 copies, 4 years... images spread..
• The #1 Thing That Successful Freelancers Always Do - Business look for some one how can do better then them self.

~Franky

Reading Notes #19

 Cloud

• How to Detect If You Are Connected To A Federation Root (Herve Roggero) - Will be useful when federation will come out.
• Mixpanel Engineering - The cloud is not for all business, here the Mixpanel’s story .
• Unable to connect to one(or few) of the Windows Azure role instnaces using remote desktop (RDP) option - Nice tips.
• Enabling Support for 32-bit IIS Applications in Windows Azure - Perfect! Simple to do and simple to use.
• Article: Introducing Queues and Topics in Azure Service Bus - A lot of new exiting stuff for the middleware and integration.
• Free Databases in the Window Azure Marketplace - Nice place to start playing with oData and/or the Marketplace
• Windows Azure PowerShell Extensions - I look forward to see those extensions...

  PowerShell is a very powerful tool for your developer tool belt,

  For an overview of the Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets, watch this video

• Windows Azure, Fiddler and netmf - Nice to know. since it's not done by default.
• 10 Predictions About Cloud Computing - This is a good question. What will became the cloud in a long-term? Good post.
• SQL Azure PowerShell for Developers on the Run! - This is a most. A really sharp idea.

  “Quickly create firewall rules for where ever you are”

• Roger Doherty's SQL Server Evangelism Blog - Great new labs for migration. reporting. sync and federation. really good update. More info about the Data-tier Application Framework or DAC Fx.
• Windows Azure Traffic Manager - I know exactly in witch project i could use this...
• Reading configuration entries using System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager class in a Windows Azure Application - A well done 101 about read config in Azure project.
• 10 Enterprise Cloud Storage Options - A 10 list of cloud storage option... but no syng of Google or Azure?
• Deadlettering in Azure AppFabric Service Bus Brokered Messaging - A great introduction to the message architecture and how to use it with the new Azure AppFabric coming in.

  “The Developer’s Guide to AppFabric”, a free e-book on Azure AppFabric development. Available for download here.

  The Enterprise Integration Patterns website provides a description of the Dead Letter Channel pattern here.

• CloudCover Show: Episode 64 - Adding Push Notifications to Windows Phone Apps – Wade explain all the new stuff for Windows Phone apps by using composable NuGet packages with Windows Azure.
  
• Using Windows Azure Service Bus Messaging (Roman Kiss) – Everything you should know about Azure service bus, write inn one amazing post.

 

Miscellaneous

• Google+ Ripples brings something interesting to the table - Trying to but together something append 2 weeks ago on Twitter... nah forget it. but see how is it possible on Google +

~Franky

Reading Notes #18

Cloud

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

Programming

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

Miscellaneous

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

~Franky

Reading Notes #17

Cloud

• Announcing Improved In-place Updates (DrewMcDaniel) - A must to read to any Azure developer. this will improve the speed and lower the friction...
• Windows Azure In-place Upgrades (Year of Azure – Week16) (brentdacodemonkey) - Really interesting. A recap of where we where and where we are going. continue with the post.
• Questions About the Cloud? Learn from Windows Azure Partners And Accelerate Your Move to the Cloud  (blogs.msdn.com) - True stories. perfect to finish convincing someone to move to the cloud (is the cloud is a solution)
• Editing a Local Windows Azure Project with the Emulator Running (Nathan Totten)- Great news... Debugging will be lot less painful.
• Dark Side of the Cloud (Andy Singleton) - Its not always as perfect as it look. Some time the cloud is not the best solution.
• SQL Azure Federations: Building Scalable, Elastic, and Multi-tenant Database Solutions - To start learning about SQL Azure federations this is a good post. a lot of details and links
• Simple Database Migration to SQL Azure (David Pallmann) - Well explain, well packaged this very frequent scenario.
• Windows Azure VM downtime due to Host and Guest OS update and how to manage it in multi-instance Windows Azure Application (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - Explain different scenarios possible when Azure is doing an update.
• What is Amazon’s Secret for Success and Why is EC2 a Runaway Train? (Randy Bias) - Great post exposing the Amazon web service AWS secret.
• Microsoft Azure: B for effort, less for execution (Barb Darrow) - Very nice post where the author talk about where Azure is compare with is competitor.
• The Microsoft Private Cloud: A Technology Overview – Perfect post to start learning on private cloud, or should I say IaaS?
• Implementing Windows Azure Retry Logic (DavidAiken) – AzureSQL and Service Bus don't implement the retry. To have a good idea u cant use the framework explain in this post

Programming

• What Ruby’s ||= (Double Pipe / Or Equals) Really Does - Explain how really this particular operator works.
• Introducing the OData Library (dpblogs) - This post explain the new feature present in the new October CTP of oData.
• Cutting Edge - Objects and the Art of Data Modeling (Dino Esposito) - Good article, and by the side explain some EF stuff. Explain how to use the active record pattern and Domain Model Pattern with EF.

~Franky

Reading Notes #16

Cloud

• The Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus (Joseph Fultz) - A great and complete sample of a use of azure AppFabric service bus. code also available.
• Announcing The New SQL Azure Reporting CTP Release - all detail about the new CTP release.

"SQL Azure Reporting enables new hybrid IT scenarios - for example, customers can schedule automatic synchronization of on-premises databases with SQL Azure, and then deploy cloud-based BI reports based on the synchronized cloud-based data"

• On Not Using owner With the Azure AppFabric Service Bus (Neil Mackenzie) -Great post to get started on Access Control Service (acs) with out using owner as in CTP.
• Types of Cloud Computing (ArchieIndian) - if still confuse between SAAS IAAS PAAS then this the post.
• Reporting on Diagnostics Data(Joseph Fultz) – Wooo! A lot of stuff is going on here. grab your CTP access and download the code available in this article. great prove of concept.
• Field Note: Calling the Windows Azure Storage API Asynchronously  (Tejaswi Redkar) - Nice trick about accessing storage asynchronously.
• Static Web Site Migration to Windows Azure (David Pallmann) - If you didn't know yet, here packaged in a 30 minutes recipe how to migrate a static web site.  good way to move in the cloud AND saving money.
• The Developer’s Guide to AppFabric (Alan Smith) - This is the official release version of “The Developer’s Guide to AppFabric” and it’s free.

Programming

• Working with Lazy Loading in Entity Framework Code First  (stevesmithblog.com) - EF code first manage the lazy loading automatically. this post show you how to disable it when needed.
• Actions in OData (Alex James) - First post of a nice series talking about pushing farther oData by adding/using action.
• Do you know Ruby Doctest? - Great tool for units test in Ruby

Miscellaneous

•  Securing Service Bus with ACS - In this talk Clemens will discuss how to secure your Service Bus applications using ACS.
• Is BizTalk Server Going Away At Some Point? Yes. Dead? Nope (Richard Seroter) - Answering the question that every one have on her lips: Does Biztalk is dead?

"Microsoft’s Tony Meleg actually did an excellent job frankly discussing the future of the middle platform and their challenges of branding and cohesion.  I strongly encourage you to watch that session"

• How to Start Freelancing (Coby Chapple) – A series about doing some freelancing. the author share is experience. Read part1, part2, part3... still one more to come
• Cloud Cover Episode 61 - Updates to SQL Azure Database with Roger Doherty - In this episode, Roger Doherty, Technical Evangelist for SQL Server and SQL Azure, joins Steve and Wade to discuss recent updates to SQL Azure database.

~Franky

Reading Notes #15

Cloud

Moving to Azure: The Plan and Start - First post of a series about moving to azure. Some good links.

Moving to Azure: The Database – (part two)  SQLAzure is so nice ;)

New Docs: AWS Getting Started Guides for Linux and Microsoft Windows - New docs... Great!

Hosting a Web Site Completely from Windows Azure Storage (David Pallmann) - If smaller is better, will you prefer 0,15 or 90?

TechDays 2011: Developer Tools, Languages, Frameworks & awesomeness (Frédéric Harper) - A lot of good things... And it’s coming at Montreal!

Does Windows Azure Startup task have time limit? What to do with heavy processing startup task in Windows Azure Role? (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - Explain a way to manage long start-up task without any issue.

Relaunching AzureDesignPatterns.com with HTML5 and Expanded Content (David Pallmann) - A useful web site that is store in blob storage...

Programming

• Ninjecting MVC3 - If you never try Ninject, then try it! Go update youre pet project to make use of it.

Miscellaneous

• M. Wright’s “Hard Code” (ericbrec) – Nice post.

~Franky

Reading Notes #14

Azure

• HTML5 + Cloud = Elasticity² (David Pallmann) - In this post David Pallman continue is explanation of relation between frontend and backend by explaining how both of them need scalability today.
• Skipping Windows Azure Startup Tasks When Running in the Emulator - Quick clean and easy.
• Key Concepts Associated with Windows Azure Development - Nice post, explaining some important notions.
• Eight cloud computing risks, and how to quash them - Good post, that help having more element when answering some frequently ask questions about moving to the cloud.
• NuGet push... to Windows Azure - wow this “PoC” is impressive. It’s amazing what we can do we NuGet
• Use the Windows Azure CDN for Assets (Brian Hitney) - Nicely explain.
• Best Practices for Leveraging Windows Azure Service Bus Brokered Messaging API - A lot of info in this great post.
• Message-oriented Architectures (Updated) - Everything you should know about message oriented architecture.
• Scaling Facebook Applications in the Azure Cloud – A Success Story and Lessons Learned (allandcp) - 2 success stories
• Windows Azure and SQL Azure Tutorials - nice tutorial to implement oData in Azure project.
• Automating Azure 1.4 Packaging using MSBuild and CSPack - Continuous integration in Azure is not strait forward. This post will help to pass truth.

Programming

• Setting up a NuGet repository in seconds: MyGet public feeds - That could be very useful. Even more when your team is split across the globe.
• September 2011 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit  (stephenwalther.com) - as usual great features like Gravatar control, Twitter Control and a better Date picker added by Stephen’s team.
• New Features in the Entity Framework June CTP - New features: enum now supported, table-valued function(TVF) kind of store procedure usable with Linq, multiple result from a store procedure and by able to cache a compiled version of the Linq query. Even the geo localisation reach the EF.
• Development Is Design - If you think that rounded window corners or cutesy animations are design... read this post. It's decoration. The development is design....
• Build Great Experiences on Any Device with OData - One of the best post I read about oData.

Ruby

• Large Ruby File Downloads Done Right! – Well done.

~Franky

Reading Notes #13

 Azure

• Now Available: Geo-Replication and new Blob, Table and Queue features for Windows Azure Storage (BradCalder) - The blob storage get a new version, more polish,  with some new features improving the final user experience.
• Data Service in the Cloud (Julie Lerman) - Another tutorial as first Azure app. Yes it was publish in April 2011 but all the base are covered.
• White Paper Series Helps You Get a Start on Windows Azure Pricing (Bruce Kyle) - A list of reference to white paper making different scenarios on the needs of different applications in the cloud.
• Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus Brokered Messaging (Neil Mackenzie) - Take a breath. In this fabulous post are a lot of information. Of good links and a lot of sample.
• The Cloud Responsibility Crisis (Cody) - The cloud is so easy that it comes close impossible to not get lost.
• 5 Things That Are Toxic to Scalability (hullsean) – Be prepare for scalability, by knowing how to avoid traps.
• Extension Methods for the August 2011 Windows Azure Storage Features (Steve Marx) - Explain the new features in this good library.
• Deploying an OData Service in Windows Azure (Shayne Burgess) - It is surprisingly simple to deploy a oData sevice in Azure. A well done tutorial.
• Now Available: The Service Bus September 2011 Release (Clemens Vasters) - great news
• TFS Azure–Technical Access Preview Experience! (Tarun Arora) - Last week I read a post that was explaining how TFS socks. But today when I read and I see all the progress they did, I say that I would love to work with Azure TFS.

SQLAzure

• What’s New in SQL Azure Management Portal? (Part II of II) (Gregory Leake) – Those news change are welcome...
• How to Backup SQL Azure Database to Windows Azure Blob Storage directly from your own machine (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - This post explain how to backup in the cloud... So really low cost.
• SQL Azure, the bacpac & Storage Containers - I need to check this because I didn't get any trouble doing my backup.

PowerShell

• Automate It! Deploying a Windows Azure Service Package from PowerShell. (Michael Washam) - It's time to improve your PowerShell skill because more than ever it is very useful.

Ruby

• Deploying Ruby in Windows Azure (Thomas Conte) - Very quick walkthrough to deploy a Ruby application in Azure.
• Some Updates to Waz-Cmd (Ruby Command-Line Tool for Windows Azure) (Steve Marx) - Cross platform tool to manage Azure storage.

~Franky