Reading Notes #84

Suggestion of the week

• Focus Your To-Do List - It's so true and the solution is so simple, but not that easy to do.

Cloud

• Working with Windows Azure SQL Database in PhpStorm (Maarten Balliauw) - Nice tool that provides a lots of useful features.
• Detecting Expired PKI Certificates (Wade) - Detail on the disruption of service for Windows Azure.
• Announcing AWS OpsWorks - Wow another release this week! This time it's some diagnostics beta tools.
• Developer Tools — Including Github, Zencoder, AWS (Natasha Lomas) - Great news for young start-ups companies: Starter Pack is back with a second edition.
• Glass Half Empty: Understanding Cloud Computing SLAs (David Pallmann) - This post demystifies the 9s in the SLA and attaches them to more real value.
• Windows Azure Store: The Services You Need, Where You Need Them (Himanshu Singh) - Nice list of Azure third party and data provider available right now on the Windows Azure Store.
• New Add-ons in the Windows Azure Store - 4 very promising new add-ons to Azure and I would suggest also New Relic.
• Practical Azure #13: Windows Azure Queue Storage - Nice overview video. All the features are well explained.

Programming

• DefinitelyTyped TypeScript definitions now on NuGet (Jason Jarrett) - Typescript is really powerful and easy to use. And these days it’s even easier to use with all those new DefinitelyTyped package for NuGet.
• Polymorphism: Part 1 (John Teague) - Great tutorial that explains an important concept in programmation.
• jQuery Tutorial – Getting Started: Basics & Selectors (James Bruce) - A lot of people are using jQuery this day, put do you use it efficiently? This post brings some 101 best practices and is quick to read...
• Survey: Most Developers Now Prefer HTML5 For Cross-Platform Development (Frederic Lardinois) - Nice post that shows who quick the HTML5 is adopted by developers.
• Ruby 2.0.0-p0 is released - Good news. Here is an overview of the new features in this new release.
• Learning Center - Wow, I just discover this web site, and I thought to share it because it's an incredible source of information well-structured and clear.
• jQuery Mobile 1.3.0 Released - New release of jQuery Mobile the library to use for a Responsive Web Design (RWD) or for a mobile first approach.

Integration

• What’s new in BizTalk360 v6.0? (Saravana Kumar) - Biztalk360 is holding his promises by releasing a new version after 4-5 month. This post list what the changes.

Database

• Is Access to Big Data Limited to Big Players? (Saroj Kar) - This post demystifies the idea of big data equal big application. Nice reading.
• Why am I Getting so Many Deadlocks From Windows Azure SQL Database? (alexandrebrisebois.wordpress.com) - Really great post that explains every detail of the problem and of its solution, even for EF.

Miscellaneous

• What Recruiters Want To See On Your LinkedIn Profile (Levo League Jaime Petkanics) - Nice post to help doing a quick check up of your LinkedIn profile.
• Being a Remote Worker Sucks - Long Live the Remote Worker (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting post that highlight the challenge of working remote and how to define them.
• Want To Be Taken Seriously? Become a Better Writer - Delete
• What does "Future Perfect English" mean? (Lynda Hurcomb) - Indeed! Learning another language is not as easy as saying hello, but much more rewarding.
• How to make files searchable in Google Drive - Ah! Simple AND useful.
• The Key to Being On Time - I don’t know for you but that his example look likes to have been taken from my life.
• Evernote resets user passwords after being hit by “coordinated” hack (Nathan Mattise) - Learn more about the Evernote attach and what are the "risk."

~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