Reading Notes #210

Suggestion of the week

• Connect(); // 2015 - All keynotes, Q&A and the technical videos are here...

Cloud

• Load data into Azure Search with zero code required (Evan Boyle) - Great news the Azure Search team had been working very hard, and they give us a super data import tool.
  
• Deep Diagnostics for Web Apps with Application Insights (Merav Davidson) - This post does a very good summary of the announcement yesterday at the Connect about the role that play Application Insights into the ALM.
  
• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.8 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - This post explains all the new featutes that are included in the new SDK 2.8.
  
• Azure Diagnostics Integration with Application Insights (Harel Broitman) - Nice post that shows how Application Insights can help us to find the bottleneck while debugging, thanks to the new SDK upgrade.
  
• Using Azure PowerShell 1.0 to Deploy an ARM Template - Awesome post that gives a good example with the new Azure PowerShell v 1.0.
  
• Azure App Service Updates – November 2015 (Jeffrey Fritz) - This post shares the last news of azure app services.
  
• Using Azure Automation in Azure - everywhere (Gary Keong) - Interesting post that highlights the difference between different Azure cloud and how to adapt our scripts.
  
• Azure Mobile Apps November 2015 Update (Matthew Henderson) - Great news features are all explains in this post.

Databases

• Using Power BI with SQL Data Warehouse (Drew DiPalma) - Another nice example how to connect PowerBI to something else to get awesome results.

Reading Notes #209

Cloud

• Microsoft and Red Hat partner to deliver more flexibility and choice (Scott Guthrie) - Great news.
  
• Using Redis as a Service in Azure to speed up ASP.NET applications - Nice post that shares some good reasons why we should use Redis cache (Azure SaaS).
  
• Azure Runbook – A complete (simple) example (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - This post is a great introduction to Azure automation (aka runbook).
  
• Azure Logic Apps Automation - Nice quick post to tease us about what we can do with Azure Logic App.
  
• Application Insights Content Pack for Power BI (Dale Koetke) - Really cool content pack that was announced.

Databases

• DocumentDB: The move towards NOSQL – Part 1 (Adarsha Datta) - Nice little post of a series to get us started about documentDB.

Programming

• Visual Studio Update 1 RC - It's already the time of an new release...
  
• Trace your Application Insights events inside Visual Studio Diagnostic tools (Abhijit Jana) - Wow! Application Insights alone is awesome, with the new VS2015 it's just turn it to eleven.

Reading Notes #208

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure--the Big Picture (Tony Meleg) - Very complete summary of the Azure platform.

Cloud

• What Are All of Microsoft Azure’s Application Integration Services? (Richard Seroter) - Very interesting post that answers two questions: What's it? and What's new? For all the features in the Azure Integration "branch."
  
• What Developers Need to Know About Docker (Paul Ballard) - Nice post that gives pros and cons about Docker, how it works and even how to create one.
  
• The Walking Dead: No Man's Land game soars to #1 supported by Azure DocumentDB (Aravind Ramachandran) - Cool post. Games are serious business, and databases are fun!

Programming

• Visual Studio - Bower: Modern Tools for Web Development - Fantastic post that demystify bower and an excellent tutorial.
  
• How to simulate a low bandwidth connection for testing web sites and applications - I plead guilty. I thought it was more complicated to do... really cool post.
  
• NuGet Package of the Week: Microphone registers and discovers Web APIs and REST services with Consul - Another useful NuGet Package, I love this "thread" of post.

Miscellaneous

• How To Deliver a Great Technical Presentation - Interesting tips and tricks to know.
  
• The Five Knows of Programming - Nice post to calm the student among us... And Remember us also that learning is fun!
  
• A Simple Formula for Changing Our Behavior (Peter Bregman) - Interesting article that expresses a nice and simple solution to walk through difficult situations... at work or at home.
  
• Using the Surface Pro 4 Type Cover with Fingerprint Reader on a Surface Pro 3 - Cool post ... it's nice to have a real user review.

Reading Notes #207

Suggestion of the week

• A Beginner’s Mind - A very inspiring article, especially for the younger, but also for the more experienced, that want to keep their interior flame.

Cloud

• Build it, Use it, Destroy it! - Interesting thoughts about a different approach when working with VMs.
  
• Public Cloud Anxiety – Dealing with maintenance & failures of VMs (marc) - Very nice pot that explains how Azure can be stable even during "bad" events.
  
• How to Incorporate Application Insights into a JavaScript Web App (Mansib Rahman) - An incredibly detail and precise tutorial about Application Insights.
  
• Playing with Azure Connectors (Adarsha Datta) - Twilio IFTTT and Logic App are incredible connectors.

Databases

• How to create a MySQL Database on Azure (Susan Ibach) - Excellent post that explains how to have a MySQL database in Azure.
  
• October update for Azure SQL Data Warehouse (Matt Usher) - Learn more about the latest improvements.

Programming

• Lazy Loading Images on the Web - (Brian Rinaldi) - Very cool post that share (and explains) a lot of tools and frameworks to implement a lazy loading process.
  
• Integrating Visual Studio Code with dnx-watch to develop ASP.NET 5 applications - Cool task in VsCode to auto-refresh asp.net website.
  
• It's happening - OpenSSH for Windows...from Microsoft - Great news for any and every PowerShell user. We are moving forward!
  
• An Introduction to the new TFS/VSO Build System (Lachezar Arabadzhiev) - Great video that will give you everything you need for doing your next project in VSO.
  
• ASP.NET - ASP.NET 5 Anywhere with OmniSharp and Yeoman - Amazing post, the perfect starting point to all developers on Mac... or Linux.
  
• Visual Studio - Bower: Modern Tools for Web Development - Fantastic post that demystify bower and an excellent tutorial.
  
• How to use Visual Studio Online to Streamline Your Application Development with Agile Methodology (Mansib Rahman) - Great tutorial that gives us a little tour of VSO work section.

Miscellaneous

• My Story: How I work, the services I use (Simon May) - Interesting post where the author shares his favourite tools and how he uses them.

Reading Notes #206

Cloud

• Automating Azure Resource Group deployment using a Service Principal in Visual Studio Online: Build/Release Management (Roopesh Nair) - Great tutorial who step by step explains how to setup a continuous deployment in Azure.
  
• My Azure Virtual Machine Won’t Start (Alexandre Brisebois) - Great quick fix, simple and efficient.
  
• Azure PowerShell 1.0 Preview (David Justice) - It time to move forward and stop using Switch-AzureMode. Check what's coming next in Azure PowerShell with this post.
  
• Azure Site Recovery with Azure Pack Update (Ashish Gangwar) - Interesting: Disaster Recovry as a service.
  
• Troubleshooting - Can't Delete Azure Resource Group (Alexandre Brisebois) - I found this post really interesting (sorry Alex) because things are not always going as planned. However, that when we learn the most.
  
• Monitoring an already-live Azure Web App (Beckylin Orooji) - Very useful post that explains how to get Application Insight profiling our web app without redeploying or having access to the code.

Programming

• Learn You Node with VS Code (G. Andrew) - This post is really an excellent starting point to learn Node.js. It gives good references, tools, and tips.

Miscellaneous

• MVP Award Update - Oct 2015 - This post explains the changes done to the MVP program to improve it. A must to all current and future MVP candidates.

What you shouldn't have missed in the last few weeks

In September, Microsoft did so many announcements it’s difficult to keep tracks of all. This short post he just to list the most important and to give you the opportunity to watch them again or the first time.

AzureCon 2015

The AzureCon was a virtual event on September 29 that was focusing on Microsoft Azure. Many View Party around the global was watching this even rich in announcements. You can watch here the AzureCon keynotes online.
But AzureCon was not only keynotes, it was more than 50 technical sessions covering every Azure’s feature. Get the the full list on Channel9 here.

Windows 10 Devices

At the beginning of October the Windows 10 Devices was a really amazing event. Microsoft was showing us all is new devices, and they were a lot! Don’t trust me, go see by yourself on this blog post by Terry Myerson.

 

What’s new

Get Started and deploy your first cloud solution in under 5 minutes. Find tons of short videos online that teach you how to quicky enjoy the power of Azure.



~Frank

Reading Notes #205

Cloud

• Introduction to Azure Search (Gunnar Peipman) - This post clarifies things about what Azure Search is and what is not.
  
• New capabilities for Logic Apps in Azure portal - Great new features that will facilitate the edition.
  
• Why the Azure Cloud? (Nicole Herskowitz) - Wonderful post that explains all the news announced in AzureCon, but with very simple words.
  
• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: Your web app doesn't need 64-bit (Scott Hanselman) - The devil is in the details, well this post explains one of them.
  
• Azure Redis Cache: Public preview of premium tier (Pranav Rastogi) - This is really a good summary about Redis cache; road map, documentation, etc.
  
• Getting started with Azure Data Factory and Azure Machine Learning (Wee Hyong Tok) - It really the post to get started with Azure Data factory.
  
• Automating Azure Resource Group deployment using a Service Principal in Visual Studio Online: Build/Release Management (Roopesh Nair) - Great tutorial that step by step explains how to setup a continous deployment in Azure.

Programming

• Case Study: Adding Application Insights to a website (Beckylin Orooji) - Really interesting post that explains all the steps done by Glimpse's team to optimize their website.

Miscellaneous

• Savoir-faire Linux and Microsoft Canada announce a close partnership in the open source field - That an impressive news, a Linux open source shop partner with Microsoft... I like it.
  
• Presentation Tips – It’s all about timing (marc) - Interesting post that gives essential tips to prepare our next presentation.

~Frank

Reading Notes #204

Suggestion of the week

• AzureCon Keynote Announcements: India Regions, GPU Support, IoT Suite, Container Service, and Security Center - This post summarizes all the AzureCon announcements. If you have more time, I suggest you to watch the keynotes.

Cloud

• View and analyze Azure Audit Logs in Power BI and more (Ashwin Kamath) - This post explains witch to use to get the maximum of our logs.

• Meet the new OneDrive for Business - Good post that explains all the advantages of the new OneDrive for business.

• Download Microsoft AzureCon Sept. 2015 Sessions Using PowerShell - The perfect script for all of us that want to see everything from AzureCon.

• How To Resize an AWS Volume Using The AWS Console or PowerShell (John Grover) - Great tutorial that explain how to get our self out of a difficult situation when things didn't go as planned.

• Introduction to Azure Search - | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog - This post clarifies things about what Azure Search is and what is not.

Programming

• 31 Days of Visual Studio 2015 Tricks and Treats (Steve Smith) - Very promising and interesting series, more to come...

• Kanban Updates, new Branch Policies, and more... – Sep 18 - All the details about the last VSO features release.

Databastes

• Create and Edit DocumentDB Server Side Scripts in the Azure Preview Portal (Stephen Baron) - Great tutorial that shows how to use that new functions of DocumentDB.

Miscellaneous

• Going Back to One (Alexandre Brisebois) - Organize our work to become a performer, could be easily done in Windows 10.

• Introducing Digital Triage - Interesting thoughts about how we should structure our resources to triage the priorities.

• Static Site or CMS? - (Brian Rinaldi) - Nice post that gives insights to answer one of the most frequent questions when people start a blog/website.

Reading Notes #203

 

 

Suggestion of the week

• Adding Insights and Telemetry to Logic Apps through Power BI (Jeff Hollan) - Fantastic post that explains how to integrate Logic Apps and Power BI. And for the lazy one that doesn't want to read, check the first haft of this video.

Cloud

• September update: Azure Preview Portal improvements (Leon Welicki) - The portal is changing again, and you can see how Microsoft is really listening to his users.
  
• Azure Service Fabric 101 - This video explains in only ten minutes, what is service fabric and why we should care.
  
• Azure Service Fabric 102 (Scott Hanselman) - You know our bases or you watch the 101; this post goes the code and explains how it can work.

Programming

• Battle of the Free Code Editors (Brian Rinaldi) - Nice post that compares three free, popular, and powerful code editor.

Databastes

• Easily Transform JSON Data When Importing to Azure DocumentDB (Stephen Baron) - Great post that explains powerful ways to import our data in DocumentDB.

Miscellaneous

• Going Back to One (Alexandre Brisebois) - Organize our work to become a performer, could be easily done in Windows. 10.

~Frank