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 #60

Cloud

• Windows Azure Cloud Services and Virtual Networks (Neil Mackenzie) - Good tips about how to manage your Windows Azure Network.
• Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing (Quentin Hardy) - Nice post that recap how Amazon Web Service evolve in time and is changing today’s business.
• Autoscaling Azure with WASABi – Part 2 (Paul Bouwer) - Quick demo with Windows Azure Autoscaling Block - Wasabi.
• ScottGu's Blog - Great! This new service is awesome. Learn more in this post or follow the references to go dipper.

[…]Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo 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. […]

• Announcing BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP Availability in Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Himanshu Singh) - That a good news. Since BizTalk is not a two clicks install, having it in an image, will save a lot of time.
• Introducing Windows Azure Mobile Services for Windows 8 (David Pallmann) - Nice simple tutorial to build quickly an application with the brand new Windows Azure Mobile Services.
• What is Windows Azure Media Services (Ming Feiy) - Lear more about this unrecognized Windows Azure service that is the Azure Media Services
• Introducing Windows Azure Mobile Services: A Backend for Your Connected Client Apps (Kirill Gavrylyuk) - Another great quick tutorial to get started with the Windows Azure Mobile Services.
• Amazon AWS is the Cloud (for now anyway) - It is true that Amazon web services is a strong well establish cloud provider. And big players like Google and Microsoft will force them to always improve the quality of their services.
• IaaS provider comparison reveals market trends for the cloud (Thoran Rodrigues) - It' s not an easy task to compare so many IaaS providers, and this post provide a different angle that we are used to see.
• How to add custom MIME mappings to non .NET Windows Azure Websites (Marc) - Nice tips and good catch! Now go update your website...
• Cloud Cover Show  Episode 88 - Tips and Tricks for Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks – A lot of good tips in this web cast and also a nice demo about how to setup a web farm using Windows Azure vm and web deploy.

Programming

• 15 things we learned about interface design as developers - Nice post with great tips to improve your interface... yes even if it's only a demo.

[…] 9% of all men are color blind. Use vischeck.com to check how your site or web app looks to those people. […]

• Bullet-proof your web service with the right monitoring setup (Nick Hardiman) - In this post learn why monitoring correctly your web services is a must. A lot of references to tools that can help you to achieve this goal are also present.
• Azure Node.js developer center homepage redesign - This post explain all steps to get to the new design and the reason why some change were made.
• Pinning Useful and Obscure Stuff to the Windows 8 Start Menu (Scott Hanselman) - Nice quick tips to setup your Windows 8 environment the way you like it.

Miscellaneous

• PCPlus 312: Dynamic exposures - This nice effect is really easy to do but remember that a tripod is a must and a fix subject too.
• Why is Windows 8 “a catastrophe for anyone in the PC space”? (pcgamesn.com) - Euh, I'm very surprised of this virulent critic of Windows 8. I didn't spend a lot of time on it but, wow that the very opposite of everything I heard before.
• Intelligence vs. Effort | Arronsw - Nice quick post about the good mindset to have versus effort and unknown.
• How to become a great software developer - Great posts that suggest 10 good brain push-ups to become, or stay, a great software developer.
• How to Write Like Your Teacher Told You Not To (Karol K) - Interesting post about how you should write a blog post. Its kind the opposite of writing "the good way" at school.
• Should Your Company Just Say "No" To Dropbox? (Brian Proffitt) - Good question. Like any powerful tools files sharing in some un-informed hands could be problematic.
• The Power of Personal (Darren Rowse) - Interesting topics, it's true that all the post that I had found great was personal.