Reading Notes #297

Suggestion of the week

• How to uninstall Scrum (Erwin Verweij) - When you will read that post (because you must read it... Seriously), you will smile, giggle and maybe even laugh.

Cloud

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell was published on September 11, 2017.) - Doing a remote desktop on a Windows VM is trivial, but doing the same thing on a Linux machine required just a little more. After reading this post will be a walk in the park.

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 16 - Deploy Jekyll Site Hosted on GitHub Pages to Azure (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 16 - Deploy Jekyll Site Hosted on GitHub Pages to Azure was published on September 13, 2017.) - I use Jekyll on Azure, and I love it. If you would like to try it, this post is all you need.

• Getting Started with Windows Containers (Alina Popa) - A cool tutorial that uses a few popular tech these days.

• Keep credentials out of code: Introducing Azure AD Managed Service Identity (Stuart Kwan) - Great post that explains what the new service is, and how it works.It also suggests a tutorial to learn how to implement it. Awesome!

• Why is Serverless Extensibility better than Webhooks? (Bobby Johnson) - A useful post that jumps right in the middle of the debate about the Webhook and serverless. Both are good but planning (as usual) is worth it.

Programming

• API Versioning with Azure API Management (Darrel Miller) - Great post that helps to find the peace, or at least make your ideas, about what kind of rules, you should follow.

• Microservices: The Good, the Bad and the Hype (Jennifer Riggins) - Nice post that explains some challenges when doing serversless. Because yes, it's a great architecture plan, but it's not magic.

• Microsoft Tech Summit is back – register for a free event near you! (Microsoft Azure team) - A big tour around the globe, check when they visit one of the fourteen cities near you.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Selling to Small Businesses - Microsoft Partner Network (Carol Roth) - Interesting points to improve our skills.

Reading Notes #236

Suggestion of the week

• Running .NET Core on Docker (Jurgis Pasukonis) - Really cool tutorial that puts many blocks to work together.

Cloud

• Turning on Windows features using Powershell DSC extension and Azure CLI (Kirpa Singh) - Clever method to activate Windows feature on multiple VM.
  
• Running Docker Container on Azure Batch (Yiding Zhou) - Nice post that explains why and how Azure batch and Docker can really work well together.
  
• Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer preview: June update (Cristy Gonzalez) - A great tool got updated and now supports all four storage services. A must for all Azure developers.
  
• Move Resources via ARM Portal (Edward Dake) - Many tips on how to move stuff around; very handy.
  
• Cloud War: Microsoft vs Amazon – Feature 2 Feature Comparisons - Great tools I wish I had that long time ago.

Programming

• ASP.NET - Writing Clean Code in ASP.NET Core with Dependency Injection - Very interesting post that explains why dependency injection is good and how to do it leveraging the new AspNetCore. I used to all that using Ninject, Moq and many other tools. Today, it's all included.

Miscellaneous

• Happiness is DevOps’ Cornerstone (Alexandre Brisebois) - Interesting post that asks a lot of questions... I would like to see some graph or pie chart about our answers.
  
• 5 Habits that Help Code Quality (View all posts by Erik Dietrich) - Yet another post about how to code better, but this one is refreshing. It explains why the opposite would be harmful and also give us a training plan for better chance of success.
  
• What’s in your highlights folder? (Marc Gagne) - Because life is not only mistakes and bad luck.Here good tips to help you giving some sunshine into your life when needed.

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 #197

Suggestion of the week

• Deploying a VM using Azure Resource Manager – Part 1 (Marc Gagné) - Really great tutorial that is the perfect. How to deploy with Powershell using Azure Manager Resources 101.

Cloud

• A Complete List of Microsoft Azure Tools (Scott Ge) - Pretty good list of tools available today to work or plan your work with. Azure.
  
• What is the Azure Marketplace? (marc) - This is a good post to get started on Azure Market place.
  
• Ruby, TinyTDS, and Azure SQL Database update (Larry Franks) - Nice update, looking forward to upgrade some Ruby scripts of mine.
  
• Scheduling Azure Automation Runbooks with Azure Scheduler (Christopher Mank) - Great tutorial on Automation, very complete.
  
• Transitioning Application Insights from the VSO Portal to the Azure Portal (Dale Koetke) - We have until October to move our Application Insights in VSO to Azure. All you need to know to have a smooth migration is here.

Programming

• Five Common Daylight Saving Time Antipatterns of .NET Developers - Ah time, the more you play with the more confuse you can be. Interesting post to avoid common mistakes.
  
• Dependency injection in ASP.NET 5 - | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog - Dependency injection is a very good structure to facilitate testing. The new Asp.Net 5 help a lot going that way.
  
• 5 Tips for Dealing with Unreliable Web APIs - Summary of best practices when working with APIs.
  
• Continuous deployment (Gabriel Schenker) - Nice post to get started on continuous delivery and what it’s means.

Podcast

• .NET Rocks!  - I really like Glimpse, and it was nice to learn more about the journey of its creator and have a peek on what coming next.
  
• Systems Thinking: Less Coding, More Thinking with Kishau Rogers - Very stimulating episode, a lot of great ideas…

Miscellaneous

• Making the Complex Simple - Interesting thoughts about productivity traps.
  
• Making a clean exit – how to leave your company with friends, not dependencies - Interesting post on how to be professional when leaving.
  
• Apt-Get for Windows - OneGet and Chocolatey on Windows 10 - A new tool in Windows call OneGet… a package manager… manager.
  
• 10-minute workouts to improve your writing - Really interesting exercises… that are easy to fit in any schedule.
  
• New Package Roundup (izuzak) - Cool list of new Atom packages.
  
• Scrum or Kanban: Which form of Agile is best for you? - Nice post that explains the main differences between the two more popular Agile methods.

Reading Notes #186

I finally watch most of the recorded sessions from Build, Ignite and MVPvConf, and I had more time to read.

Suggestion of the week

• Learning to git bisect (Rural) - Very, very interesting walkthrough, I never knew Git got that kind of feature.

Cloud

• Azure preview portal support for Cloud Services (Nick Harris) - +1 for the Preview portal.
  
• Azure Bits #1 - Up and Running (Rik Robinson) - Nice little tutorial that implement an asp.net website with queue and tasks.
  
• Azure Automation: New Graphical and Textual Authoring Features (Chris Sanders) - Perfect post to get started on Azure Automatiom.
  
• Azure PowerShell DSC Extension v1.10 released (Kris Bash) - Cool
  
• A taste of DocumentDB through our Query Playground (Andrew Hoh) - This post is a quick introduction of an interesting tool available for free on the Azure website.
  
• .NET Rocks! - Episode 1137 (Carl Franklin and Richard Cambell) - Nice episode where Sam Vanhoutte shares with us his impression about BizTalk in Azure in all it's different flavor: VM, SaaS, LogicApp.
  
• Debugging Desired State Configuration (DSC) on (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post explains every step of a debugging session with DSC using PowerShell.
  
• A Monster VM Azure Resource Manager Template (Alexandre Brisebois) - Nice deep dive into how to create a custom template for the Azure Resources Manager.
  
• Microsoft – the only vendor named a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrants for IaaS, Application PaaS, and Cloud Storage (Nicole Herskowitz) - Very interesting post that summarizes the Gatner document about today cloud leaders.

Microsoft is currently the only vendor to be positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service , Application Platform as a Service , Cloud Storage Services and Server Virtualization

• Getting Started with Azure Notification Hubs (xximjasonxx) - This is a nice post to get started with Azure Hub and nice tool Service Bus Explorer (available online).

Programming

• JustDecompile Engine Becomes Open Source (Iana Tsolova) - Time to go checks what's under the hood.
  
• Create Node Task for Visual Studio Code (Steve Michelotti) - Nice post that explains clearly how create a task in VisualStudio Code.
  
• Customize ASP.NET MVC 6 View Location Easily (Jeff) - Nice tips, and a very simple solution to make the Shared folder more visible.

Miscellaneous

• Task Management for Teams (JD Meier) - Interesting thoughts about the size of our planned periods.
  
• Getting Started with Azure Notification Hubs (xximjasonxx) - This is a nice post to get started with Azure Hub and nice tool
  
• Open Source: A Small Guide for Newcomers (Felix Rieseberg) - If you already know your base with git and would like to jump-on the open-source wave, this post is the perfect start point. It provides nice advices and good references for more detail information.

~Frank

Note about the image of this week: This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request here.

Reading Notes #182

Suggestion of the week

• Orchestrating massive parallelisation of Azure WebJobs for fun and profit (Troy Hunt) - An awesome post. I really like those post where we learn step by step what has been tried and failed, and how to move from point A to Z.

Cloud

• Azure Mobile Services and APIs – RESTful and Custom (Adarsha Datta) - Nice tutorial about how to use Azure service Api and customizes it.
• How Azure Web Apps Hosts an ASP.NET 5 Application (tugberkugurlu.com) - Interesting post th0at shows how aspnet works with Azure under the hood.
  
• NoSQL database service Azure DocumentDB now Generally Available (John Macintyre) - Know everything you need to get started on DocumetDB, now in GA. Nice free import tool was also released.

released the DocumentDB Data Migration tool, an open source solution that imports data from a variety of sources, including JSON files, CSV files, SQL Server, MongoDB and existing DocumentDB collections.

• Mostly Cloudy - April 14th - This post is a nice overview of the Azure actuality for April.
  
• Think #Microservices - Very interesting post that explains why microservices could be so promising.

Programming

• How to Update a Forked Repository (blog.falafel.com) - Nice little how to for Github and sourcetree.
  
• Understanding Internationalization in ASP.NET MVC (About the Author) - Nice tutorial that explains the difference between: Internationalization, localisation, globalisation and how to use them to build a nice app.net website.
  
• New book: Node.js for .NET Developers (KimSpilker Kim Spilker) - Today nodejs is an unavoidable language, this book explains how it works from a c# point of view.

Miscellaneous

• Free ebook: Managing Agile Open-Source Software Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Online (KimSpilker Kim Spilker) - A free book, that's always welcome.
  
• Avoiding Common Executive DevOps Mistakes (Ericka Chickowski) - Interesting post about common mistakes when people are trying to do agile methodology.
  
• Microsoft BUILD Announces #BuildTour (MVP Award Program) - Great news!
  
• Dropbox can now open documents straight into Microsoft Office Online (Dave Yin) - Now that what I call a reel int0egration, and a great feature!

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #162

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Service Bus 101 with Dan Rosanova - With those three videos, you will get started on the service bus in Azure and the Pub-Sub pattern. A thirty minutes well invested. Azure Service Bus 102 and Azure Service Bus 103

Cloud

• #Azure Table Storage - Using StartsWith to Filter on RowKeys - Nice post that explains some good practices to get quickly what we are querying for, and while keeping our code clean.

• Azure : How to publish a web site from VS2013 to Azure (Sacha Barber) - Nice first post of a beginner series on how to do things on Azure.

• Azure API Management Part One: An Introduction - Really nice post to get started with the brand new api manager of Windows Azure.

Programming

• Version 1.9.2 for Asp.Net Released (Anthony van der Hoorn) - Times to update your NuGet packages.

• NuGet Package of the Week - Courtesy Flush to flush buffers earlier and optimize time to first byte (Scott Hanselman) - As usual, this series of posts from Scott presents us another NuGet's pearl.

Miscellaneous

• Open Graph, Twitter Card and Schema.org support in Ghost - Good news, because having a shared message well formatted is always better.

• Doing Something is Better Than Doing Nothing at All - This post gives some tips on how to follow this golden rule.

• 151 Blog Post Ideas Guaranteed to Blast Off Your Blog (Matt Banner) - Hey bloggers, do yourself a favor and stimulate yourself with tons of ideas for new post. Very stimulating.

• Moving on from Scrum - Disciplined Agile Delivery - Nice post that gives all the interesting bookmarks of the book Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD).

~Frank Boucher

Reading Notes #156

Suggestion of the week

• Your Azure website CPU is going nuts and it’s not your fault (Troy Hunt) - This post tells us about a troubleshoot on Azure when looking for the casu of CPU spikes.

Cloud

• Enabling Hybrid Scenarios on Microsoft Azure (haishibai.blogspot.ca) - Nice post that presents five hybrid cloud scenarios with Azure.
  
• #Azure Talk - Working with Microsoft Azure Resources - Useful post that compares many different tools that manage Azure resources.
  
• Azure Websites for the Enterprise with Virtual Networks - Nice quick tutorial about connecting an Azure website with an un-premises computer.
  
• Mostly Cloudy – Sept 19th, 2014 - This post introduces some nice opensource project and reminds us to update our OS Familly in Azure.
  
• How I used Azure Mobile Services in my Unity game (Mickey MacDonald) - This post shows us some of the options available to simplify our life when we want to use Azure Mobile Service in our mobile apps.
  
• Soup to Nuts: From Raw Hardware to Cloud-Enabled Device - Excellent article that gives very exiting Raspberry Pi project that uses Azure Services.

Programming

• Choosing a JavaScript Framework with Craig McKeachie - Really interesting episode talking on key features to pick a Javascript framework, base on our projects or code that you like .
  
• Jump-Location - A Change Directory (CD) PowerShell Command that reads your mind (Scott Hanselman) - Great little tools to have.
  
• Towards a better console - PSReadLine for PowerShell command line editing (Scott Hanselman) - Two really nice PowerShell tools in one post.
  
• Web API Documentation Tools -- Visual Studio Magazine (Terrence Dorsey) - Many great tools to generate API documentation.

Miscellaneous

• **Scaled Agile Framework: Using TFS to support epics, release trains, and multiple backlogs whitepaper (Gregg Boer) - This post introduces us to an interesting whitepaper.

~Frank

Reading Notes #142

Suggestion of the week

• How To Refactor for Dependency Injection -- Visual Studio Magazine (Ondrej Balas) - I really liked this post. Seriously, I'll be referring to it each time someone will be asking why we should use IoC.

Programming

• Web Performance Optimization is Simple - Can Your Developers Execute? (love2dev.com) - Nice post that explained why knowing more than a hello word is important.
  
• Announcing Update to Productivity Power Tools 2013 - Ah. Great.
  
• The Magic of using Asynchronous Methods in ASP.NET 4.5 plus an important gotcha (Scott Hanselman) - This post explains very clearly how we should do our async call in a web app.
  
• Using Asynchronous Methods in ASP.NET MVC 4 - Great tutorial that covers everything we need to know about async in a web application context.
  
• Test Plan and Test Suite Customization with TFS2013 Update3 (Manoj Bableshwar) - Visual studio is already to update 3! This post shows one of the new feature that was the most requested by users.
  
• Becoming SOLID in C# - Really interesting article that encoureage us to know more about SOLID principles in C#.
  
• Change Risk Anti-Patterns & Code Complexity - This post explains an interesting method to calculate the risk of your code when facing changes.

Mobile

• Xamarin.Forms - Write Once, Run Everywhere, AND Be Native? (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting post that proved how amazing Xamarin is becoming.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Agile Engineering Practices Today - A really interesting article that explains an concept in a simple way.
  
• Waterfall to Agile (Andy Watson, B. Clay Shannon JD Meier) - I likethis post because it shows strong images to explains the difference between waterfall and agile.
  
• Self-Improvement In Agile Teams - Interesting post about how we should think when we feel to do something more, in an agile team.

Reading Notes #141

Suggestion of the week

• Moving to Microsoft Azure (Filip Ekberg) - Another story about a blog migration on Azure. It's always interesting to learn what kind of trouble the people got while doing that.

Cloud

• Optimizing calls to Azure storage using Fiddler (Maarten Balliauw ) - Not only this post explains how to optimize our calls to blob storage, but it means that MyGet is a lot faster!
  
• Visual Studio Online Update – May 20th (Brian Harry MS) - Heads up about the last update on Visual Studio Online and what's coming next. BTW try it's very nice.
  
• Puppet Module Updates to Better Manage Microsoft Azure Resources (Ross Gardler) - Quick post that introduced a new featured of Azure that look incredibly powerful.

Programming

• All ASP.NET MVC Forms Need To Include Html.AntiForgeryToken() For Security (Peter Kellner) - This post is a nice quick explanation of an important security feature in Asp.net Mvc.
  
• From Requirements to Deployment: The Modern SW Developer using TFS (Tom Walker Jonathan Rozenblit) - Nice video.
  
• Bloggers: Know when to use a JPG and when to use a PNG and always Squish them both (hanselman.com) (Scott Hanselman) - This post contains useful tools to compress the images inside your posts, and some nice tips for the format selection.
  
• NuGet Package of the Week: ImageProcessor - lightweight image manipulation in C# (hanselman.com) (Scott Hanselman) - Another useful tool library to edit our images in our code.
  
• Setting up an Internal PowerShellGet Repository (Kris Bash, Roman Kuzmin, Peter Kriegel) - This post introduced a nuget for PowerShell packages, and how to install our private repository. Nice!
  
• The Future of .NET on the Server: ASP.NET vNext content and videos from TechEd 2014 (hanselman.com) (Scott Hanselman) - This post suggested to two videos presented at TechEd about vNext. If you are curious about what is coming next in .Net world it's a must.
  
• Indigo Studio from a Developer Perspective - I was also skeptical, the first-time someone talked me about Indigo. However, the best way to make your idea about something is to try it...

Mobile

• Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity: Coded UI Testing for the Windows Phone–Adding Assertions (Lori Lalonde) - This post is the third of a great series on how to test the UI of a phone application.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Agile Engineering Practices Today - Really interesting article that explains important concepts in a simple way to understand.

Reading Notes #139

Suggestion of the week

• Refactoring your CSS with LESS in Visual Studio Web Essentials (David Paquette) - Web essentials is really essential! This post explains how easy it is to manage our CSS files with LESS.

Cloud

• Simple Web Site Backup retention policy with WebJobs (Eduardo Laureano) - That’s a really nice tutorial that explains how to use Azure webjobs.
• Basic Tier Virtual Machines (Kenai Kwa) - It’s time to save money. We need to change the type of our VM to be basic for all Azure VMs that don’t need load balancer or scalability.
• IIS Reset on Windows Azure Web Role (Value Maker) - Safe yourself sometimes and gray hair by reading this post before you got to do IISReset on an Azure VM…
• Cloud Power: How to scale Azure Websites globally with Traffic Manager (Scott Hanselman) - Great example of scaling a website with Azure.
• Managing your Azure Storage account with Zudio - This post introduces a very intuitive tool for when we want a quick and simple view of our stuff.

Programming

• Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity: Coded UI Testing for the Windows Phone - Part 1 (Lori Lalonde) - This post lists the prerequisites required to do a UI unit test that will be explains in a future post.
• What should I be looking for during Code Reviews? - Very interesting post that gives us a good idea of what we should think about when doing a code review.
• ASP.NET MVC Helper - MoreLessText (James Curran) - That’s a nice HTML helper simple and efficient, like all the best are.

Mobile

• Build Some Ears on Your App and then Listen! (Mark B Schramm) - This post lists the best practices about how we should take care of our apps once they are live.

Miscellaneous

• SonicAgile Now with Dropbox Integration - Nice new add-on to this great management tool.
• FREE Pluralsight video: “Get Involved” in community! (Scott Hanselman) - Excellent video that will help you to get started. You don’t have any excuse anymore since it’s free!
• VM Image PowerShell ‘How To’ Blog Post (Christine Avanessians) - Really useful post that gives a lot of code snipets with the explication on what they do. A must.

~Frank

As strong as a team

Everybody knows that we are stronger together. At work, we are grouped in small teams to accomplish more and... but wait, are we really working as one big strong force or are we working in a group but focusing on our own personal achievements? Let me share with you how as a team, we achieved what we thought was impossible.

The Context

The project was an application integrating different parts of the client's environment. A lot of technology was involved and of course, the schedule planned for it was really tight. We were a small team with different levels of experience.

The fall

As a team, we thought that splitting the job was the best option. Every member took a piece of the puzzle and started working on his side.
The juniors got themselves overwhelmed in complex patterns and best practices. They forgot the client's needs and tried to stubbornly use new technologies. The more experienced were pushed in this swirl of queries and technological challenges, lost their landmark, their concentration and the big picture.
The solution we were building was looking like an ugly patchwork that was not even functional. Continuing this way was a guarantee of failure.

The recovery

Of course, I wouldn't be writing this post if we did continue, instead we met and looked at what we could do better. Hopefully, for us, most of what we did was not a loss. If we re-focused, with a bit of a ramp-up and some extra hours put in, everything was still possible.
We did some lunch-and-learn to share the knowledge. We wrote templates to get all on the same base when we were starting new sections. We also produced short documents that explained how to get started with the concepts and technologies present in the project. The goal was to keep it short and simple so it will be readable at a glimpse.
However, all this would have been lost without code-review for everyone. Often code-reviews are perceived negatively. A review is the chance to improve not only "your" code but to standardize variable names, namespace structures, code patterns and to get to know the functions/ tools available.
Another valuable thing was our daily scrum meetings. That way, as soon as one team member had issues the best resources could jump-in to resolve the problems, or share his previous experience on how to solve this kind of complication.
With all these efforts we not only did we deliver a great solution, but we built something better: a team. Not only that people worked with each other, yet they were team-members that worked in synergy and that, is a great accomplishment.

The Lesson

I discovered something that I already know! A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It sounds so simple but is it not always like that with the truth? Feel free to share what you did to improve your teamwork in the comment section.


~Frank

References

• www.scrum.org

Reading Notes #111

Cloud

• Dev and Test in the Cloud: Explained (Jonathan Rozenblit) - For dev and tests environment, windows Azure is a must.
  
• Quick Script: Copy All Blobs to New Storage Account Using PowerShell (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice and useful script.

Programming

• jQuery UI Demystified: Part 1 - Since jquery and jqueryUI are so often used use these days, avoid just doing copy-paste. Take few minutes and read this nice tutorials that explains how to use the jqueryUI widget.
  
• Tools: SlowCheetah - XML Transforms (Igor Zalmanovich ) - Definitively, a tool to have.
  
• Sorting with LINQ, Dynamically -- Visual Studio Magazine (Peter Vogel) - Nice quick tips to sort a grid by any columns dynamically.
  
• HTML5 Sparkline chart for data-intense, small-scale Data Visualization - Evangelism - Great tool, it looks easy to use and powerful enough for many different situations. Looking forward to trying it.
  
• How to Get Started with the Ignite UI Layout Manager - Interesting "UI organizer" and look simple to use.

Database

• ASP.NET MVC: Configuring ASP.NET MVC 4 Membership with a SQL CE Database - Nice tutorial that shows how to configure SqlCe to be used as a database for membership.
  
• Creating NONCLUSTERED INDEXES on Massive Tables in Windows Azure SQL Database - Nice post that demystify the indexes and explains why we should use them.
  
• SQL Server Compact 4 desktop app with simple Private Deployment and LINQ to SQL (ErikEJ) - Very complete tutorial that explains an easy deployment with SQLCE.

Miscellaneous

• Why You Should Be Able to Work from Home - Interesting thoughts about working from home and how it would be good for you, and your work.
  
• Stop asking people what they think! (and start watching what they do) - I agree. How many times did I ear don't give what the clients asks but what they needs.
  
• Have you seen Google Trekker? (Baffin Paddler) - Wow! Google always found a new way to impress me.
  

~Frank

Reading Notes #109

 

Suggestion of the week

• 10 Easy Steps to Azure Web Site Custom Domains (Bret Stateham) - The best tutorial a saw on this topic, very clear, with screenshots and tips.

Cloud

• Delivering push notifications to millions of devices with Windows Azure Notification Hubs - Create post that explains push notification and notification hubs in Windows Azure.
  
• Windows Azure: New Virtual Machine, Active Directory, Multi-Factor Auth, Storage, Web Site and Spending Limit Improvements - Okay! That a big release a new VM type, some new feature in the billing section (I known a lot of people that will be very happy) and new more convenient maintenance features.
  
• Important: Update to Default PHP Runtime on Windows Azure Web Sites - Nice post that explained how to keep control of the PHP version running on our website in Azure.

Programming

• Generically Implementing the Unit of Work & Repository Pattern with Entity Framework in MVC & Simplifying Entity Graphs - Nice tutorial about some really useful pattern.
  
• Power Tools and other Extensions for VS/TFS 2013 RC - Nice update!
  
• Visual Studio Tips: Starting to code your class project in TFS (Susan Ibach) - Great post whit a lot of tips, the perfect get started post to use TFS as source control.

Database

• Auto-delete Azure SQL Database Servers with no databases - Nice catch! Be aware that this can append to you.

Miscellaneous

• Developer – Best Practices for Daily Stand-Up or Daily Scrum – Rules and Regulations (Pinal Dave) - Quick recap of what should be a SCRUM meeting. Team...
  
• Sometimes You Have to Slow Down - Interesting post that talks about how to improve the comprehension of the students into a class room. But it's true for all kinds of audience.
  
• Sit, Stand, Walk, Type - Using a Treadmill Desk (Scott Hanselman) - At the beginning, I found this concept funny, but while reading the post the idea makes is way in my head, and finally, I think it's a great idea! Good job!

~Frank

Reading Notes #101

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure Storage Best Practices - Great post that reviews the today's best practices to get the best of Azure Storage.

Cloud

• Scaling Up and Scaling Out in Windows Azure Web Sites (Craig Kitterman) - Nice post that clarified that scaling options from the Azure Website point of view.
  
• Windows Azure Storage Queue with error queues (Pascal Laurin) - Nice tutorial about using Azure Storage Queues in an asynchronous pattern. You just need to attach an alert from the new Azure Mobile Services to the Error queue, and you are in business! Until you get notified, then we will need the next post.
  
• Windows Azure SQL Database Automated Backups are Finally Here! - That really a good news! I cannot see any reason why anybody wouldn't use it.
  
• Linking a resource to your Cloud Service? What does that mean (Ashish Goyal) - Good clarification about what is exactly a link resource and what it's not.
  
• How to get a sticky load balancer in Windows Azure - Interesting post that comments the usage of sticky load balancer (to use session in a multi server context) and explains how to do it in Azure if you really need it.
  
• An Introduction to Windows Azure BLOB Storage (Mike Wood) - This incredibly complete post contains everything about Azure Blob storage. that the ultimate resource on that topics!
  
• Windows Azure SQL Database Automated Backup Frequency is in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) - Nice catch! so UTC it is...
  
• Dev/Test in the Cloud - Every developer should now what is available for them in Azure. It is so quick and simple! And if you stop your VMs when you are not developing, you stop paying for it!
  
• Windows Azure Web Sites: How Application Strings and Connection Strings Work(Craig_Kitterman) - Great post that explains how to get a more secure website by using application string.
  
• Turbo Charging Your Windows Azure Cloud Services - Interesting post where we can read about a real cost and performance optimization.

 

Integration

• Windows Azure BizTalk Services & BizTalk 2013 - comparing the mapper (Glenn Colpaert)- Very complete comparison of the two mappers that really shows the pros and cons of each of them.

Programming

• Deployment tool (Fredrik Normén) - Interesting "pet project": building is own deployment tool...
  
• Four Ways to Implement Lazy Loading in C# (Francesco Cariaggi) - Interesting post that gives alternative to the really handy lazy loading pattern.
  
• TypeScript 0.9 Preview Release (S.Somasegar) - Learn more about the new features (generics) that bring the last version of TypeScript released not long ago.
  
• Some of the Anti Patterns - Interesting post that identified some anti patterns that reflects bad practices. Knowing them helps to improve our code, so it's good to refresh our memory.
  
• Use PowerShell to Sort CSV Files in Order - Who don't need to sort stuff? Next time indeed of opening Excell I will type one command line; thanks to this post!
  
• The Great New Features in JustDecompile (James Bender) - Nice post that walkthru the new features included in the new release of this useful tool.
  
• Building static websites with Middleman - Very interesting code. I didn't know Middleman before I'll definitly look at it.

 

Database

• SQL – Difference Between INNER JOIN and JOIN (Pinal Dave) - Don't cheat and answer this frequently asked question before reading the post. And, did you got it?
  
• How to choose a No SQL Database - No Sql database with theirs pros and cons.

 

Miscellaneous

• Is Agile Really Cheaper? (Scott Sehlhorst) - I like this post because it puts words on though that I had. A good post to be more prepare next time a client asks you the question.

~Frank

Reading Notes #100

I’m back! The blog is not dead. I was just super busy. First, I went to the Microsoft Build and it was very nice. Then I moved! I have now a gigantic stack of books and articles to read… so more to come.

This week marks an important milestone, the 100th Reading Notes! I want to thank you all my readers / followers to have been supporting me all along. Let’s go for under more!

Happy reading!

 Suggestion of the week

Don’t Write Code You Don’t Need (Erik Dietrich) - Very interesting post that gives some best practices to write better code.

Cloud

Failure is not an option for Netflix's service oriented architecture (Joe McKendrick) - Good proof that working with failure is not a synonym of fail.

Is there more to using SQL in Azure than redirecting your connection string? - Nice post that explains why we need to think differently when doing cloud.

Quick Recap of cloud announcements at BUILD and WPC 2013 - (Luis Panzano) - Nice! A two-week summary in one post!

Autoscaling Windows Azure Cloud Services (and web sites) (Maarten Balliauw) - One of the announcements that impressed me the most at build conference. Don't miss the chance to learn more about the new autoscaling feature of Azure.

Programming

Stop Doing Internet Wrong (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting list of some simple things to do to get a better experience online.

Cross-Platform Portable Class Libraries with .NET are Happening (Scott Hanselman) - Great post to get started about Portable Class Librairy (PCL) how are very useful to write app that run on many platforms.

Try Visual Studio 2013 Preview – There’s an Azure gallery image for that!(Tyler Doerksen) - Resistance is futile. It is so easy to try that you won't be able to resist. And if you don't know what's new in VS2013 check Scott Hanselman Build conference.

What is claims-based authentication? (Gunnar Peipman) - Nice post that gives a nice introduction to claims. It looks like the first of a series about this topic.

ASP.NET N-Layered Applications - Introduction (Part 1) - Very promising series where the author describes all steps of is application. For the architecture to the unit tests.

Miscellaneous

Why So Many Leadership Programs Ultimately Fail (Peter Bregman)- Interesting story, that proof once again that the best wait to learn something is to hump in and do it.

Is Agile Really Cheaper? (Scott Sehlhorst) - I like this post because it puts words on though that I had. A good post to be more prepared next time a client asks you the question.

 
~Frank

Reading Notes #95

Suggestion of the week

• The Unexpected Antidote to Procrastination (Peter Bregman)- A person a know also said: If you are not making mistakes, it means that you're not working hard enough.
  
• Lessons Learned: Taking the best out of Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Nuno Godinho) - This post is a must, it describes all the best practices to get the better of Windows Azure Virtual Machine (VM).

Reading Notes #94

Suggestion of the week

• 10 Tips for Learning a New Technology) - Nice post that gives simple suggestion to have a better kick start when learning new stuff. It gives a lot of online training website references.
  
• Creating a “Flat File” Shared Database with Amazon S3 and Node.js - Very interesting and inspiring tutorial.
  
  

Cloud

• How Do You Choose Your Cloud Provider? (Toddy Mladenov) - This post doesn't give an easy answer, because it's impossible. However, it explains how to find your answer.
  
• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: Enabling New Relic Performance Monitoring on Windows Azure Websites - Indeed, NewRelic is an incredible tool. Check-it out.
  
• Microsoft working on DaaS solution hosted on Azure (Kenneth van Surksum) - That could be interesting.
  
• Moving all a website's images and assets to the Azure CDN - This one was on me stack since few days now, but I shouldn't have waited; really nice. I liked the live thing also, it gives a real idea of the effort. Time, and difficulty of the project. Note:Watch until the end.
  
• Windows Azure SQL Data Sync - The Maximum Limit For Index or Statistics Key Column List is 16 - Nice workaround of an Azure Data Sync limitation.
  
• Using Existing Windows Azure SQL Databases with Azure Mobile Services - Nice short post answering one common question about the Azure Mobile Services.
  
• Paper: Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Architecture Guide (Kenneth van Surksum) - Two papers about IaaS Fabric Architecture got public...
  
  

Programming

• Git Explained: For Beginners - If you don't know about Git, or you still not familiar with it? This is definitely the post for you. From vocabulary to code sample, this tutorial explains all you need to know.
  
• CDNs fail, but your scripts don't have to - fallback from CDN to local jQuery - Nice post that gives samples of CDN fallback, because we it will append, but we don't know when.
  
• Utilize Compilation as a Service to create the next level plugin capability (youtube.com) - Wow! This idea is fantastic. A nice video that explains how we could use Roslyn.
  
• Sublime Text (2) (Drew Barontini) - I discover Sublime Text 2 few months ago, and since then I'm installing it everywhere. Here is a nice post that presents important features and customizations.(To install using Chocolatey just type cinst sublimetext ).
  
• 10 Ways to Make Agile Design More Effective - Interesting post that gives nice tips to improve your journey in an Agile project.
  
• Merge Files with Git Merge Tool - Perfect tutorial for a beginner with Git (like me) , this post explains the basic of the merge process.
  
  

Databases

• SQL SERVER - Azure SQL Databases Backup Made Easy with SQLBackupAndFTP - Free and simple to use. That a nice tool.

Integration

• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Important considerations before setup the server (Part 1) - Nice tutorial with some time-saver tips.

Miscellaneous

• 6 Things Exceptional Leaders Do Better (Peter Gasca) - Know what you need to improve.
  
• Are You Used to Delivering Working Software on a Daily Basis and Changing the Software in Response to Emerging Requirements? - A quiz for yourself to know how really responsive to change you are.`
  
  

~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 #78

Suggestion of the week

• The Missing Windows 8 Instructional Video (Scott Hanselman) - Finally! Someone did it. Great video that helps to get started with Windows 8. Bookmark, share and re-share.

Cloud

• (Some) Best Practices for Building Windows Azure Cloud Applications (Gaurav) - Good post that reviews the most important best practices. Take 2 minutes and review them.
• New Windows Azure Mobile Services Getting Started Content (James Conard) - Perfect post to get started with Azure mobile services. It contains a lot of references to others great content.
• Knowing when to choose Windows Azure Table Storage or Windows Azure SQL database - Simple questions to know what kind of "table" you need. Simple and effective.
• WordPress Database Error on Azure (Schwammy) - Nice catch. These tips will save a lot of time to anyone having a Wordpress blog hosted on windows Azure.
• Manage your subscriptions with the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio - This post explains the features of the new available tools Studio to manage our Azure. Since Vs is the principal tool for all the .Net developers and that this add-on is very powerful, I highly recommend to read this post.
• Interacting with Clouds From Visual Studio: Part 2 – Amazon Web Services - Second post of a series about AWS this one explain how to install and use the new add-on to Visual Studio to manage your Amazon Web Services.
• Episode 98 - Mobile Services, ASP.NET Facebook Template, and Github Publishing Demos (Channel 9) (Nick Harris Nathan Totten) - Great show that quick recap the news of the past 2 weeks and well introduce new capabilities of the mobile services and how to works with the Github publishing integration.
• Bret Stateham's Blog - If one day you forget what was the username used to connect to your Azure Sql Server, here is what you should do.
• Windows Azure Active Directory Cartoon (Channel 9) - This video is fantastic. In only few minutes it’s explain very clearly what is Active directory.
• Build your own SQL Server Agent for Windows Azure SQL Database with the Scheduler - Great post/ tutorial that use the mobile services to create a Sql Server Agent.

 

Integration

• BizTalk360 a monitoring and support tool for BizTalk Server environments (Part 1) - First post a big series this one introduce Biztalk360 and explain why it should be considerate as a great tool.
• In which BizTalk360 differs from other tools? (Part 2)
• Advanced capabilities for managing permissions (Part 3)
• Monitoring and Alert Notification capabilities (Part 4)
• Complexity abstraction of certain tasks (Part 5)
• Productivity Tools (Part 6)
• Governance and Auditing Capabilities (Part 7)

Database

• Windows Azure SQL Database Security Scenarios and Tips - Simple rule that will make your database more secured.
• Secure Your Windows Azure SQL Database - Get started with database security with this post that defines some major rules.
• Windows Azure SQL Database and SQL Server -- Performance and Scalability Compared and Contrasted - Excellent post that explainsth0e differences of Azure SQL database and SQL Server and the limitations.
• Creating a SQL Server Database Project in Visual Studio 2012 - Very clear post about how-to use the SSDT in different scenarios.

Programming

• Building and Deploying Windows Azure Web Site with Node.js and MongoDB by using Microsoft WebMatrix (Shiju Varghese) - Clear explanation. The final solution is also available online.
• Catching Exceptions in PowerShell - Quick post with a simple code snippet. Perfect to understand how to trap specific exception.

Miscellaneous

• 8 Tips to Sell Windows Store App - Nice post that complete all those how-to build your app to the windows store. This one explains how to maximize your impact and get as many download as possible.
• Managing Programs With Agile and Traditional Projects (Johanna) - Good tips about how we could manage a mixt of agile and no-agile projects.

~Frank