Reading Notes #416

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. 

It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed. Enjoy!

Cloud

• ASP.NET Core Apps Observability (Francisco) - A great post that shares, and explains how to implement logs, traces, and metrics in modern application.

• Azure Cost Management + Billing updates – February 2020 (Michael Flanakin) - Wow, an incredible update on all front. New features, new PowerBi app, new APIs, and so much more.

• Durable Functions Upgrade Strategies (Mark Heath) - A real gold mine of information about best practices when migrating. Of course great when migrating durable functions, but also true for any services.

Programming

• How to set up a tab profile in Windows Terminal to automatically SSH into a Linux box - Scott Hanselman (Scott Hanselman) - If you've been hacking or just copy-pasting config without understanding to mutch, this post will explain how to do you own version.

• Announcing PowerShell 7.0 (Joey) - That awesome post will explain what's in PowerShell 7 and why we should care... Because yes... we should.

• Docker Desktop for Windows Home is here! - Docker Blog (Ben De St Paer-Gotch) - Fantastic news! And so easy to install. Lovely.

• How to merge a pull request 🔥🔥🔥 (Steve Belovarich) - Interesting post that shares some best practices when merging.

Podcast

• Starting a profitable business in six weeks with Courtland Allen (Software Engineering Unlocked) - A really interesting discussion about success in tech. All the work that it required, but also the timing, and the people you keep around you in the journey.

• #28: Frank Boucher - Live Stream Coding (The Solo Coder Podcast) - Shameless plug... But a good episode nevertheless.

• #361: The Generosity of Scars with Scott Mann (The EntreLeadership Podcast) - First when I eared the guess was a military I thought it will be full of war references... But no! This episode is all about human. Our self, are we feel alone and strangely the fact that we are not. Great episode and I really liked Scott Mann verbs.

• How to Start and Grow A Podcast That Gets Listeners - Twitch Advice (Stream Coach: Twitch Stream Tips) - I like how Ashley treats her topics. She does it in a different way. In my journey to learn about how to provide great streaming content, this episode was a nice complement.

Book

The Infinite Game 

by: Simon Sinek

 I really enjoyed this book. This book gave me vocabulary. It was putting words on ideas, explaining clearly some feelings that I wasn't able to express. Like when you know something is good or bad, but that you can explain why. It's less impressive than Start with Why, but definitely, something to read.

 

Reading Notes #400

Cloud

• 10 user experience updates to the Azure portal | Blog | Microsoft Azure (Leon Welicki) - I'm very pleased with this portal update. Seriously I spent the last two weeks doing tons of demo and all those improvements... Wonderful!

• Improving observability of your Kubernetes deployments with Azure Monitor for containers | Blog | Microsoft Azure (Keiko Harada) - Great post about monitoring within Kubernetes.

Programming

• Cool WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) tips and tricks you (or I) didn't know were possible (Scott Hanselman) - Tons of awesome tips with WSL.

• ASP.NET Core updates in .NET Core 3.1 Preview 3 (Sourabh) - Preview 3... The final version is coming pretty soon!

• Getting feedback from EntityFramework Core through diagnostics (Dominique St-Amand) - This is a great tutorial that explains how to use the Application Insight SDK with EF.

• Trying out Visual Studio Online - Using the cloud to manage and compile your code is amazing (Scott Hanselman) - VSOnline is so cool! I personally just briefly tried it (busy with Ignite and Ignite The Tour) but it was working great. Looking forward to testing the VSCode extension...

~

Reading Notes #319

Cloud

• Azure Log Analytics ML: Using the evaluate operator with the app() or workspace() scope function (Iris Classon) - A nice blog post that shares some beat stuff to make our queries to work.
• Custom Vision service deployment on Azure with ARM template (Vivien Chevallier) - The perfect post to get started following the best practices.

Programming

• Setting up Application Insights took 10 minutes. It created two days of work for me. (Scott Hanselman) - Application Insights is really an incredible tool. A must-have in any online project... Not only the cloud one, just need to have internet access.
• Using Swagger to automatically generate the client code (Evgeny Zborovsky) - A nice tutorial that explains how to do cool stuff with swagger.

Databases

• Making Azure the best place for all your applications and data (Rohan Kumar) - A few great products that turn GA are announced in this post.

Miscellaneous

• Finding What's Changed in Your Code (Peter Vogel) - This post is like a big slice of wisdom cake...
• Follow Your Passion Is WRONG? (What About MONEY?) (John Sonmez) - Follow your passion or what I personally refer to "fun".It's very important.

Reading Notes #304

Cloud

• Application Insights: VSTS dashboard chart widget now available (Mike Gresley) - Woohoo! Finally, it's there. I'm going to add it to all my projects right now.
• Monitor Azure services and applications using Grafana (Ashwin Kamath) - I didn't know that tool, but now it's definitely under my radar.
• Azure Durable Functions: Making Serverless Last (Mary Branscombe) - A great post that introduces the durable function and explains where it fits in the integration offer.

Programming

• Creating a Minimal ASP.NET Core Windows Container (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - This is an amazing post that shows how to optimize our containers. It may be about Asp.Net Core but it applies to any containers. It also shows one of the big improvements with .Net Core...
• WebOptimizer - a Bundler and Minifier for ASP.NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This post shares a nice little tool available for Asp.Net Core.
• Why Is It So Difficult To Get Started Writing Automated Tests? (Matthew Jones) - So many very good questions are asked in this post, but what are the answers?

Databases

• Automatic tuning will be a new default (Veljko Vasic) - An important post t read and share to avoid any panic in January.

Podcast

• EntreLeadership #231: Renée Mauborgne—Move Beyond Competing (EntreLeadership Team) - A great episode with a few tools that look very interesting... And of course, a book reference that you should add to you to read list.
• Dotnet Rocks - 1491 Building VSTS using VSTS with Dan Hellem and Rogan Ferguson (Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell) - Great show about VSTS... If you using or think of using the tool... That's for you.

Miscellaneous

• I Don’t Have Time is a Myth (Donn Felker) - I love it. We have so many opportunities; we just need to take them.
• The Main Challenges of Building Machine Learning Tech (Donn Felker) - Very interesting article about AI.
• Why I won't be switching to VSCode any time soon - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - I was surprised when I saw the title of this post, how could you not like VsCode? However, after reading it, I understand. Through preferences are personal, VSCode does a lot and needs a bit more than few minutes to be tame. I got also overwhelmed when I started using it. The secret is the documentation... and sometimes. Then it becomes whatever you want.

Reading Notes #287

Cloud

• .NET: Manage Azure Container Service, Cosmos DB, Active Directory Graph and more (Asir Selvasingh) - I'm a bit scared about this .Net new feature, but at the same time curious to see where it will go.
• Azure Redis Cache Geo-Replication in Public Preview (Ye Gu) - Nice tutorial that will help to have a better disaster recovery plan.
• Deploying Applications to Azure Container Service (atulm) - Great tutorial to start orchestrating containers on Azure.
• Designing Globally Resilient Apps with Azure App Service – Opsgility (Chris Pietschmann) - Great post that lists a lot of tools available in Azure to get a better architecture for your solution.
• Enhanced app usage monitoring and investigative features in Azure Application Insights (Rahul Bagaria) - Wow, so many new features, exactly what I needed!
• Microsoft’s Logic Apps Aims to Bring Serverless Functionality to Non-Coders (Mark Boyd) - Nice post that gives a glimpse at the Logic Apps future.
• Receive emails from Azure WebJobs when errors are detected (Vivien Chevallier) - Nice tutorial that explains how to manage error in a webjob and implement the best practices.

Programming

• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 4) - Steve Gordon's Blog (Steve Gordon) - This post of the series explains the Docker file and few useful commands. I really like this series.
• Porting a 15 year old .NET 1.1 Virtual CPU Tiny Operating System school project to .NET Core 2.0 (Scott Hanselman) - We all have those prehistoric pieces of code, and it required lots of courage to share them with the public. However, what all of us learn from it, is priceless. Thank you, Scott.
• Speed of dotnet run vs the speed of dotnet for published apps (plus self-contained .NET Core apps) (Scott Hanselman) - Great post that explains a few differences between the published and just builds performance.

Miscellaneous

• How to Get into the Habit of Time Tracking - Toggl Blog (Liza Plotnikova) - I don't count the times where Toogl "saved my life" when it was time to do my timesheet. A tool to try.

Reading Notes #285

Cloud

• 10 tips for enterprise integration with Logic Apps (Toon Vanhoutte) - Nice list of integration / LogicApps best practices.
• Azure Automation Graphical Editor from a Coder’s Perspective (Brian Christopher Harrison) - Pretty cool post that explains how someone with PowerShell base could use the designer interface in automation.
• Azure CLI Samples for Azure Cosmos DB - Just a quick reference to see what's available today.
• Azure Logic Apps - Retry Policy (Sriram Hariharan) - This post explains how to customize a key feature to build successful integration solution in cloud programming.
• Microsoft Cognitive Custom Vision Service .Net Core Angular 4 Application (Part One) - With all those code snippets and screen captures, this tutorial is extremely well detailed.
• How to Serve Serverless with Examples in Azure (Jeremy Likness) - Nice post that decorticates the serverless using Azure Functions as an example.
• Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit version 2.0 - Super, new version of the toolkit.
• Top 5 mistakes when people talk about Azure (Saverio Guardato) - Yep, same here.All true.

Programming

• How to reference a .NET Core library in WinForms - Or, .NET Standard Explained (Scott Hanselman) - Nice explanation, very clear.

Suggestion of the week

• Solve Node.js issues faster with Application Insights for Node.js (Josh Gavant) - Awesome post that shares a lots of very useful tips and guidance.

Miscellaneous

• 10 strategies for beating “programmer’s block” (Madison Moore) - Interesting top ten.

Reading Notes #268

Cloud

• Azure Application Insights JavaScript SDK: reliability and performance improvements (Beckylin Orooji) - That's a good news! Time to update our packages.
  
• Access on-premise SQL Server data from Azure Logic Apps via On-Premises Data Gateway (Eldert Grootenboer) - Nice tutorial that explains step by step how to connect securely our on-premises resources to Azure.
  
• Cognitive Services APIs: Speech - Wow! So many ideas to play with those services... But that would be in another post.
  
• Serverless Integration with Logic Apps, Functions and Cognitive Service API (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - Another good integration example leveraging services in Azure.
  
• Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack v2.4 for Visio 2016/2013 is now available (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - We are always searching for images do use in our diagram. Here is your chance to update your tool with a nice pack.

Programming

• Running Cross Browser Automated Testings in Visual Studio Team Services - Fantastic tutorial that explains how to have a real impact on our deployment's speed by automating our UI testing on VSTS.

Miscellaneous

• Considerations on using Microsoft Flow or Logic Apps to sync documents (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - This post answers a question that many people I meet asked. Very clear, and yet simple to understand.

Reading Notes #266

Suggestion of the week

• 22 tips to lower Azure pricing and optimize hosting costs (Matt Watson) - Fantastic list that overviews a lot of opportunities to lower the total of our Azure receipt.

Cloud

• Announcing the new Azure Marketplace experience (Shankar Sivadasan) - Another proof that Microsoft is really listening to his customers and partners, nice improvement.
  
• Azure Application Insights – An essential part of Microsoft DevOps Strategy (Subodh Sohoni) - Excellent post that explains why Application Insights is a must for all DevOps.
  
• Calling a Logic App from an HTML form (Jeff Hollan) - Nice usage of the HTTP trigger.
  
• Now available: Azure invoices emailed direct to your inbox (Adam Pickersgill) - Sweet! Now we talk.
  
• Understanding the Azure App Service Editor (Ken Cenerelli) - My first reaction was: No way, this is awesome! And it is. E was in place to implement this cool tool. However, remember that this is only to do some quick fix, because, at the next deployment, these changes will be lost.

Programming

• If You Automate Your Tests, Automate Your Code Review (Erik Dietrich) - Interesting post that explains the idea about automating our code reviews. It gives a book as suggestions to learn more about it.

Databases

• SQL Database Query Editor available in Azure Portal (Ninar Nuemah) - I was looking for this since the old query tool was removed. I will probably continue to use SQL studio management or VsCode, put what a time saving, and you are investigating a problem... Open a blade right from the Azure portal and voila!

Miscellaneous

• MVP API Intro (Daron Yöndem) - I love it! I already have few ideas in mind, and I'm curious to see what you will do guys.

Reading Notes #254

Cloud

• AWS Developer Tool Recap – Recent Enhancements to CodeCommit, CodePipeline, and CodeDeploy - This post is definitely a great list of tools.
  
• Exploring Application Insights for disconnected or connected deep telemetry in ASP.NET Apps - No way!! That's awesome, I'm going right away to test the disconnected mode.
  
• Sending a Regular SMS with Azure Functions and Twilio (Jason) - Nice little tutorial about Azure function App.
  
• What Is: Microsoft Cognitive Services - Wow, brains power as services... imagine plugging that to into your APIs or your bots... oh yeah.

Programming

• Answers to your top TACO questions (Visual Studio Blog) - This post answers many questions asked at Ignite in the mobile deployment world.
  
• Exploring ServiceStack's simple and fast web services on .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This post is a really nice introduction to an interesting alternative when building services.
  
• Introducing the ASP.Net Async SessionState Module (Matt FJH) - This post explains how session can be managed in Assp.net core,
  
• Yarn vs npm: Everything You Need to Know (Tim Severien) - Interesting new package manager that is trying to solve issues with the already great npm.

Databases

• 9 Things You Should Know About SQL Azure Databases (Victor Moreno) - Nice post that shows some strength of databases as a service.

Miscellaneous

• Follow every Microsoft MVP on Twitter! (Chris ) - Cool script...
  
• Export Power BI report to PowerPoint (Preview) (Tzvi Keisar) - Love it!
  
• Happy #Friday Five! (MVP Award Program) - I know ... I'm guilty, and proud to be in the Friday five.

Reading Notes #248

Programming

• Building Your First Bot using Microsoft Bot Framework - Nice tutorial to get started with the bot framework... An yes, you should care, because bots are the new apps.
  
• How to use Power BI Embedded with AspNetCore - Oh yeah! Quick and simple.
  
• StrathWeb. A free flowing web tech monologue. - Nice post that explains different paths (good and bad) to declare a controller in Asp.Net Core and explains why.

Databases

• Connect to Azure SQL Database V12 via Redirection (Kun Cheng) - Very interesting post about how to achieve great performance with our Azure solution.
  
• Improved Automatic Tuning boosts your Azure SQL Database performance (Vladimir Ivanovic) - Definitely something to try at the minimum... It looks fantastic.

Miscellaneous

• Who am I really logged in as on Visual Studio Team Services? (Willy-P. Schaub) - Nice tips... That will solve so many questions.
  
• You might be a creative if … (docjamesw@gmail.com) - A post to read in the morning. It's like a little pill of energy.
  
• You’re doing it wrong: Demos (Gil Zilberfeld) - Nice quick post that helps us to definitely pick a side when the question "Should we demo that?" popped.

Reading Notes #247

Cloud

• AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform – Mobile Services - A very interesting comparison of the major cloud provider with mobile development perspective.
  
• Accelerate your insights with Application Insights Performance Counters (Mackenzie Frackleton) - Get always more with Application Insights...
  
• Fixing Azure Portal Errors - Errors are inevitable, this post explains how to workaround most of them and when nothing works how let the support team knows.
  
• What is Serverless Computing? Exploring Azure Functions (Scott Hanselman) - Great post that demos an Azure Function and also explains more about that new expression: severless.

Programming

• 9 Docker .NET App Templates: A Complete Guide - Fantastic post that shows many different ways to leverage container and also explains why containers are so useful.
  
• 9 Visual Studio Productivity Tools (Dustin Davis) - An incredible video, definitely a must. How could I didn't know so much?!
  
• Exploring HockeyApp data in Application Insights: introducing the Bridge App (Evgeny Ternovsky) - Nice post that explains how to use your metadata in HockeyApp.
  
• Pimp my report with Docker (Gabriel Schenker) - Cool example of how docker could help us.
  
• Publishing an ASP.NET Core website to a cheap Linux VM host (Scott Hanselman) - Great tutorial to learn quickly how to play with dotnetcore on linux VM and not busting our budget.
  
• Why Is .NET Core Important? - Interesting post that explains what been achieved by donet core.

Miscellaneous

• The Dropbox hack is real - It's time to change your password, and do not use the same everywhere...

Reading Notes #240

Cloud

• Azure App Services - Using Azure App Services to Convert a Web Page to PDF - Great tutorial and even more because it’s useful.
  
• Connect to your on-premises data sources from Logic Apps (Jeff Hollan) - That’s a really useful connector.
  
• Everything you need to know about loading a free Let’s Encrypt certificate into an Azure website - Nice tutorial on how to create a certificate in Azure.
  
• New Application Insights metric widget for Visual Studio Team Services (Mike Gresley) - Cool another great tile to add in our VSTS project page.
  

Programming

• Simplifying Technical Presentations with Docker - Interesting idea, definitely something to keep in mind when I do my next presentation.

Data

• DocumentDB protocol support for MongoDB (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Woooo. That huge! We can now swap any mongodb for a documentdb and your tooling or app will continue to work.

Miscellaneous

• Automation Showdown: IFTTT vs Zapier vs Microsoft Flow - Interesting comparison of three power tools that don’t exactly target the same users but that are similar.
  
• Evernote is crippling their free service, here’s how to move to OneNote - Interesting to know, and the timing is good me, I was just asking myself he same question…
  
• Is your stuff backed up? Recovering from a hardware failure - A good backup plan is crucial, the drive my old server died recently, and it saved me a lot of pain.
  
• Microsoft shows how bad Chrome is for your laptop’s battery (Tom Warren) - Wow when a friend of mine shared me that post, I didn’t expect Edge to be that good. And with the new release that is bridging back add-ons… Does Microsoft just came back in the race to be the best web browser?!
  

Reading Notes #237

Cloud

• Azure Redis Cache May 2016 update (Pranav Rastogi) - Quick overview o this update.
  
• Release of Service Fabric SDK 2.1.150 and Runtime 5.1.150 - Have you played with Azure Fabric yet? Here is your chance with new SDK that provides more features and fixes some bugs.
  
• Application Insights is a Business Tool (Alexandre Brisebois) - Indeed, Application Insights is a business tool and a good one. Even more since it's available Azure services.
  
• Azure Media Services is now available in the new Azure portal (Mingfei Yan) - Fantastic another big piece that joined all the other services in the new portal.
  
• Power BI - Microsoft Azure Media Services and Power BI - Great tutorial that explains how to setup a cool dashboard and help you to get more about your media consumers.

Programming

• How to Debug and Run .NET CORE RC2 direct from within Visual Studio Code (Luís Henrique Demetrio) - Wow. I try on Windows, and it takes least than 5 minutes to get setup. Really cool.

Miscellaneous

• Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn - This is a really big move ... even more at the and of the fiscal year.

Reading Notes #221

Suggestion of the week

• Why You Should Learn JavaScript in 2016 (Ken Powers) - I eared a lot of people complaining about Javascript, this excellent post explains why you undeniably, we should all know it, an if it's not the case why 2016 is a great time to learn it.

Cloud

• Azure Logic Apps : Orchestrating business processes and systems integration (Carey Payette) - This is a very nice tutorial that shows how to build an Azure Logic App with twitter and Sql Databe's connector.
  
• How to Setup Application Insights in an Azure WebJob (Jon Gallant) - Nice quick post that will make you save a lot of time.
  
• Azure IoT Hub general availability overview (Nayana Singh) - IoT Hub is finally GA, get to know all included components in this nice overview.
  
• Azure Search indexer for Azure Blob Storage now in public preview (Eugene Shvets) - This excellent tutorial explains how we can benefite of all the magic in this azure search preview.

Programming

• VisualStudio Code v0.10.8 (January 2016) - Learn more about what's new in this latest release.
  
• Search now available on Visual Studio Marketplace (Harysh Menon) - Did you know you can add extension to visual studio team services (vsts) and code (vscode)? This is the perfect post to get started.
  
• Chris Pietschmann - Nice post that explains very clearly why we really soundn't be writing none tested code.

Data

• Power BI Service February Update (Amanda Cofsky) - Fantastic! This update will give us the possibility to share outside ou organization... And many other things.

Miscellaneous

• What Does a Petaflop Look Like on Azure? (Alexandre Brisbois) - Interesting dive in the supercomputer universe.
  
• ASP.NET MVC: Keep Private Settings Out of Source Control - Simple an efficient.
  
• Multitasking is Killing Your Brain — Life Tips. (Larry Kim) - Really interesting post that comment on a very popular debate: Can w multitask?

~Frank

Reading Notes #213

Cloud

• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.8.1 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - Great new feature and improvement in this last SDK release..
  
• General availability of Premium tier (Pranav Rastogi) - Great announcement, plus details about the difference between the regular and the premium version.
  
• Azure Resource Manager Authentication In PowerShell (Scott) - Interesting sharing... It doesn't work always on the first try.
  
• Azure Container Service preview (Ross Gardler) - Get ready to play with Linux container... And soon Windows one.
  
• Continuous Delivery of Azure WebJobs via Git (Jan Hentschel) - Great tutorial that gets us started with Webjobs and continuous deployment.
  
• Partner Incentives – the move to Active Usage - Very interesting post that explains why Microsoft has changes their way to look at their Azure metrics.
  
• Announcing Azure Portal general availability (Leon Welicki) - The portal finally gets to the quality level that was targeted by Microsoft... well, long time ago. The portal will still continue to evolve, but it's now a full fledge product.
  
• Things to remember when you work with Azure and the new Team Build (Matteo Emili) - Nice post that gives us a little more depth about get ready to use build in the cloud.

Programming

• Application contracts with Swagger powered APIs for .NET or Why SwaggerProvider - This post explains how swagger can simplify our Api coding time.
  
• Glimpse at Application Insights Telemetry (Beckylin Orooji) - Awesome news, the great tools that or now integrated together. I'm really looking forward to trying that.
  
• PowerShell Tests released on GitHub (Karol Kaczmarek, Steve Lee, David Wilson) - Nice announcement from the powershell team that shared on github their tests' strategy... Expect some Pester!

Databases

• Transactional Replication to Azure SQL DB now in public preview (Jean-Yves Devant) - Since most of the time the first project is a migration, this new tool, will be very useful.

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 #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.

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