How to Manage Azure Resources

What ever you are on running on Linux, Mac or Windows that you are on the road or in the comfort of your office there is many different ways to manage your Azure resources. In this video I will show you five ways to do it and explain the pros and cons of each:

1. Azure Portal
2. Azure PowerShell
3. Azure CLI
4. Azure Mobile App
5. Azure Cloud Shell

There is also an excellent Microsoft Learn module that will teach you how to use the Azure portal efficiently.

References

• Azure Portal: https://portal.azure.com
• Learn Module: https://c5m.ca/azFun-portal
• Azure PowerShell: https://c5m.ca/azPS
• Azure CLI: https://c5m.ca/azCLI
• Azure Mobile App: https://c5m.ca/azMobileApp
• Azure Cloud Shell: https://shell..azure.com

Reading Notes #299

Cloud

• Azure Log Analytics – meet our new query language (Noa Kuperberg) - This post shares great examples of simple, but useful query to get started.
• Azure Site Recovery powers new Managed DR offerings by Microsoft Partners (Mayank Nayar) - Nice DR option with well-known partners to keep our VM safe as our business.
• Five more reasons why you should download the Azure mobile app (Shankar Sivadasan) - This app is getting better and better every time I hear about it. Guess what I will install in a few...
• How to configure log4net on Azure App Service (Benjamin Perkins) - You prefer log4net because your App is also deployed on-premise, or because you are just doing a lift&shift, or any other reason, this post is for you, every little things are explained in details.
• Integrating Azure Advisor Into Your Workday (Timothy Warner) - The azure advisor is one of my favorite tools in Azure, always something nice to do with it... Well until you fix it.
• Query across resources (Noa Kuperberg) - Wow! This is a really good news.

Programming

• Server-side rendering a D3 chart with React 16 - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - It's an interesting tutorial that shows how to optimize the refresh of your chart using React.
• Tabs vs Spaces - A peaceful resolution with EditorConfig in Visual Studio. Plus .NET Extensions! (Scott Hanselman) - I personally don't really care to use spaces or tab ( I will use what's already there) but that config editor... That's something that will save a few teams... This is a post to share!
• What’s brewing in Visual Studio Team Services: September 2017 Digest (Buck Hodges) - VSTS is so packed of features it's a must to every developer and team. This post does a tour of the new feature it will give you an idea of this gigantic tool.

Databases

• Yes to databases in containers - Microsoft SQL Server available on Docker Store - Docker Blog (Elton Stoneman) - Pretty convenient I think, looking forward to trying it.

Miscellaneous

• Why I won’t write code demos, articles or new talks in your interview process (Frédéric Harper) - Interesting thoughts about some hirering practices. Finding a good math it's hard on both side.

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 #250

 

Suggestion of the week

• Is that Really Good Quality Code You’re Writing? - Always good to have our memory refreshed.

Cloud

• Announcing the release of Azure Mobile Apps Node SDK v3.0.0 (Adrian Hall) - Nice upgrade that includes a low of features. Be aware of the breaking changes.
  
• Data Factory supports multiple web service inputs for Azure ML Batch Execution (Harish Kumar Agarwal) - Cool! Simple AND powerful.
  
• Refreshing user logins in App Service Mobile Apps (Mimi Xu) - Great news, no more painful and complicated process, in the code App

Programming

• Build cloud apps at warp speed (James Staten) - Awesome tools, I'm very curious to see what people will create with those.
  
• NGINX for ASP.NET Core In-Depth - Interesting post that explains this very popular web server. It also very easy to use with docker.
  
• Self-contained .NET Core Applications - Great post that clarifies little things, but yeah... The devil is in the details!

Reading Notes #224

Cloud

• An application revolution powered by the cloud (Mark Russinovich) - This post is a great introduction to the air of micro-services. It explains the evolution from the monolithic architecture and introduces some container system.
  
• Azure Active Directory Application (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - This post is a good intro to Azure Active Directory and how it could help us in our cloud applications.
  
• Why Microsoft Azure? - Interesting post that explains major reasons why Microsoft is a lead in cloud computing.
• Load Balancing VMs in Azure Resource Manager (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Another great tutorial from Vincent.
  
• Creating a Node.js Azure Mobile App from OS X or Linux - Excellent tutorial that shows step by step how to build a unique backend easily using Azure mobile services.
  

Programming

• Save money with Application Insights’ web SDK 2.0 (Beckylin Orooji) - Nice new version that gives us more flexibility, but be aware it also included important breaking changes.
  
• Visual Studio Code Jumpstart for Node.js Developers (Dave Johnson) - This post is a nice tutorial that explains about to get started in Node.js by setting up our dev environment from scratch.
  
• Introducing LINQPad.QueryPlanVisualizer (Giorgi) - Great tool.
  

Miscellaneous

• Save money with Application Insights’ web SDK 2.0 (Beckylin Orooji) - Nice new version that gives us more flexibility, but be aware it also included important breaking changes.

Reading Notes #214

Suggestion of the week

• Express - This is the perfect post to get started with node.js with Azure. This post starts with you step by step from a vanilla computer running OS X or Linux to your first App.

Cloud

• Troubleshooting – ma llowedContentLength Exceeded - Useful quick post for all the none asp.net user on Azure.
• September update for Web Apps and App Service environments in the Azure Preview Portal (ron Tardif) - Nice post that lists the September features of the new (not preview anymore). Azure portal.
• Microsoft Takes Azure Portal out of Extended Preview (2015 | Richard Seroter on Dec 14) - It's all in the title, but since the devil is in the detail .... that the post to know about it.

Programming

• Setting up Continuous Deployment for Android with VSTS and HockeyApp - HockeyApp is definitely a must for all mobile develpment teams. This post is a nice intro to it and also to VisualStudio Team Services.
• What I Learned After A Week of Visual Studio Code and ASP.NET 5 - I've been too busy (or lazy) to do that test myself and try to do my next project on a Linux machine only with VSCode as tools... that post was a real pleasure to read of that.
• Exploring Azure DocumentDB in Visual Studio (Andrew Hoh) - This post reveals all the feature of this very powerful addition the already great cloud explorer, VisualStudio add-on.
• Visual Studio Code: PowerShell Extension (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - Nice post of a series and cool introduction to a useful vscode extension... if you still don't have already installed it yet.

Data

• Power BI Desktop Custom Visualization (Scott Murray) - Learn more about how Power BI let you expand the Wow effect of your data in this nice post.
• Reading Your Way Into Big Data - Perfect post to get started to the data platform and build your ready queue.

Miscellaneous

• “Fixing” Windows Live Writer’s NotFound - Open Live Writer… - The brand-new Open Live Writer is still very young, this is how walkaround one of the frequent problems.
• Announcing Open Live Writer - An Open Source Fork of Windows Live Writer - Great newsthis llong time amazing tool will probably get a lot of improuvement in the next months.
• Get more awesome Pluralsight content than ever for zero dollars! - That news was the sunshine of my day, now we don't have any excuse not to get our subscription in Plurasign.

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 #179

Suggestion of the week

• Welcome Azure App Service. Some of my thoughts (Sam Vanhoutte) - Interesting post about the new apps thing that just been announced and the "link" with BizTalk.

Cloud

• Pragmatic IoT on Azure Part 1: Introduction - Interesting post about a very popular topic, a series to follow...
  
• ScottGu's Blog - ScottGu's Blog - Perfect post to have a high level overview about this great Azure update.
  
• Announcing Azure App Service (Bill Staples) - Get all the information about the new Azure App Services.
  
• Introducing Azure App Service - You missed the live announcement? Look the recorded conference here.
  
• A Dev and Test Adventure on (Alexandre Brisebois) - If like Alex, you're one of those who are still not using Azume VM for your dev... Here is your chance, the scripts and the Vm are all done for you.

Programming

• dotnetConf 2015 - If you missed this online event, all videos are available here on demand.
  
• Using Gulp for ASP.NET 5 & Visual Studio 2015 (Shayne Boyer) - Until the new release that will include template using Gulp, here is a great tutorial that will show how to achieve that.
  
• Visual Studio Tools for Windows 10 Technical Preview (S.Somasegar) - Get an idea of what' s coming next... with our favorite tool.
  
• The Dew Review – DevExpress TestCafe - This post introduces an interesting test tool. We can try it 30 days for free.

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #166

Suggestion of the week

• Unit Testing Asynchronous Code - This post is a wonderful source of information about how to test ascyn code following the best practices.

Cloud

• Security and Identity Management with Azure Mobile Services - Great article from MSDN Mag that provides important information.

• Comparing Clouds : IaaS Scalability Options (Richard Seroter) - Very interesting article that compares one the key feature: scalability between the biggest cloud providers.

• Scaling a Multi-Tenant Application with Azure DocumentDB (John Macintyre) - Very good post that reviews and explains different scaling strategies in the NoSql context.

• Applied Azure: Infographic of how “Have I been pwned?” orchestrates Microsoft’s cloud services - One year after the launch of Have I been pwned, see what this service has become, and what was learned during this journey.

Programming

• 5 Incredible Features in the Visual Studio 2015 Preview - (Michael Crump) - Still didn't try visual studio 2015? This post will describe so of his greatest new features.

• ASP.NET 5: Using POCO controllers - Very interesting tutorial that explains some functionalities of Asp. Net MVC 5.

• 3 Useful Tools for Local Development & Testing - (Brian Rinaldi) - It's always nice to find new toys.

• Getting ready for the future with the Microsoft .NET Portability Analyzer (Scott Hanselman) - So many great tools that can help us are available easily and for free.

Miscellaneous

• How to Use Google in the Most Unusual Way to Make Your Self-Editing Faster, and Better (Guest Blogger) - Nice and very clever tips.

• 5 Quick Questions with Robert Scoble: What Makes a Great Tech Blog? (Stacey Roberts) - Everything about how to have a good tech blog.

• This is your bank, please verify your details – No, you verify YOUR details! - This situation arrived to frequently. I got in the same situation and mostly at the equivalent conclusion... how about you?

• The Small Personal Risks That Actually Change Behavior - Interesting post where the author shares his life, experience, inspiring.

• Is Blogging Dead? How Blogs are changing and How You Can Stay on Top (Stacey Roberts) - Very interesting post about the evolution of the blogging platform as medium and suggestion n how bloggers should be adapted to today's reality.

• Top Blogging Tools For the Blogger’s Soul (Matt Banner) - A nice list of online tools.

• The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD? (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that removes the voile on a great "mystery".

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #165

 

Suggestion of the week

• OmniSharp - Making cross-platform .NET a reality, and a pleasure (Scott Hanselman) - This is both really exciting and easy to bring in your environment.

 

Cloud

• Azure : Blob Storage / Retrieval (sachabarber) - Excellent post to get started with the azure storage blob.

• Security and Identity Management with Azure Mobile Services - Great article from MSDN Mag that provides important information on how the cloud can help line-of-business (LOB) application developers create and support all platforms.

Programming

• Visual Studio 2013 Community - "Professional" development for free (Greg Duncan) - This post gives all the detail about this new community version: what is in, how to get it, the compatibility or incompatibility... everything.
• The Blog of Jason Roberts (Jason Roberts) - This book looks awesome, and the author Jason Roberts offer that we pay what we want. More to come.

Integration

• Azure BizTalk Services: An Introduction - This is the second post of a series on BizTalk. We are still in an introduction mode, but this is good, BizTalk is not a little application or system, and in this time of the Internet of things, it's good to have the good tools.

~ Frank B

Reading Notes #145

Suggestion of the week

• Thinking About Strings, Quotes, Tokens, And Tildes In Less CSS - Less CSS seams really interesting. Next web projects, I seriously think use it.

Cloud

• Lessons Learned – On #Azure, Log Everything!s (Alexandre Briseboi) - Great post about how we should use the Event Trace Windows (ETW) to do our logs.
• Using Time-based Partition Keys in #Azure Table Storage (Alexandre Briseboi) - Nice tips about how saving our logs in Azure.
• How to get notifications from a Windows Azure website - Wow, this is truly amazing and really easy to do.

Programming

• How to connect your Windows Phone 8 & 8.1 app to Yammer - Nice short tutorial to learn how connect Windows Phone (wp) apps to Yammer.
• PowerShell Tools - v0.8.0 - Now with REPL! - Time to get or update this great add-ons in our Visual Studio.
• Thinktecture.IdentityManager as a replacement for the ASP.NET WebSite Administration tool (Scott Hanselman) - This post introduces a great project to manage our memberships in our Asp.Net projects through a nice interface.

Mobile

• Windows First: A New Strategy for Mobile Development and Beyond - Programming multi platform application is becoming much easier. This post explains some of your options.

Architecture

• The Open Group Open Platform 3.0™ Starts to Take Shape (The Open Group Blog) - This post talks about an interesting white paper. What’s good in it and why we should read it. This new 3.0 platform look very promising.

Miscellaneous

• How to use an Xbox One controller on your Windows PC (Scott Hanselman) - Really.?! That simple? That’s great!
• Windows Live Writer going Open Source? - This post explains why our help is needed in order to give a future to Windows Live Writer.

Reading Notes #138

Suggestion of the week

• Logging with the .NET backend for Azure Mobile Services (Carlos Figueira) - Great post that optimizes a logger by adding layers over layers of customization at every paragraph.

Cloud

• Azure: 99.95% SQL Database SLA, 500 GB DB Size, Improved Performance Self-Service Restore, and Business Continuity - A database for 5$ / Month! That's nice. This post explained all the new features around databases.

Programming

• Getting Started on the Roslyn Journey (Erik Dietrich) - This post announced an interesting series where we should get started with Roslyn.
  
• "It's just a software issue"- Edge.js brings Node and .NET together on three platforms (Scott Hanselman) - Great project that could be very useful in many different situations.

Mobile

• The Full Story of Featured and Spotlighted Apps on Windows Phone (Sébastien Lachance) - Interesting post to prepare the launch of our next mobile application.
  
• Build Some Ears on Your App and then Listen! (Mark B Schramm) - This post that listed the best practices about how we should take care of our apps once they are live.

~Frank

Reading Notes #137

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Phone 8.1 has my attention now - This update is really exciting. It not only removes some irritants but adds really nice polish new features.

Cloud

• Automating Environment Creation using Microsoft Azure PowerShell - Nice scrit!
  
• Static Internal IP Address for Virtual Machines (Corey Sanders) - This post answered to a very frequent question about static IP for Azure virtual machine.
  
• Stupid Azure Trick #10 – Use SSL on MSDN Visual Studio Azure VMs (Bill Wilder) - This post explains an easy solution to fix some certificate issue present in the current Azure VM image when using SSL.

Programming

• Download PowerShell Script Browser 1.0 - Developer Top Scenarios and Solutions - That's a great idea.
  
• A World of Scripts at your Fingertips – Introducing Script Browser - Really good idea a scripts gallery, now available inside the tool.
  
• Source Code Control with Git and Mercurial -- Visual Studio Magazine (Terrence Dorsey) - This post is really complete. It is the post to get started with distributes source control. Reference to other sources of information, tools, and online repository are 0also presented.
  
• Why Katana should be on your radar (AnhPhan, Tom Dykstra - MSFT, Joost de Nijs, Yatajga, Ralph Rick_Anderson) - If you never eared about Katana, this post is for you.

Mobile

• Why jQuery Mobile didn’t succeed - Interesting thoughs about jQuery mobile.
  
• "Windows Phone 8.1 for Developers" series with 19 posts so far... - Nice reference to a great source of tutorial.

Miscellaneous

• Pas de croissance sans marketing (David Chabot) - Interesting post about what's really suppose to be the marketing.

~Frank

Reading Notes #136

 

Suggestion of the week

• Open Source is a thankless job. We do it anyway (Scott Hanselman) - A post that brings back the essence of what supposed to an open-source project and what it means to participate.

Cloud

• Creating an Azure Mobile Services .NET backend from scratch (Carlos Figueira) - Great tutorial here without magic. Every steps are well explained.
  
• Microsoft Azure Load Balancing Services (Marios Zikos) - Great article that explains how the load balancer work and how to configure it based on our needs.
  
• Information on Microsoft Azure and Heartbleed (Andrew Cushman) - This post explained when, even if running on Microsoft Azure, the Heartbleed vulnerability could affect your app.
  
• Size Matters… A LOT! - This post gives nice options to minimize the impact of a mobile application using the cloud as backend.
  
• Reading from a queue in an Azure WebJob - This post got us started with Azure webjobs.
  
• VM Image (Christine Avanessians) - Wonderful, so many new functionalities! I'm really looking forward to know more and try it.
  
• VM Agent and Extensions – Part 1 (Kundana Palagiri) - This post introduced the currently available extensions with a quick example. VMExtension looks a very promising feature with a lot of potential.
  
• Azure Updates: Web Sites, VMs, Mobile Services, Notification Hubs, Storage, VNets, Scheduler, AutoScale and More (Scott Gu) - I don't know where to start. This last release contained so many new features it's incredible. You must read this post.
  
• Les architectures émergentes, l'innovation en architecture et les nouvelles tendances - Annonce d'un événement à Montréal sur l'architecture notamment pour le "cloud".
  
• How to assign a private Static IP to a Windows Azure VM - Useful powershell script to manage your Azure's VMs.
  
• IT Pros ROCK! - This post explains very clearly all the options with their pros and cons when shutting down AzureVM.
  
• Automating Environment Creation using Microsoft Azure PowerShell - Nice scrit!
  
• Deep dive: Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC and Azure SDK 2.3 (Mohit Srivastava) - Great post that goes into details in all the major new features from the last Azure SDK and visual studio release.

Programming

• Developing for Windows Phone 8.1 using XAML (Nick) - This post got us started with the three choices we have to develop windows phone application.
  
• Announcing release of Microsoft Avro Library (Maxim Lukiyanov) - Great news, a new serializer for .Net and it's available on NuGet.
  
• Exploring ASP.NET Web Pages - A fully-featured MiniBlog using just Razor (Scott Hanselman) - This post introduced another but quite minimalist blog engine call miniBlog.
  
• Il était une fois… Modernizr (Anne B) - Outil très utile pour le développement web.

Miscellaneous

• Merge conflicts in csproj files - Nice post that explained why the merge method had to change in Git to merge Visual Studio project file.
  
• What price might you really be paying for Woolworths “free” wifi? - Aaah marketing, when will you stop to surprise me?

Reading Notes #135

 

Suggestion of the week

• Patterns and Anti-Patterns for Scalable and Available Cloud Architectures (Jonathan Allen) - Fantastic overview of some really useful pattern and anti-pattern to improve the performance of our cloud applications.

Cloud

• Cloud Load testing with Visual Studio Online - Launching General Availability (Charles Sterling) - Nice walktrouth of this great new feature available in Visual Studio online. Also available in video.
  
• Blogging On Virtual Machines (Corey Sanders) - This is the first post of a new blog, focusing n IaaS. That's a good news.
  
• Creating an Azure Mobile Services .NET backend from scratch (Carlos Figueira) - Great tutorial here without magic. Every steps are well explained.

Programming

• Windows Phone 8.1 for Developers-Choose your weapons - Nice post that enumerates the options newly available to develop on Windows Phone.
  
• Announcing TypeScript 1.0 - Great news, TypeScript is finally version 1.0! No more excuses.

Book

• What is DevOps? (Mike Loukides) - Interesting short and free book that gives you a historical overview of devOps.

Miscellaneous

• DevOps, Cloud, and the Lean “Wheel of Waste” - An Interesting post about devops advantage by avoiding waste.
  
• Microsoft Quiet On New APIs for Windows Phone 8.1 - This post lists the new features in windows Phone 8.1.
  
• On Critics, Criticism and Remarkability (Seth Godin) - An Interesting post that could improve team spirit.

Reading Notes #133

 

Suggestion of the week

• Rockin’ Windows Azure with Visual Studio (Jonathan Rozenblit & Paul Laberge) - Great video that takes the time to talk about all the great tools we have to develop with Microsoft Azure.

 

Cloud

• Microsoft is pushing Windows Azure BizTalk Services - Wiki Ninjas - Official Blog of TechNet Wiki - Site Home - TechNet Blogs - Stay up to date with Windows Azure BizTalk Services (WABS) by following the author in this list.
  
• The Windows Azure Service Bus and the Internet of Things, Part 2 - Very interesting, and a bit unusual, tutorial where we build a mobile application, that will control an Arduino through Microsoft Azure.

Programming

• Changes in the Microsoft MVP Program - MVPs for Open Source Contributions (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting change in the MVP program.
  
• Obtaining Twitter Access Tokens with ASP.NET Identity - Very complete tutorial about how to transform the user / pws of Twitter in a reel claims.
  
• Using Windows Azure Access Control Service (ACS) in MVC 5 Application Using Visual Studio 2013 (Gaurav) - Woh! Things look so easy in Visual Studio 2013... Very constructive reading.

Miscellaneous

• Back to Basics: When allowing user uploads, don't allow uploads to execute code (Scott Hanselman) - Wow, it's crazy how "bad" peoples always found a way inside our application.

Reading Notes #124

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure: Staging Publishing Support for Web Sites, Monitoring Improvements, Hyper-V Recovery Manager GA, and PCI Compliance (ScottGu) - Great update again this week, may of the new features will be very appreciated.

Cloud

• Windows Azure Websites Development Stacks Support (Mark_BrownMS) - Nice post about how Azure website manages config version with his different supported languages.
  
• Using the Same Client-Side User with Multiple Azure Mobile Services (Chris Risner) - This nice post explains what are our options to bridge a UserID across multiple mobile application.
  
• GUIDs VS. IDs on Windows Azure SQL Database - Nice post, where the author gives is answer to a timeless question.
  
• Announcing E-book version of Scott Guthrie’s “Building Real-World Cloud Apps with Windows Azure” - Interesting talk that you can now download as text. However, the video is still available...

Programming

• Code First Goodies in Entity Framework 6 - Nice article that explains more in details some new features of EF 6.0.
  
• Comments should be sentences (About me) - Interesting point of view about how should be the comments and why.

Miscellaneous

• WTF is an Architect Anyway? - Interesting thoughts about the definition of the role architect.
  
• How Do I Get Things Done? New Pluralsight Course Reveals All My Secrets - Learn the best tips from a real Jedi.
  
• 5 Myths that Can Ruin Project Management - Interesting post that uncovers some myths in project management.
  
• 30 Ways To Leave Google Apps Behind (Ciara Byrne) - Great post not because I agree or disagree with the title idea, but because it presents a lot of great applications.

Reading Notes #99

 Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure: Major Updates for Mobile Backend Development (Scott Gu) - Another big release for Windows Azure that boost the Mobile Services offers.

Cloud

• Azure VM Access Control with PowerShell (Tyler Doerksen) - Great with this post we now know all the new features that came up last week: PowerShell command.
• 10 Dos and Don'ts for Running Proof-of-Concept Projects in the Cloud - Nice post that highlights the pros and cons.
• Conflicts: Windows Azure Mobile Service to SQLite Data Sync for Windows Phone and WinRT with Portable Class Libraries - Nice post about possible sync conflicts.
• BASE Jumping in the Cloud (Jason Bloomberg) - Interesting post that explains why a re-architecture is more than often needed when moving our application in the cloud.

Programming

• Using Duck Typing to Avoid Conditionals in JavaScript - Good explication of Duck Typing method by refractory code step by step.
• Introduction to Unit Testing (Don’t Worry, Your Secret is Safe with Me) (Erik Dietrich) - Interesting post about unit testing. What is it, and what it isn't.
• Claim based Authentication and WIF : Part 1 - First of a series, this post describes what is a claim base process and who are the players involve in it.
• Stop Doing Internet Wrong (Scott Hanselman)- Interesting list of some simple things to do to get a better experience online.
• Using Azure Mobile Services in SharpDevelop - Nice alternative to Visual Studio. Check out the video here to see it developing with Azure.

Databases

• Amazon RDS Lowers On-Demand and Reserved Instance Prices Globally - And the battle for the lowest price continues (that's good for us) this time the databases are targeted.

User eXperience (UX)

• Bundling and Minification in ASP.NET MVC (Suprotim Agarwal) - Minification is a important process to have a nice UX. It's now easier than ever.

Miscellaneous

• Marketing 101 for developers (Phil Cross, saraallison Natasha Joseph) - Why a developer should care about marketing? Because we need it? This post answers the question.
• The Importance of Closed Captioning - How To and Why Subtitle (Scott Hanselman) - Really interesting post. Doing subtile look like a lot of effort, but it's worth it. This post contains sample, tutorial and tools references.
• 8+ Practical Tips for Avoiding Pickpockets - Simple tips that can save you a lot of problems when you are traveling.

~Frank

Reading Notes #89

Suggestion of the week

• Pinching pennies when scaling in The Cloud (Scott Hanselman) - Great example of code optimization, and all that in the cloud.
• Mobile Services and Windows Azure Storage (Chris) - Great tutorial that explains how to change the usual SQL database to Azure storage with Azure Mobile services. The client parts are also available for iOS and Android.

Cloud

• Optimized Windows Azure IaaS Disk Mobility with Save-AzureVhd (Michael Washam) - Another quick post that demonstrates how to upload a VHD in Azure storage using the new Azure cmdlet feature.
  
• What Does Your Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan Look Like? - Nice post that explains how you can use Azure Data Sync to backup your database.
  
• Running SSL with Windows Azure Web Sites Today - The perfect workaround to have a SSL Azure Website today is explained in this post. Using a web service to forward the traffic this is a good solution until SSL is supported.
  
• Put Your Windows Azure SQL Database on a Diet! - Nice post of a real case, real data and real prices.
  
• A Quick Guide to Getting Started with New Relic - Perfect starting point with a lot of information and reference on deeper tutorials.
  
• Three gotchas with the Azure Service Bus - Very interesting post that goes deeper than usual and explains clearly some details of the Azure service bus.
  
• Cloud Cover Show: Episode 103 - Windows Azure HDInsight (Nick Harris, Nathan Totten) - Don't miss this show, it explains what big data, why it is useful. What's the difference between it and HDInsight and in bonus, you got a demo.

 

Programming

• The Repository Pattern - Nice example of dependency injection. Really useful pattern.
  
• Problems with Copy Pasting Code - And Modifying Slightly... (Jason Singh) - Wow! I'm always impressed by tools that are available to get better code. That one is a must.
  
• Understanding Javascript Prototypes - Very clear post that explains what is a javascript prototype, what is not and how to use it.
  
• Why 30% of App Deployments Fail (Victor Cruz) - Interesting post that share result of a survey on deployment strategies.
  
• App Building Made Easier–Step 3 (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Great post. Start coding, you are not alone. Note that even if Jonathan didn't say it help is also available in French...
  
• Getting started with AngularJS - With all those JavaScript framework available it's difficult to know with one to pick or where to start looking. This post is a good place to start.

 

Integration

• BizTalk Anti Pattern – Don’t over complicate your maps (Michael Stephenson) - It is sometime difficult to find the limit of functoids to use in map to get the job done. But we shouldn't be afraid to .Net code.

I wrote a blog post a few years ago around the options for where you could put configuration settings in BizTalk (Click here).

• BizTalk 2013 worldwide launch events by Impack - Learn more about this important event that you shouldn't miss.

System Management

• BizTalk Monitoring Solutions (SCOM vs BizTalk360) white paper by Kent Weare (Saravana Kumar) - Nice intro to the white paper about monitoring BizTalk solutions. And of course, the reference to the white paper.

Miscellaneous

• The 3 Biggest Resume Mistakes - Few tips to get your social "you" more appealing. Because to have new contracts you need to demark yourself.
  
• How to: Add a ‘Copy Code’ Link to Your Blog Post and Colored Code Blocks (Jeff Sanders) - Simple tips to improve the code visibility and accessibility in your post.
  
• Surviving legacy code - Very complete article about legacy code and why the trash for person is the treasure of another.

• Move your Hotmail.com account to an Outlook.com account (Greg Shultz) - I use outlook.com for few months now, and I love it. This post explains how to migrate, what era your options and what will happen if you do nothing.

~Frank

Reading Notes #67

Cloud

• Cloudy Thoughts by SyntaxC4 - Nice post that demonstrate where are the environment variables base on different languages.
• Windows 8 and the Cloud: Better Together (David Pallmann) - Good post that told how and why it a good thing to use Windows Azure to leverage your Windows 8 applications.
• .NET Framework 4.5 Support in Windows Azure Web Sites (Channel 9) - Nice video podcast about new feature in Windows Azure and what you should do with your web/worker roles.
• Windows Azure Mobile Services: New support for iOS apps, Facebook/Twitter/Google identity, Emails, SMS, Blobs, Service Bus and more - Great news! This new features will gives a lot more of flexibility. And all these are already available for iOS!! That major. Good job.

[…]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.[…]

• Windows Azure Training Kit – October 2012 - This post present what’s new in this update and gives the new GitHub link of the Windows Azure Training Kit.
• Blob Storage and Shared Access Signatures (Stephen Kaufman Stephen Kaufman Microsoft MSFT 6,797 Points 1 2 1 Recent Achievements Blogger III Blog Conversation Starter Blogger II View Profile) - Useful tutorial that explain how to setup a shared access signatures in c#.
• Modifying the contents of cscfg file while deploying a cloud service with PowerShell (18 2012 Ercenk October) - Great script! Must keep this in our tool box...
• Implementing Entity Services using NoSQL – Part 1: Outline - Nice post, first of a series that explains a Java project to build a Data Services using NoSql.
• Cloud Cover Show Episode 91 - Windows Azure Mobile Services Updates – Very nice good demo about some mobile new capabilities and a big tease for the next episode 92…

Integration

• What’s new in BizTalk360 version 5.0? Available for immediate download (Saravana Kumar) - Nice post that explain the 5 major new features in the last version of the great BizTalk360. Looking very promising.

Programming

• Why Mocking Matters - Nice explanation of what the differences are between fakes, stubs and mocks.

[…]This is easy to do with Telerik JustMock. I wrote about using JustMock to get you started in From Legacy to Dependency Injection. […]

• Expressing Ruby Code in Natural Language - Wow, that look like a lot of fun. That what I call a good "pet project".

[…]This is called rubber duck debugging, because you could have solved the problem by explaining it to a rubber duck on your desk. […]

• First try with TypeScript - A developer share is first thoughts of TypeScript and explains it with code sample.
• SSDT & DACFx (October 2012) Compatibility Notes - Details about a update that will fix some compatibility issue.
• 10 Tips to avoid the typical Windows 8 design traps - Essential for any developer. If you want to distinguish yourself from the other in the apps store, this is where it's start.
• Stored procedures DO NOT increase performance (Shivprasad koirala) - Interesting post that hi-light the difference between inline code and store procedure. I agree with the conclusion. Sprocs are better to facilitate the maintainability.
• Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 CTP - Wow an update already with new features that great. Reference to download pages.
• Supporting agile teams
• Continuously enabling quality
• SharePoint development
• Windows development
• How do you estimate with Story Points and determine Velocity when you’ve not done it before? (johnv petersen) - Nice post that with help you to start doing estimation.
• Get In on the Action: Learn Windows 8 with Hands-on Labs « Jonathan Rozenblit - Get started to the Windows8 development with these 17 labs references.

Miscellaneous

• If You’re Too Busy to Meditate, Read This (Peter) - This post explain how a little meditation is possible and how it can help.
• 7 Tips For Building a 'Power Network' on LinkedIn - Quick tips to improve your LinkedIn network.
• Instapaper delivered to your Kindle changes how you consume web content - Plus IFTTT, blogs and more (Scott Hanselman) - Of course you can do this... I prefer Readability but the idea is the same...