Reading Notes #48

Cloud

• Windows Azure Start-up Tasks Part 1 - First of a series this nice post explain the basics of start-up task when deploying in Windows Azure.
• Windows Azure Start-up Tasks Part 2 - Great post that gives a lot of information on Azure start-up tasks: environment variables, useful xPath query, important tips that will save you a lot troubles.
• Windows Azure Myths - Nice post that demystify 5 important myths about Windows Azure.
• Cloud SLAs: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You - SLAs are an important topic. Here is a good post to have a better understanding of it. This post talk about SLAs in general so you will also need to get more info from your cloud provider.
• Amazon Attracts Windows and .NET Developers to the AWS Cloud (Saroj Kar) - Amazon is really pushing harder to be attractive for the .Net developer. That good news since it will give you more options ;)
• My CDN Progression - Great post about true life experience. This post will definitely help people, looking for a CDN, to take better decision or at least start their search with more wisdom.
• Debugging Windows Azure Web Role Application_Start() method in Global.asax.cs (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - Nice quick tips to reach break point in Application_Start().
• 5 Issues Cloud Computing Can’t Solve (Xath Cruz) - The cloud is good but not magic. Here are 5 frequent ideas where in fact the cloud (whoever is your provider) can’t help you.

Programming

• Automating Visual Studio 2010 builds and deployments with Nant.Builder (Iain Hunter) - Really interesting series. The steps are simple and well explained. In the next one deploy to Azure...
• [MONITORING] Les 10 raisons de développer son application en HTML5 (Web App) (Gamorlive) - If you agree with the fact that your user must be connected (like when looking your web site), then here are 10 reasons why you should do your new application in HTML5.
• Le Monkey Patching - I'm new to the idea of dynamic code, and I tend to use it to help me testing/ mocking. These posts illustrate how it could be very useful in other situation.
• Quick Status of Your Windows Azure Apps with PowerShell - Really nice script. Thanks Steve!

Miscellaneous

• I took Hanselman's advice and now look at me... - Nice post a thru story telling how by following Scott Handselman advice someone become more productive.
• Cool Tools: How to Find Free and Cheap Ebooks - Good references of tools to get eBooks and also to search them.

[…]Sources, InkMesh is the best search engine I have found for identifying if an author or a book is available in eBook form,[…]

 
~ Frank

Reading Notes #47

Cloud

• Is AWS or Windows Azure the Right Choice? It’s Not That Easy. - Really good question that compare AWS with Azure.
• Downloading Windows Azure Publish Settings (Subscription Configuration) file (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - Time saver quick tips to retrieve Azure Publish settings in one click.
• Avoiding cloud lock-in - Nice post that explain why it is important keep our application loosely couple. Or if we don't to know what we do.
• Corporate Filesharing with Security and Control - This is the perfect alternative for a super private "DropBox" and it is true that it make full of sense in a corporate perspective.
• WordPress on S3: run a beautiful website on Amazon S3 cloud storage (Artem Livshits) - Great initiative! This is a perfect example of a application that take the advantage of the cloud safe cheap and that will grow with your need.
• Comparing Windows Azure Blob Storage and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)–Summary (Gaurav) - Very long and exhaustive comparison between those 2 services. I didn't even know some features... Nice post.
• Episode 80 - Getting Started with SQL Azure Data Sync Preview (Channel 9) (Nick Harris Nathan Totten) - Really nice episode. I try the Azure Data Sync in one of my project (I should post something about it...) it is a very promising tool.
• Maarten Balliauw {blog} (maartenba) - Nice post about the changes that append now because of the cloud computing.
• Why You Need Compuware for Application Performance Monitoring - This looks like a very useful tool.
• Comparing Windows Azure Blob Storage and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)–Part I (Gaurav) - Amazing post that covers ALL features of both Windows and Amazon cloud service. This is the part 1 of a series and it focus on containers and buckets.
• CloudTip #13-What do you need to know to get started? (mbenkov) - Great post that presents all 9 screencasts of soup of nuts. If you like watching video to quickly get started, you will like this one.
• Comparing Windows Azure Blob Storage and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)–Part II (Gaurav) - Second part of a series, this one compares Azures blob storage to Amazon Simple storage. It covers all details even the different methods to upload and download files.
• Cloud Ninja Metering Block - Really promising project that provides tools to measuring a multi-tenants Azure solution. More to come.
• Windows Azure Service Bus EAI Doesn’t Support Multicast Messaging. Should It? - The Azure service bus EAI is still at a hurly stage right now, but Seroter is highlighting a good point... It should.
• An Introduction to Windows Azure (Part 2) - Really nice post part 2 of 2 this introduction post is focussing on available services in Windows Azure.
• Scott Guthrie on Cloud-Powered Revolutions (scottgu, Jonathan Rozenblit) - Really nice (and funny) introduction of Azure by the great Scott Gu. (1h video)

Programming

• An Introduction to NuGet - Nice post that explain quickly what is NuGet and witch tools are available.
• Why I Hate Unit Testing - What a nightmare! I'm not sure that this post will help the undecided to join the unit testing but this JusMock tool deserved a look.

"This is easy to do with Telerik JustMock. I wrote about using JustMock to get you started in From Legacy to Dependency Injection.
Steve Forte and Joel Semeniuk have a great presentation on this called The Agile Buffet Table."

• Automating Visual Studio 2010 builds and deployments with Nant.Builder (Iain Hunter) - Really interesting series. The steps are simple and well explained. In the next one deploy to Azure...

Miscellaneous

• A Super-Efficient Email Process (Peter) - Explain a simple method to be more productive and efficient with e-mail management.
• the Continuous Client (Joshua Topolsky) - So true, I'm looking for a continuous Twitter client for a long time now. I don't understand why this isn't in all application. Congratulation to Kindle for this! You can start reading on one device and continue to another one without effort.
• 9 Steps to Take When You Loathe Your Own Blog (Guest Blogger) - Having a blog is a lot work. Here are 9 tips to keep you inspired and proliferates.
• 5 Things to Ask Your Cloud Backup Services Provider - I'm a Mozy user and really happy with it. Of course this post is also a sales pitch but the questions are the good one and should be considered when selecting your backup solution. When did you do your last backup?
• 5 Steps To Choosing The Right Challenges (Brendon Burchard) - Nice post that give good tips to identify good challenges.

~Frank