Reading Notes #524

Good Monday, time to share my reading notes. Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that caught my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• How to run Bash scripts in WordPress on Azure App Service (Abhishek Reddy) - This post explains two ways to achieve that.

• Azure Virtual Machines vs App Services (Michael Shpilt) - The pros and cons of both are listed in this post with some advice. Everything you need to help you to make your choice.

• How to use Azurite for testing Azure Storage in dotnet? (Max Hamulyák) - This very helpful post shows how to use Azirite to test our application.

Programming

• 5 tips for prioritizing Dependabot alerts (Brittany O'Shea) - Nice tips to help us with all these alerts.

• Build skills that open doors—with Microsoft Learn (Erin Rifkin) - This post summarizes it very well. Learn.mocrosoft.com is a great destination.

• Dockerize your SQL Server and use it in ASP.NET Core with Entity Framework Core (Bryan Hogan) - A very complete tutorial that explains all the steps to build an API from nothing.

~frank

Reading Notes #329

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Logic Apps, tips from the real world (gord) - Nice post that explains a real-life situation fixed using Logic Apps.

Cloud

• Create Your First ‘No Code’ Logic App in Microsoft Azure (Timothy Warner ) - Another great example of how easy and useful logic apps are.
• How I choose which services to use in Azure (Barry Luijbregts, Scott Hanselman) - Oh wow! Very interesting video, presenting a nice and structured way to pick our cloud services.
• Import Azure Portal Dashboard (Abhijit Jana) - Nah! I didn't know you could import/ export... That's cool.
• Quick Navigation using Azure Portal Keyboard Shortcuts (Abhijit Jana) - Nice reminder... I'll definitely have a new look at them and use them more.
• Serverless with AWS Lambda and Scala (Rob Hinds) - Interesting Tutorial to get started with the AWS Lamba Amazon Serveurless offer}
• Exploring Azure App Service – Web Apps and SQL Azure (Andrew B Hall) - Quick and simple tutorial about Azure webapp with EF and a database.

Programming

• Installing PowerShell Core on a Raspberry Pi (powered by .NET Core) (Scott Hanselman) - It looks like the Raspberry Pi is now "more accepted" into the familly. It's time to try docker and PowerShell again.
• Building, Running, and Testing .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 2.1 in Docker on a Raspberry Pi (ARM32) (Scott Hanselman) - Fantastic! Now that .Net Core is So easily portable on Pi, I can start building my summer project with a familiar language.
• Introducing Play with Kubernetes (Mano Marks) - Bookmark this post, next rainy day ( or before) let's learn some new stuff.
• Do you need to speak English to Code? Noor - An Arabic Programming Language (Ahmed Abdalla, Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting question, and even more interesting the solution Ahmed built! Great episode.

Books

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World (Gary Vaynerchuk) - Great book, for all of us you are trying to tell something, pass a message on the social media... This is a must.

Miscellaneous

• Why invest in backend developers when your customers don’t care? (Forrest Brazeal) - Interesting post about serverless and architecture patterns.
• Entreleadership #263: Thriving in the Age of Overload (Juliet Funt, Ken Colman) - I love that idea of Whitespace. Great episode very inspiring.

Reading Notes #282

Cloud

• Enhancements to Application Insights Smart Detection (Anton Fritz) - Really cool new service that will improve our way to detect problems.
  
• How to easily and silently obtain AccessToken (Bearer) from an existing Azure PowerShell session (Stéphane Lapointe) - Nice optimization of our environment and still be secure.

Programming

• Deploy Cognitive Toolkit model to Azure Web Apps (Ilia Karmanov) - Nice short demonstration, all the code is available on GitHub.
  
• Load Balancing Node.js Applications with NGINX and Docker (Bruno Krebs) - This is a really good tutorial that explains thing very clearly and simply.
  
• Using .NET and Docker Together (Rich Lander) - This post is a fantastic list of references to get started with .Net Core and Docker combination.
  
• Kubernetes in action: How orchestration and containers can increase uptime and resiliency (Brendan Burns) - Wow I was really impressed by how Kubernetes works and mange things effortless (for simple cases).

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 #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 #211

Cloud

• Azure Mobile Apps November 2015 Update (Matthew Henderson) - Great news features are all explains in this post.
  
• Microsoft at Supercomputing Yes, we support Linux (Alex Sutton) - Azure is a very good place to do your supercomputing whatever is your targeted OS, this post explains why.
  
• Announcing API Management and Event Hubs integration (Steve Danielson) - Great new features announced.
  
• On & Off - Done Right on Azure - This post shows how to manage Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Where we preserve networking, security and state while temporarily removing compute. When the time comes, we restore the compute resources and operate normally.

Programming

• Visual Studio Code - NEW RELEASE: v0.10.2 (6 bug fixes) (Ed Price - MSFT) - You saw the notification, but wonder what was inside this update, then this quick post is for you.

Miscellaneous

• I’m sorry, but your email address is not as valuable as you think it is - Interesting thoughts about sharing our email address or not.
  
• The piracy paradox at Udemy - Very interesting post about security and the Internet.

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 #208

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure--the Big Picture (Tony Meleg) - Very complete summary of the Azure platform.

Cloud

• What Are All of Microsoft Azure’s Application Integration Services? (Richard Seroter) - Very interesting post that answers two questions: What's it? and What's new? For all the features in the Azure Integration "branch."
  
• What Developers Need to Know About Docker (Paul Ballard) - Nice post that gives pros and cons about Docker, how it works and even how to create one.
  
• The Walking Dead: No Man's Land game soars to #1 supported by Azure DocumentDB (Aravind Ramachandran) - Cool post. Games are serious business, and databases are fun!

Programming

• Visual Studio - Bower: Modern Tools for Web Development - Fantastic post that demystify bower and an excellent tutorial.
  
• How to simulate a low bandwidth connection for testing web sites and applications - I plead guilty. I thought it was more complicated to do... really cool post.
  
• NuGet Package of the Week: Microphone registers and discovers Web APIs and REST services with Consul - Another useful NuGet Package, I love this "thread" of post.

Miscellaneous

• How To Deliver a Great Technical Presentation - Interesting tips and tricks to know.
  
• The Five Knows of Programming - Nice post to calm the student among us... And Remember us also that learning is fun!
  
• A Simple Formula for Changing Our Behavior (Peter Bregman) - Interesting article that expresses a nice and simple solution to walk through difficult situations... at work or at home.
  
• Using the Surface Pro 4 Type Cover with Fingerprint Reader on a Surface Pro 3 - Cool post ... it's nice to have a real user review.

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 #115

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More - So many good news that I don't know where to start. Some of my clients are waiting for this features since long time... A post that you must read.
  
• How to install the nodejs Ghost blogging software on Azure Websites (Scott Hanselman) - Very exiting project. Thanks Scott to share all that with us.

Cloud

• Clone an Azure VM using Powershell - Powershell scripts are so useful, and code sample are always welcome.
  
• Getting started with Windows Azure - part 2 (Usman Ur Rehman Ahmed) - Second part of a serie that offer a nice tutorial.
  
• Evolving IT for Today and Tomorrow - Interesting event that's coming in many Canadian city...
  
• Announcing the Preview of Windows Azure Import/Export Service and Several Enhancements for Web and Mobile Solution Scenarios (Steven Martin) - Quick summary about the new Windows Azure release of this week.
  
• Programming Windows Azure Media Services - An Overview (Albert (Gong) Cheng) - Very clear introduction to what is Windows Azure Media.
  
• Azure Websites vs Cloud Services (Tyler Doerksen) - Great post that amazingly clarifies the differences between these two Azure services.
  
• Why does an Azure storage account have two access keys? - This post answered a more than often asked question.
  
• Amazon CTO: Open source software and the cloud allows startups to focus on innovation (Ben Woods) - Interesting thoughts: the cloud is more a business evolution than a technology evolution.
  
• My List of Windows Azure Podcasts (Alexandre Brisebois) - Nice Windows Azure podcast list.

Databases

• WebLog of Ken Cox - I find out that using the migration wazard was the best option in my case... Until they update Sql Management Studio.

UX

• Build a Responsive and Modern UI with CSS for WinJS Apps - Good article to start doing your apps with the good tools and best practices.

Programming

• Using ASTs with ISE to make scripting more productive - Great PowerShell 3 scripts, this idea is genial.
  
• Microsoft Swings Its Web Sword - This post explains the context of the "new" Katana project and its relation with OVNI, Aspnet MVC, etc.
  
• Why do my Font Awesome icons show up as blank squares? (Scott Hanselman) - Nice catch. A lot of time could be saved.
  
• Getting Started with Oak - This article describes the C# / Ruby projects this Oak. A project to follow.
  
• Getting Started with the Katana Project - Looking forward to see where this project is going. This post explains the basics.
  
  

Miscellaneous

• PowerCfg - The hidden energy and battery tool for Windows you're not using (Scott Hanselman) - Really interesting investion about power consuption.

~Frank

Reading Notes #112

Suggestion of the week

• UNIT of Work Design Pattern (Shivprasad koirala) - Good post that explains an important design pattern.

Cloud

• **Easy Background Processing with WebAPI and Windows Azure (Erez Harari) - Great tutorial that gets you ready to make your apps.
  
• Big Data – Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data – Day 11 of 21 (Pinal Dave) - Interesting post about Big Data history.
  
• CSI: Re-enabling Remote Desktop with PowerShell after you've blocked it with your own firewall rule (Scott Hanselman) - Very useful tips.
  
• Winsmarts.com (Sahil Malik) - Short post about how to get setup and enjoy Azure PowerShell.
  
• Using web.config transforms with NLog configuration - | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog - Nice post that explains how to configure our config file so it will work with transform, NLog and Azure.
  
• Developing Windows Azure Mobile Services server-side - Very complete tutorial with a lot of details that cover also tests.
  
• Microsoft SQL Server Hybrid Cloud Blog Series (Madhan_Arumugam_Ramakrishnan) - A lot of good article references.

Programming

• **Time Saving Tips to Get Your Windows Phone App Started (Lori Lalonde) - Useful post that quickly summarizes all the options you have when starting a new phone project.
  
• IEnumerable VS IQueryable (More..) - Nice quick post that explains clearly with sample two often mismatch classes.
  
• Var VS IEnumerable (More..) - Nice post that shows some subtile differences that could have an unexpected impact.
  
• Difference betweeen ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC (Imran Abdul Ghani) - Aaah! Loud and clear.
  
• Announcing the Release of Visual Studio 2013 and Great Improvements to ASP.NET and Entity Framework (asp.net) - You probably eared about the brand new Visual Studio 2013, but to know what new in it, this is the post to read.

Miscellaneous

• Enterprise Architecture: Reflections on My Journey of Becoming A Systems Thinking Enterprise Architect (Alan Hakimi) - I liked this post where the author share is experience on how he became an architect.

~Frank

Reading Notes #108

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure IaaS Deployment Methodology with PowerShell Part One (YungChou) - First of a very promising series, this post explains that basic of a good Azure deployment.

Cloud

• Don’t Budget for Cloud (Jason Bloomberg) - Nice post that helps to understand how to budget for the IT future of companies; It could be in the cloud, could be not, and it could be a mix...
  
• Connecting Clouds – Creating a site-to-site Network with Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure (mwasham) - Great post! A post to bookmark, that a nice tutorial to build a fail over solution cross cloud provider.
  
• Dell mantra: one cloud, not even Amazon’s, doesn’t fit all - This post explained how deferent Dell wants to be in his cloud services.
  
• Architecture, Agile and Cloud Challenges - Good post that explains how we should analyses changes in our project architecture when deploying in the cloud. (Here it's Azure but it could be all other providers).
  
• Inside Dropbox’s Quest to Bury the Hard Drive (Marcus Wohlsen) - Interesting post to know more about what's planning this big player.
  
• WordPress with SQL Azure on Windows Azure Websites (mksunitha) - What1? It's that easy? No more excuse.
  
• Delivering push notifications to millions of devices with Windows Azure Notification Hubs - Create post that explains push notification and notification hubs in Windows Azure.

Programming

• Internal tools – cheap and tasteless? - DevOps definitively worth more of our attention.
  
• Top 10 ASP.NET MVC Interview Questions (Imran Abdul Ghani) - If you eared about asp.net mvc, and want to know more about it, here's the post for you.
  
• Book Review: Building Interactive Queries With LINQPad (Latish Sehgal) - Interesting book that introduces the very useful linqPad and the omnipresent LinQ.
  
• New Online Course: TDD and BDD in Ruby - 5 days to be up to speed with testing, mocking in Ruby... or get your money (35$) back.
  
• 30 Days of TDD: Day Three – Your First Test (James Bender) - Third post of a very promising series to learn from nothing how to build our tests (unit tests, integration tests, etc.) in a .Net environment. The tools used in the series are nunit, justmock, justcode and nuget of course.

Miscellaneous

• 10 Web apps to help you plan and promote a great event (Brinda Ayer) - Nice tools to know.
  
• Scott Hanselman - Interesting post, it's nice to see explication of what I though was happening.
  
• It’s not Scrum if… (Mark Levison) - Nice post that helps us to get back on the good path.
  
• Keeping Your Life Synced Up - Nice recap of the most popular tools to help us.
  
  

~ Frank

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 #96

Suggestion of the week

• ASP.NET Bad Practices: What you shouldn’t do in ASP.NET (Part 1) - Something different, the bad practices... A must-read post.
  
• Powerpoint 2013: Visualizations Part 2: Creating Data Infographics with Charts and Graphs - Really good post that gives a lot of tips to improve the look and effectiveness of our charts. A post to bookmark and re-read before your next presentation or blog post.

 

Cloud

• Introducing Amazon Cloud Player for Windows Desktop (Paul Thurrott) - Interesting product from Amazon: Cloud player.
  
• Windows Azure SDK 2.0 Released!) (Brian H. Prince) - Nice quick recap detailed just enough to really what's new.
  
• Windows Azure Cache - Pessimistic Concurrency Model (Ravi Verma) - Nice tutorial to have a better understanding of a useful pattern: pessimistic concurrency model.
  
• How to setup a Load Balanced Web Farm of Virtual Machines (Linux or otherwise) on Windows Azure (command line) (Scott Hanselman)- Very good post. We don't see that often article about Linux VM. This ones very complete and gives methods through the portal or by command line.
  
• Windows Azure Blob Storage Service - Migrating Blobs Between Accounts - Nice tutorial that explains how to build in C# a very useful tools. In the same idea in PowerShell could be found on my blog here.
  
• Faster Save Experience Editing Scripts in the Windows Azure Mobile Services Portal (Nick Harris) - Ooh yes! A so little thing that is a so good news!
  
• Dealing with Windows Azure Storage transient faults (Grigori Melnik MSFT) - Excellent post that present Topaz to manage transient fault connections in an Azure Storage context. It also compares Topaz to the default retry mechanisms.

 

Programming

• Smart Watches are finally going to happen - Pebble Watch Reviewed (Scott Hanselman)- Learn more about the great new type of watch that is The Pebble.
  
• Team Foundation Service my new default GIT repository - New great tool with all the good of our old friend.
  
• “Confident Ruby” now in Beta! (Avdi Grimm) - Promissing book about Ruby, still in pre-release so cheaper... a good deal.
  
• A first look at SignalR - Rick Strahl's Web Log - Powerful, easy to use and well documented, SignalR is a library that we should definitely look at.
  
• Redirecting ASP.NET Legacy URLs to Extensionless with the IIS Rewrite Module (Scott Hanselman)- A post to bookmark. Nice tutorial, very clear.

 

Miscellaneous

• How to write a great blog post - Devices, Services, Life (Simon May) - Interedting post about the nonofficial rules to write a great post.
  
• Startups – The Importance of Momentum (Iain Hunter) - Nicepost that gives 10 rules to follow when time is missing or when you need to do more with less.
  
• Blogging Best Practices - Concepts, Ideas and Motives - Part 1 - This nice post and video can help you to define your idea to start a Blog... Because sharing is important.
  
• How to Prospect for New Customers (Geoffrey James) - Nice post that helps to structure our search for new customers.
  
• Blogging Best Practices - Writing an Interesting Blog - Part 3 - Quick tips to help us in front of the "white page."
  
• How Blogging Helped My Pitch (Francesca Louise Fenzi) - Interesting though about what can blogging brings to business.
  
• Cool Tools – How to Be Invisible - The book looks interesting and this post, invent if it goes in the completely opposite direction is really interesting too.
  
  

~Frank

Reading Notes #88

Cloud

• Avoid these five cloud storage pitfalls (Rick Vanover) - Good advices that will help thinking through a cloud migration.
• Tips for a successful submission to Windows Azure App Gallery (mksunitha) - Great tutorial that explains every step to create and submit a Windows Azure application, so it can be part of the Azure app Gallery.
• Windows Azure Mobile Services - for Organizations and the Enterprise (Channel 9)(Clemens V) - Nice video that focuses on the business capability of the services.
• 10 reasons to outsource your cloud (Jack Wallen) - Nice post. These are really the top reasons.
• New blob storage cmdlets in Azure PowerShell 0.6.12 (Abhishek Anand) - This post lists the great new features included in the new version of Azure PowerShell.
• 12 reasons why public clouds are better than private clouds | ZDNet (Joe McKendrick) - Aaah Musphy's law; I was talking about that just yesterday with a client. Nice post.
• Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets Now Supports Storage! (Michael Washam) - Yeah! they finally been integrated (and more polish) in the Azure PowerShell cmdlets! (before only available in azure command line, and less friendly)
• 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 cmdlets feature.

Programming

• Taking It to the Next Level(Jonathan Rozenblit) - Nice post that explains how to can use the Ads from Microsoft to get more from your developer's skill training.
• TFS as perfect tool for Scrum (Part 1) - Introduction in Scrum and TFS - A promising series about Scrum methodologies and how it could be used with TFS.
• A Month of PowerShell – Day 6 (Exporting and Importing) (Wayne Sheffield) - Ah. What if I want to full text in one variable?
• A Month of PowerShell – Day 7 (Script Input/Output) (Wayne Sheffield) - Very useful cmdlets in this one to improve trace and user experience: interacting, getting feedback, etc....
• Changing ASP.NET web.config inheritance when mixing versions of child applications (Scott Hanselman) - Nice catch! A good trick to know.
• Nice Tool for Presenters who use Visual Studio 2012 - Great! I'm already using the productivity tool, but I didn't know about this feature.
• A Month of PowerShell – Day 8 (Working with Snippets in the ISE) (Wayne Sheffield) - Presenting snipetsType and their utilities.
• Understanding method lookup in Ruby 2.0 – Interesting post that goes under the hood of Ruby Language.
• A Month of PowerShell – Day 9 (Getting Started with SMO) (Wayne Sheffield) - This post focuses on MsSql tools (SMO).
• Building Single Page Apps on the Microsoft Stack (Stephen Walther) - Nice post and presentation to get started.

Database

• Diagnosing differences between production and development - Get a better ideas of what are your options to compare database schemas.
• The ODataLib Dependency Issues in the Storage Client Library for .NET are Now Resolved - Learn why you should be happy about this new version.

System Management

• But what can I do with Windows Azure? Backups (Buck Woody) - Know better your options when it comes to backup using the cloud (Azure).

Miscellaneous

• The 30 Minute Meeting (Janine Popick) - Interesting thoughts about long meeting.
• Introducing: The New Readability for Chrome and Tags in iOS (blog.readability.com) - Wow the speed improvement of the new chrome extension is amazing.
• //BUILD 2013 Announced (David Jung MSFT) - Time to plan... ;)
• How to Use Temptation to Strengthen Your Willpower - Interesting post. Try to rest eating while reading it...
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (Charles Duhigg) – I was very impressed by this book. I learned a lot about the brain and how it’s possible to re-program the brain.

~Frank

Reading Notes #85

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure Updates: Android Support, SQL Reporting Services, Active Directory, More… - Wow wow wow! So many new features, and in many spheres: mobile, reporting, service bus, etc.... A post to read!
• How To Train Your Robot: how I teach kids to program without computers - I really like the idea. An it could be sincerely funny... for the kids. ;)

Cloud

• Using nConf and Azure to avoid leaking secrets on GitHub » Encosia (Dave Ward) - Very clever utility. It will definitely find a place in my toolbox.
• 2 Cloud Computing Concerns And How To Deal With Them (business2community.com) - Yes going to the cloud mean that your expose to some risk, as not going to. Being well-informed and prepared is the key.
• AWS Free Usage Tier Now Includes Amazon ElastiCache - Good new for all AWS that gets more for the same 0$.
• Windows Azure Mobile Services adds Android support and extends availability to East Asia - Excellent overviews of the new Android capabilities of Windows Azure and nice reference to a tutorial on how to build your first app.
• Microsoft Acquires Cloud Performance Management Service MetricsHub, Makes It Available For Free On Azure (Frederic Lardinois) - MetricsHub a new free product to try!
• Windows Azure, now with more enterprise access management! (Alex Simons) - Nice introduction to the new Active Directory features available in the Azure portal.
• Moving Your Applications to Windows Azure - Very complete article about all aspects of what moving an application to Azure imply.

Databases

• Why am I Getting so Many Deadlocks From Windows Azure SQL Database?(Alexandre Brisebois) - Really great post that explains every detail of the problem and of its solution, even for EF.
• Do you know big data's top 9 challenges? -- Washington Technology (Mark Hoover) - Interinsting list, because it's true that challenge mean opportunity.
• Different ways to Backup your Windows Azure SQL database (Ki Yi) - Very complete list of eight solutions to take your SQL Azure database backup. The list also gives website references, pros and cons and for each solution.

Integration

• Data/Contract Coupling in Messaging (Channel 9) (Clemens V) - Excellent video that puts in simple words fundamental concepts.

Programming

• Chrome Dev Tools: JavaScript and Performance - And I though I knew my Chrome Dev Tools... very nice post.
• Polymorphism Part 2: Refactoring to Polymorphic Behavior (John Teague) - Going dipper this exellent post is the second in the series to explain the concept of polymorphism.
• Continuous integration using TFS on the Cloud (Stephen Ebichondo) - For many people continuous integration sound so complicated that they don't want to try it. Here is an excellent tutorial that will guides you through your first build.
• ASP.NET Web API Queryable with OData (Channel 9) (Brady Gaster Cory Fowler) - Nice show with a lot of info on new oData coming soon. Also, the first On Location interview Scott Hunter; tease of some new functionalities to come in VS.
• New Pluralsight Course: Building ASP.NET Web API OData Services - Overview of the new course available on the oData updated features.

Miscellaneous

• Want a More Productive Week? Clean Your Darn Desk! (Guest Blogger) - Because sometimes, its need it.
• 5 Things That I’ve Learned About Working Remotely (Richard Seroter) - Interesting post written in response to another post from Scott Hanselman.
• 10 Things Really Amazing Employees Do - As an employee, I'm looking forward to become one of those amazing people...
• Programming's not for you? How about thinking? Be empowered. (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting thoughts on how to stimulate our kids or younger.
• Episode 101 - Real-World Windows Azure with Auth0 (Nick Harris, Nathan Totten) - Great show this demo was great.

~Frank

Reading Notes #76

 
Suggestion of the week

• Subscribe! (Clement Vasters) - An amazing new series about the Windows Azure Service Bus, really good video.
• Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 1: The Portal
• Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 2: .NET SDK and Visual Studio
• Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 3: Service Bus Explorer
• Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 4: Queues
• Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 5: Topics
• Getting Started with Service Bus. (Final) Part 6: Relay

Cloud

• New Windows Azure PowerShell Update – December 2012 (Michael Washam) - Nice update to the Azure PowerShell tool that gives more options to manage Virtual machine and Service Bus.
• Table Storage 2.0 (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice post that explains the new structure of the namespace in the library and gives some samples of code how to use it.
• Practical Azure #5: Windows Azure SQL Database - Perfect get started video about Azure Sql Database.
• Storing user uploads in Windows Azure blob storage (Maarten Balliauw) - Great solution to a simple real word question. Easily scalable and secure. I really like it!
• Azure Remote PowerShell (Dustin Metzgar) - This post explains how the author managed to get more information from an instance running in Azure. The code sample is also available.
• PaaS not cheap enough? AppFog has a deal for you! (Barb Darrow) - New lower prices for Cloud Foundry.
• Applications are now open for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure – 2013 (Scott Gu)- Great opportunity for business to start using Azure with a lot of resources.
• Cross-Post: Announcing Windows Azure Media Player framework Preview for iOS (Craig Kitterman) - Great new for iOS developers that can now enjoy the awesome Azure Media Services.
• Deploy an on-premise VM to Windows Azure with App Controller (John Joyner) - Hurray! A lot of people were waiting for this feature!

Integration

• BizTalk360 Deployment and Configuration best practices (Saravana Kumar) - Use must read/bookmark the great post. It explains all the best practices related to BizTalk360, all in one single post.

Database

• Windows Azure Import/Export Service and External References - Important notice that can save you a lot of time when exporting a database in Windows Azure.
• Available Today: SSDT—December 2012 - New updated version of Sql Server Data Tool (SSDT) now support unit testing.
• Getting Started with SQL Server Database Unit Testing in SSDT - Nice post that explains how to get started with the new testing features available in Sql Server Data Tool. From converting the 2010 test projects to customization.

Programming

• 10 skills for developers to focus on in 2013 (Justin James) - Developers if you didn't see these coming, here is the top list of what you should learn/ improve in 2013.
• Why All The Lambdas? - This post explains very clearly how the lambdas are so useful by using a well use sample of code in Asp. Net MVC @Html.TextBoxFor(Model.Rating).
• Use Big Data to gain insight about small business customers (David Gitonga) - Interesting post that explains how BigData could be you in your business... even if you are in a small company.
• What Refactoring is, and what it isn’t - According to Kent Beck and Martin Fowler (Jim Bird) - While doing some refac****. I mean re writing in a project I found this post to be really interesting... and actual.
• 10 Tools To Get Kids Excited About Programming (Saikat Basu) - Wow those are great! I'm exited to show some of these to my kid. It's always good to transit passion ;)
• Essential Command-Line Tools for Web Developers - Interesting tools that can saves a lot of times doing repetitive tasks, specially during web development.
• JQUERY 1.9 BETA 1 RELEASED - Nice jQuery 1.9 is coming. Learn all about the new features ex: the multiple getter. Since big structural changes are maid in this version the jQuery team is providing migration tools. Learn where to find these and how-to uses them in this post.
• Recreate a VM .. over and over again (Priyo Lahiri) - Nice script that is a time saver. I would have liked to have it one month ago when I was testing deployment... Let's keep it for the future.
• So long and thanks for the all the Expression... Expression Design & Web are End of Life'd (but now free) [oh, and the rest of the Expression Suite is dead too] - If you still using VS2010 it's a good time to download Blend now. Also I wonder what application will replace/take the lead instead of SuperPreview (in Expression Web)?

Miscellaneous

• 15 Social Media Mistakes that are Strangling Your Success (Georgina Laidlaw) - This post suggested simple "rules" that are easy to follow, and that will make you more likeable on social media.
• Surface & iPad Collision Course  - Nice post that compares what could be compared between an iPad and a Surface... Nothing unexpected put still something to read.
• Backing Up WordPress? Don’t Make These 9 Mistakes - If you are a developer, you probably backup your machines and your code. That good. Do you do the same for your blog? You should, here is how-to do it the good way.

~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...