Reading Notes #610

Happy Canada Day!
It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

• Is .NET Aspire NuGet for Cloud Service Dependencies? (Phil Haack) - I like the comparison with NuGet. Using .NET Aspire in a project does indeed simplify a lot things. I'll be waiting for that follow up post.

Programming

• Dev Home Preview v0.15 Release (Kayla Cinnamon) - Cools news updates in Dev home.

• Announcing TypeScript 5.5 - TypeScript (Daniel Rosenwasser) - Really good news for the JavaScript developers. This post shares all the new features like ECMAScript, Set Methods support, and the performance improvement included in this release candidate of Typescript.

• Refactor your code with default lambda parameters - .NET Blog (David Pine) - A really good post, last of a series of four about new features of C# 12. I really like that new way to declare defaults I think it's much clearer.

• Blazor Basics: Dealing with Complex State Scenarios (Claudio Bernasconi) - Interesting package Fluxor that help managing states. The post also explains different pros and cons of methods to maintain states.

Databases

• What is SQL Injection in Cybersecurity? How to Prevent SQLi Attacks (Jen Swisher) - This post explains what are SQL injections and how they could affect our website. When I shares how to prevent those attack the post focuses on CMS like WordPress.

AI

• Mistral Introduces AI Code Generation Model Codestral (Daniel Dominguez) - On nice! A new model that specializes into code, and many languages on top of that.

~frank

Reading Notes #565

It's time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Adding Application Insights Logging to an ASP.NET app using the .NET SDK (David Giard) - This is a quick tutorial to get us started. Let's get control of our data.

Programming

• Required Parameters in Blazor WebAssembly (Code Maze) - This is a very well-explained post. How to use features added in .NET 6 to make our application reliable.

• What does Azure AD renamed Microsoft Entra ID mean for .NET developers? - .NET Blog (Jeremy Likness) - Learn more about the Identity. This post also includes other links to learn more about it.

• Shell integration in the Windows Terminal (Mike Griese) - Its very interesting to read the upcoming features and understand how these things will works.

• What Are HTTP Headers? | Postman Blog (The Postman Team) - This is a great post about headers. Used by everyone known by developers involve in API, they are the key of a clear communication.

• Introducing a powerful new Extension Manager - Visual Studio Blog (Maia Kelner) - Looking forward to trying this redesigned manager!

• Introducing TypeChat (Anders Hejlsberg, Steve Lucco, Daniel Rosenwasser, Pierce Boggan, Umesh Madan, Mike Hopcroft, and Gayathri Chandrasekaran) - That looks like a pretty cool package to add to our apps!

Data

• Azure Data Studio Schema Compare Extension (Josephine) - There is an extension for everything ...almost. I love that we can customize our tools the way we like.

Low Code

• How To Build Responsive Power Apps Forms From Scratch (Matthew Devaney) - Build an App quickly, that's nice. But make that App look great on any screen, now your talking! This is very detailed and complete example that helps us build our first responsive App.

Podcast

• Who are the Ops Behind the DevRel Curtain? (Ep 80) (Community Pulse) - Interesting episode about DevRel and more particularly two who are doing less visible work. Helping those who are helping... And a tiny bit about bread! Yell done, David!

• 60. How security is everywhere & the balance between legislation and innovation - with Scott Helme (Betatalks the podcast) - An episode about security of course but also tech, cars, coffee, and question like does your oven should really have internet access?

Miscellaneous

• Blazor Basics: Data Binding in Blazor (Claudio Bernasconi) - Nice post that explains the little particularity of those bindings. It could save you a lot of time.

~Frank

Reading Notes #521

Good Monday, 

Already time to share new reading notes. Here is a list of all the articles, and blog posts that catch my interest during the week. 

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• No-code Automation for Azure Boards Using Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents (Jason Hand) - You have so many options to watch this workshop. The bite-sized videos will teach you how to be more efficient with Azure DevOps without any code.

• Extending Docker’s Integration with containerd (Djordje Lukic) - Docker team shares the roadmap for their adoption of containers as basic components in image management. Learn more about it and how you can try it today in this post.

• How to Change an Azure Function Written in .NET from In-Process to Isolated Process (Nick) - Great post that from scratch create a regular Azure Function into Visual Studio publish it and then quickly migrate it to an Isolated one.

Programming

• .NET MAUI Cloud Skills Challenge - Learn .NET MAUI, Get Stickers! (Matt Soucoup) - This is a really interesting cloud challenge. With .NET MAUI I could build apps for mobile and desktop...

• 3 ways every company can get started with an open-source software strategy (Ashley Wolf) - Open source can be so much and it is normal to not understand all of it at the beginning. This nice post answer a few questions for enterprises who would like to start.

• Announcing built-in container support for the .NET SDK (Chet Husk) - After the .NET included in Ubuntu a few days ago, now simplistic containerization has so many great new tools and opportunities.

• Getting Started With TypeScript and React (Ifeoma Imoh) - This is a nice tutorial to get started.

• How I made an ai to watch my cats poop for me (Estefannie) - Great project using Raspberry Pi, node, C, and a lot of creativity. The video is a must, it provides a better overview of the journey, and the story is gold.

• Merging two GitHub repositories without losing commit history (Schalk Neethling) - Nice work documenting this flow. Keeping as much information as possible is often very important. A post to bookmark for later use.

• No more Dockerfiles with the help of .NET CLI (Christian Nagel) - Interesting stuff coming up in .NET 7 that we can experiment today.

Podcasts

• 588: How to Help Your Manager Shine, with David Gergen (Coaching for Leaders) - Interesting discussion about how to help your manager with a very special guest. David Gergen is the author of Hearts Touched With Fire, and talks about the importance of the relationship between a manager and a direct report.

Miscellaneous

• How to Colorize Pictures With OpenVINO™ on Ubuntu Containers (Valentin Viennot) - This very complete post shares the realization of a kubernetes and docker project with all the required details so we could give it a try.

~frank

Reading Notes #467

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all 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.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

This week's image brings us to 2017, back when I was a Microsoft MVP, yes my name is on that wall with so many of my friends! Have I great summit this week!

Cloud

• Azure Functions Support for node.JS 14 and .Net 5 Is Now Generally Available (Steef-Jan Wiggers Follow) - A quick post that detailed what is new and why it's nice.

• Azure Workbooks - Set it to Auto-Refresh (Shikha Jain) - Your mouse will thanks you, because of less clicks.

• Cloud-Native learning resources for .NET developers (Nish Anil) - A nice post that explains the cloud-native idea and lists sooooo many resources to get started.

Programming

• 5 things to include in your project ASAP (Lior Bragilevsky) - This is a very JavaScript focus post, but easily portable to other languages.

• Debugging configuration values in ASP.NET Core (Andrew Lock) - A great tutorial that teaches some great ways to debug and inspect the appSettings.

• Introducing AWS SSO support in the AWS Toolkit for VS Code | Amazon Web Services (Garret Sweetwood) - Another great VS Code extension, this time to help you with your authentification with AWS.

• Scaling Microservices on Kubernetes (Ashley Davis) - Interesting post about scaling. Scaling horizontally, vertically the advantages and complexities of each options.

• Tetris in Blazor WebAssembly (Matthew Jones ) - I keep repeating it, coding is fun and creative! Learn more about this cool open source project in this post.

• The common misconception about TypeScript (Narasimha Prasanna HN) - This is a great post that shares simple best practices in TypeScript.

Miscellaneous

• Get better at programming by learning how things work (Julia Evans) - Inspirational post to stay curious and keep learning.

~Frank

Reading Notes #457

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all 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.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• 2 Local machines 1 Dev VM (John Friesen) - A nice tutorial that can help us get started and understand how things work.

• An Introduction to Azure Media Services - The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard (David Giard) - Media services is a gem that not enough people know. Nice little introduction post.

• Azure Storage - Zip multiple files using Azure Functions (Josef Ottosson) - Great project. I like the sharing of the thoughts or questions encounter during that build. We are all eventually meet them too.

• How To Calculate Pricing In Azure (Mahesh Chand) - Nice quick refresh or quick start. Cost is such an important topic.

• Integration tests using Azure Storage emulator and .NET Core in Azure DevOps (Dominique St-Amand) - A really interesting tutorial. I'm definitely bookmarking that one for later.

• Introducing Azure Health Bot—an evolution of Microsoft Healthcare Bot with new functionality (Lili Cheng) - Very inspiring to see the evolution of what bots are able to do.

Programming

• Advanced TypeScript Tips & Tricks - DEV Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻 (Dino Kacavenda) - Very very interesting tips. As a new TypeScript coder, I found this really reassuring to know there is a way.

• Save the Date for DockerCon Live 2021! - Docker Blog (Matt Carter) - If you are a container user, or just thinking about it... Reserve the date.

• How to Use Query Strings in Blazor WebAssembly (Marinko Spasojevic) - Nice tutorial. Very detailed.

Miscellaneous

• Productive (And Realistic) Ways To Optimize Your Space For Remote Work (Genevieve Michaels) - Nice post that gives a lot of suggestions to make that space at home more comfortable and pleasing.

Reading Notes #451

Cloud

• Migrating to the new C# Azure KeyVault SDK Libraries (Dominique St-Amand) - Learning a new SDK can be challenging and this post can help you lowering the learning curve. So much great feature.

• Tip 295 - What database should you use in your next Azure Functions app | Azure Tips and Tricks - A nice little post that shows different options to connect our azFunctions to a data store.

Programming

• 6 ways to narrow types in TypeScript (Carl Rippon) - This is a nice post that teaches how to avoid a few good exceptions.

• What's new in .NET Productivity (Mika Dumont) - In post offers a nice summary of the new feature available in the latest version of Roslyn.

• Your dotnet outdated is outdated! Update and help keep your .NET projects up to date (Scott Hanselman) - Wonderful! Easy to update and to use. Sold!

Miscellaneous

• Azure DevOps Boards and Excel! (Sarah Lean) - Pretty sweet tips for everyone.

Podcast

• 622 - Why Vulnerability Is a Misunderstood Professional Superpower (Modern Mentor) - First time on this podcast, but definitely not the last. Great show great topic.
• The Shorts -- Backyard Adventures (The Dirtbag Diaries) - One thing keep coming back to my head again and again as I was listening... Yeah, so true! I love it. Let's do small adventure.
• 227: Databases! (Merge Conflict) - So many great questions, a tons of answers, hypotheses, and laughs. Great show guys!
• Growing the next generation of technologists with CodeCrew's Meka Egwuekwe (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting questions. I really like discussion from a different point of view; for me.

Books

A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring

Author: John Wooden, John C. Maxwell

What a great book. I didn't know John Wooden before, but I am very impressed and inspired by both coach Wooden and the author. There is so much in this book and worth reading it again... But first, let's get prepare :)

Reading Notes #449

Cloud

• Deploying Minecraft on Azure (Sophia Parafina) - Interesting post that leverages Pulumi.

Programming

• Using the ASP.NET Core Environment Feature to manage Development vs. Production for any config file type (Scott Hanselman) - A nice tutorial that explains how to benefits of our environment in C#

• Building applications with C# and a Challenge! (Shayne Boyer) - Very happy to finally see C# to learn. I should have a look at all those modules...interactive he said...it looks awesome.

• Internationalization And Localization For Static Sites — Smashing Magazine (Sam Richard) - This is an amazing post that not only shows how they did it but explains why they did. Really interesting.

• Managing multiple SSH keys for authentication to GitHub on Windows 10 (Dominique St-Amand) - Nice tips to work securely with 2 ssh key.

• Node.js REST API Tutorial: Express.js and TypeScript (Marcos Henrique da Silva) - As I'm learning TypeScript/ Node.js for a project and was looking for how to structure and organized my project this post provide so much.

• Should Your Enterprise Pick Angular, React or Blazor? (Jon Hilton) - Of course, it depends, but I like how this post lets you think about many different aspects before making your decision.

• Best practice when naming Durable Functions in C# (Laurent Bugnion) - Nice update. So many developers will thank you later...

Miscellaneous

• How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time (Apoorva Govind) - In the end, what is most important is that you are happy. I like to continuously learn new things, but I also learn that for some people, this is not healthy. And it is totally fine.

Reading Notes #441

Cloud

• Auto-installing Applications on Azure VM with Chocolatey for Live Streaming (Justin Yoo) - A nice quick tutorial that lists all the pieces to build you're ready to use VM like a streaming machine.

• Creating an .NET AWS serverless application using API Gateway with API Key (Dror Helper) - A nice tutorial that explains how to get started.

• Introduction to Cloud Computing and Azure (Code Maze) - A good article to get started. Starting from nothing and explaining the basic concepts.

Programming

• How to Add TypeScript to a JavaScript Project (Dor Sever) - Great post that shares a lot of information to get started with TypeScript, even how to sell it to your team.

• ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Preview 8 (Daniel Roth) - Nice update packed with tons of features.

• Blazor WebAssembly Gets Lazy Loading -- Visual Studio Magazine (David Ramel) - Nice post that focuses on one of the features (lazy loading of the dependencies) of the last update.

Miscellaneous

• I'm Open Sourcing the Have I Been Pwned Code Base (Troy Hunt) - Interesting news about this project. Going open source is a big move, and Troy explains why he did it.

Podcast

• How to Create a Social Media Plan Template with Andrea Jones (Influencer Entrepreneurs with Jenny Melrose) - They say planning is everything, so I was happy to listen to this episode and learn more it and see if it was different depending on the platform.

• Cycling Through Changes with Laura King (Wild Ideas Worth Living) - I'm a man and my "baby" is an adult now. Yet, I found that episode very interesting. Even though a lot of friends shared with me a few "challenges" that pregnancy brings... And didn't think about the training ones...

Book

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less 

Author: Greg McKeown 

- I really like this book. In a world where we all try to get more things done to be more productive, this book talks about doing less... to be more productive. Very interesting I thought. Talking about priorities, and how to help you to find our focus.

☁️

Reading Notes #219

Suggestion of the week

• I Hated JavaScript - Awesome post that presents Typescript under is best light.

Cloud

• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.8.2 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - This post will explain why you really want to upgrade to this new SDK version.
  
• Syncing Files Between Devices with Azure File Sync | - Nice tutorial that shows how to build a Xamarin application leveraging files synchronization between devices.
  
• Upgrading to the Azure Search .NET SDK version 1.0.1-preview - Wow!So So much in this new version, I'm looking forward to play with it.
  
• Getting Started with Selenium Testing in a Continuous Integration Pipeline with Visual Studio (Charles Sterling) - Great tutorial that shows how to use one of the more popular testing tools in a CI solution running in VisualStudio Team Services (VSTS).

Programming

• Visual Studio Code and local web server (Lachezar Arabadzhiev) - Really cool and light solution to develop a website or web application.
  
• Interactive Coding with C# and F# REPLs ScriptCS or the Visual Studio Interactive Window (Scott Hanselman) - Repl...Yep it's real thing an it could be really useful. L more about this tools and where to find it, in this post.

Books

• Free eBook: Enterprise Cloud Strategy - Hmmmm. To read.

Reading Notes #187

Cloud

• Publishing an ASP.NET 5 app to Docker on Linux with Visual Studio (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tutorial for a cross-platform Hello word.
  
• Create a CentOS Virtual Machine Using #Azure Resource Manager (Alexandre Brisebois) - Nice deep-dive to Azure Resource manager creating a Raid0 Linux VM.
  
• Protect Mission Critial #Azure Virtual Machines from Accidental Deletion - An accident is so fast done...Thanks for the tips!
  
• Is Microsoft Changing Azure Too Much? (Paul Ballard) - Interesting thought. And you what do you think?
  
• Delphi Turns Every Car into a Connected Car with Affordable, Cloud-Based Telematics (microsoft.com) - Interesting use case about Azure, IoT.
  
• Hooking up a scheduler job to a WebJob - Nice post that explains different options when we are using Azure webjob or scheduler.

Programming

• 10 Leading HTML5 Frameworks You'll Find Hard to Miss - Your next mobile project.
  
• Using TypeScript for Visual Studio Online Extensions (Serkan Inci) - Little introduction to a useful extension.

Miscellaneous

• Making the Complex Simple - Interesting article about how to become a true leader.
  
• Atom.io for Markdown editing (Larry Franks) - This post explains how to transform the great editor Atom in an amazing markdown editor.
  
• And the Release Date for Windows 10 Is... (Paul Thurrott) - The official date is finally out!

Reading Notes #177

Suggestion of the week

• The Modern JavaScript Developer’s Toolbox  - If you eared about those buzz words: Grunt, Gulp, Sublime, LESS, Angular, want to know more, This is THE post you are looking for.

Cloud

• Get Your Reading On: Azure eBooks (Jonathan Rozenblit) - 8 free books, what else to say... Thanks of course.
  
• Cloud Computing Can Make Any Old Beater a Connected Car (Alex Davies) - Interesting article about the close future.
  
• Azure API Management Part 1: An Introduction - Nice introduction about the APIM, nice warm up.
  
• Free ebook: Microsoft Azure Essentials: Azure Automation (Kim Spilker, Mark) - Nice free ebook.

Programming

• Getting Started with TypeScript – Classes, Types and Interfaces - Very nice and clear introduction wit also a video.
  
• Welcome Back! - The AJAX Control Toolkit March 2015 Update (Vittorio Bertocci) - Yeah! A long wait but it's here now... Learn all the nice features of this new release in this post.
  
• Comprendre et maîtriser npm - Introduction - The perfect post to get started, for whom read French.

Miscellaneous

• How Leaders Should React When Someone Disappoints (Peter Bregman) - Interesting post about how we should react, simple and efficient.

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 #131

Suggestion of the week

• Build End-to-End Apps with TypeScript (Gil Fink) - Amazing tutorial that gives the opportunity to learn a lot about recent language and tools. A mandatory reading for all web developers.

Cloud

• Windows Azure Websites online tools you should know about (Nir Mashkowski) - Nice quick and clear introduction to Kudu dashboard.
  
• Stupid Azure Trick #8 – Take control of Management Certificate names (Bill Wilder) - Nice clarification about certificate and security management in Windows Azure.
  
• Remote Administration of Windows Azure Websites using IIS Manager (Nir Mashkowski) - Soooo convenient. This post explains how we can remotely connect to a Windows Azure website with IIS.
  
• Stupid Azure Trick #7 – Use Windows Azure’s Local Storage Emulator with Web Sites & VMs (Bill Wilder) - Nice trick that explains how to use Azure emulator, because it's something we (or will) need.
  
• #WindowsAzure Lessons Learned : Don't be Afraid to Duplicate Data - Interesting re-design of a cloud solution.
  
• Announcing General Availability of Oracle Software on Windows Azure and Updates to Windows Azure Traffic Manager (Steven Martin) - Great new images and useful feature are now available.
  
• Tutorial: Finding Virtual Machine Images for Windows Azure in VM Depot (Ross Gardler) - That a very nice upgrade: an amazing search/sort engine.
  
• Is Your Application Built for the Cloud? - Interesting questioning about when to know if our application is built for the cloud, and nice list of pattern that are really well compatible with cloud solutions.

Programming

• NuGet Package of the Week: FluentAutomation for automated testing of Web Applications (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting tools to automate things like the ScriptCS.(Available via Chocolatey).
  
• Remove that dirty CSS! - Very useful tutorial that uses Node.js and Grunt.

Miscellaneous

• How to Clear Your Mind in 15 Minutes (Kevin Daum) - Sometimes to get more productive, we need to pause. Here are few tips on how-to achieve that.
  
• Why NOT measure progress using subjective percents - | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog - Interesting point of view about calculating project progress.
  
• Keepin' Track of Your Views - I found this post interesting because it explains how pageviews are counted.
  
• Logiciel libre : soyons clairs! (Laurent Bounin) - Very interesting point of view about open-source software (in French).
  
• Back to Basics: Assert your assumptions and diff your source code (Scott Hanselman) - Aah debugging... Never assume something. Thanks for sharing this story, I feel less alone now.

~Frank

Reading Notes #127

Suggestion of the week

• Source Control considered harmful - Excellent post! Don't stop at the first paragraphs, everything will be clear as you read through.

Cloud

• Stupid Azure Trick #3 – Create a Dev Virtual Machine in Windows Azure (Bill Wilder) - Very simple and efficient.
  
• Can I use Multiple Monitors with Remote Desktop (RDP)? Yes. Here’s how. (Bill Wilder) - How could I have missed that?!
  
• Gartner's 2014 MQ for PaaS: Organizing the Chaos - This post is sharing interesting though about the new PaaS Gardner's Quatran.
  
• Deploying TWO websites to Windows Azure from one Git Repository - This post explains a ninja trick with Azure Website and Git.
  
• Where’s Azure? Mapping Windows Azure 4 years after full General Availability. (Bill Wilder) - Interesting quick post that maps Azure today.
  
• WordPress 3.8 on Windows Azure Websites (Mark_BrownMS) - It's time to upgrade our blog on Azure website.
  
• Le Global Windows Azure Bootcamp à Montréal (Samedi 29 mars, 2014) - Time to reserved your place!
  
• Amazon is Still the Leader When it Comes to Cloud Pricing (Saroj Kar) - Good news for cloud user, the prices are going down...
  
• Brownfield Windows Azure Solutions & Hidden Treasures - Nice example of how a simple website could be optimized / become scalable in multi iteration so it doesn't affect negatively the user experience.
  
• Amazon Launches New Reporting Tools For EC2 (Frederic Lardinois) - Great new tools that help seeing stats of all kinds about resources and billing.

Programming

• For your convenience, please disable security warnings - This post explains why we soudln't turn-off security warning. It looks obvious, but ...
  
• Here’s how Bell was hacked – SQL injection blow-by-blow - About sql injection.
  
• Pro NuGet second edition is out - A book to add in your bookshelf (virtual or not)
  
• 10 Reasons Web Developers Should Learn Angular - Whatever it is because you need munitions to get Angular to be adopted at your work or because you what to know more about it, this excellent post is for you.
  
• Web Essentials 2013: Where is the TypeScript support? (Google+) - Important explanation for TypeScript user.

Databases

• Hadoop 2.0 – A Big Step For Big Data (Saroj Kar) - Nice post that introduces MapReduce v2 (MRv2) one the best new feature of Hadoop last release.

Integration

• Streaming Xml Transformations (Christos Karras) - Great tutorial that explains very clearly what are our solutions when we are in front of a complex XML transformation.

Miscellaneous

• Internet of Things or Thing on the Internet? - Interesting thoughts about today's and tomorrow's Internet.
  
• Fixed: The Synology NAS with Plex Server and mismatched version numbers - Nice catch. If you don't know Plex here to read about it.
  
• The Heart of Innovation: How to Prepare for Brainstorming - Nice post to help us to improve our meetingproductivity.

Reading Notes #123

Suggestion of the week

• Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows (Scott Hanselman) - A post to read, and bookmark. I always find awesome tool that I didn't know.
  
• Introducing Visual Studio Online - This post is a lot more than only an introduction. It explains all the options we will encounter to start our first project, but it also describes how to use it, build with a CI, test, monitor, etc.

Cloud

• A new year's present: introducing Glimpse plugins for Windows Azure (Maarten Balliauw) - Really interesting tools that provide a lot of useful information. I need to try this.
  
• Quick ways to edit your files hosted in Windows Azure Web Sites (WAWS), other than re-deploying - Nice quick tips that can save you a lot of time... and troubles.
  
• Do you serve your Azure Web Site hot or cold? - Useful use for the scheduler to improve website performance.
  
• New Windows Azure Network Security Whitepaper (Ashwin Palekar) - This is the post to improve your knowledge about network security, since it references the windows Azure white paper on the topic.
  
• Cloud Cover Show - Episode 125: Getting started with Application Insights for Visual Studio Online - Really great video. If you don't have time to read the MSDN Mag article or to get a better of the Online experience, this is the video.

Programming

• Composite Pattern: Handling child node collections - Interesting code solution. To read a second time.
  
• Temporary is The New Permanent - Interesting point of view about caring about our code.
  
• The Quality of Code (Paul W. Homer) - One of the best posts I read about this topic since a long time. It explains very well how easy it is to lose the focus.
  
• TypeScript: A New Language for .NET and JavaScript Developers - Nice introduction and quick overview of TypeScript.
  
• Prefixing ID columns with the table name in Entity Framework - See a time saving tips in this post to rename all ID property of your datamodel.

You can find out more about these conventions in the blog post Custom Code First Conventions (EF6 onwards)

Architecture

• How to Become a Software Architect - Interesting list.

Miscellaneous

• Finding a low-memory browser (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting information, and a simple but useful PowerShell script to get the info.
  
• What blogging was - Interesting thoughts about what blog became.

Reading Notes #121

Cloud

• Building a Windows 8.1 Developer Environment in Windows Azure - Great workaround to be able to build win 8 or 8.1 application in an Azure VM.
• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: Automating everything with the Windows Azure Management Libraries and .NET (Scott Hanselman) - Nice short code sample of .net Azure command.
• Choosing a Cloud Network for Government-Compliant Applications - Learn a lot of details about Azure cloud services: security, warranties, architecture, options, etc.

Programming

• Learning TypeScript: Hello World - Nice tutorial where each step is clearly explained.
• TFS Administration Tool 2.3 (2013) Released (Grant Holliday) - New version of that usefull tool is out.

(oups, I lost my notes... sorry.)

Reading Notes #101

Suggestion of the week

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

Cloud

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

 

Integration

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

Programming

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

 

Database

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

 

Miscellaneous

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

~Frank

Reading Notes #98

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure: Announcing New Dev/Test Offering, BizTalk Services, SSL Support with Web Sites, AD Improvements, Per Minute Billing (Scott Guthrie)- This post is a mandatory reading. Know from the source what's new! So many good things, that I don't know where to start...
• Announcing "Get Involved" from Tekpub - Enhance your career by engaging with your peers (Scott Hanselman & Rob Conery) - Really great video that explains how to be involve in the community, the good way. Really nice work.

 

Cloud

• How To: Setup Windows Azure PowerShell  - Quick post that explains how to get ready to play with Azure with PowerShell.
• Cloud Cover Show, Episode 109 - Using Windows Azure Active Directory from Windows Store apps - Nice episode with V. Bertocci that get us up to date on all the news Windows Azure Active Directory (AD) features.
• Running WordPress with SQL Azure - That a great workaround! It could be super if we had this option when creating the application.
• Is Amazon becoming the Microsoft of cloud? Hold that thought | ZDNet (Service Oriented Joe McKendrick) - Interesting post about the future of the major players who wants to rules the cloud.
• Microsoft’s “Understanding the Microsoft Cloud” White Paper Misses the Windows Azure IaaS Boat (Roger Jennings) - Hard critic of a Microsoft White Paper. However, it's true that this paper does reflect Azure IaaS reality.
• Cloudy Thoughts by SyntaxC4 - Quick post that introduces some cool new feature for PHP in Azure...
• Windows Azure PowerShell June 2013 Update for IaaS and PaaS (Michael Washam) - With new Azure capabilities comes great PowerShell functionality... this post is all about that. Also Michal Washam is announcing that he is quitting Microsoft.
• Cloud Cover Show, Episode 110 - Windows Azure BizTalk Services - Great show with a demo done by no other one then Guru Venkataraman.
• Checking Azure Cloud Service SDK Version with PowerShell (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice and useful script.
• 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 cmommand.

 

Programming

• ELMAH: Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET (and MVC too!) (Scott Hanselman) - This post is not really recent, but really interesting. If you still don't ELMAH this post is for you.
• Making Computer Science Cool (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Really good resources post that gives place to get started based on our level of confort. It could also be use at home for our kids... I wonder if this kind of information is also available in other languages...
• TypeScript: Scaling Up JavaScript - Great video from TechEd, it was hard to wait until the end to start doing TypeScript...

Databases

• Azure does Powershell too (Grant Fritchey) - Nice quick introduction to Azure Sql PowerShell cmdlets.

 

Integration

• Walkthrough of New Windows Azure BizTalk Services - Again a great post/ tutorial from Seroter. This is THE place to start to know more about the Biztalk services (WABS)

 

Miscellaneous

• Are you secure? WiFi Honeypots, Pineapples and SSL with Troy Hunt - And I though a knew the danger of the WiFi. You must spend 30 minutes and listen this post... and re-share!
• Live Demonstration: Hacker Tools You Should Know and Worry About (Hasain Alshakarti, Marcus Murray) - Wow! Very "perturbing" video that shows a lot of different tools to help you... or not.

~Frank

Reading Notes #70

Cloud

• Let's see : Attach an Azure blob drive in windows 7. (Nicolas Dorier) - A lot of information in this post where Nicolas Dorier explain how he pass through all the problems.
• New Powershell command line goodies for Windows Azure at #bldwin (Glenn Block) - This post explains some of the new features in the last release of Azure Powershell cmdlets.
• A tool to simplify and automate your SQL Azure database backup - Make backup is so important that it shouldn’t be human related. Here are some tools to help you reaching this goal.
• Disaster and the Cloud - An actual story about how the cloud helps in a disaster recover situation.
• Why should a startup use Windows Azure? (Shaymaa A) - If you are in a start-up bookmark this short post, because it's the perfect page to get started with BizSpark.
• Windows Azure: Automated UI testing using the power of cloud (Anuj Chaudhary) - Nice deep dive in a test case scenario using Windows Azure around the globe.
• Here's What's New with Windows Azure (Bill Hilf) - Recap of the Windows Azure related news at the //Build event.
• The Developer Movement & Windows Azure (Marc Gagné) - Goodies alert! How to get 3000 points and some great goodies...
• Manu Cohen-Yashar's Blog - I did search where the old portal link was... here is the answer.
• Microsoft Access 2013: A Cool New Rapid Development Tool for the Cloud (Gregory Leake) - Great news about Office 2014 and really nice way to use Azure...
• Top 5 Cool New Things with Windows Azure Web Sites (Nir Mashkowski) - Nice walkthrough the last new features of Windows Azure Website.
• Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and Bitbucket - Nice since I also use Bitbucket for some of my personal projects... I looking forward to try this!
• Announcing: New System Views for Windows Azure SQL Database (Gregory Leake) - Good news about the Azure SQL database, it's now possible to query the even log and views.
• Un voyage vers le cloud sur Windows Azure présenté par Matricis Informatique - Présentation en français sur Windows Azure a Montréal.

Programming

• The Hanselminutes Podcast - Loud and clear. The best description of what is TypeScript and why I should start using it.
• What's New? (amazon.com) - Nice update for DynamoDB.
• SSDT Team at PASS Summit - List of the presentation about SSDT at the PASS Summit.
• Reactive Extensions (Rx) is now Open Source (Scott Hanselman) - Learn more about Rx and is new open source status.
• TypeScript - Tutorial (typescriptlang.org) - Directly from the official TypeScript website, this tutorial get you up and ready in a few. Well explain. And a really nice repl page.

Integration

• BizTalk Server 2013 BETA (Saravana Kumar) - A lot of people was seeing it dead, but BizTalk 2013 is stronger than ever with a lot of the great improvement and new features... be ready!

Miscellaneous

• Infographics Are Hot, Your Boring Data Is Not (Janine Popick) - It's a fact that it's a lot easier to understand data with a visual support, this post points out 5 tools to help.
• Your Employee Is an Online Celebrity. Now What Do You Do? (Alexandra Samuel) - Witch question should be questions should be asked to validate if the co-existence between co-branded employee and the company.
• A retrospective of an unproductive day - Nice tips to feel better in those days when you feel like you did nothing...

Reading Notes #69

Cloud

• This Site Now Powered By Windows Azure Websites! (Chris) - In this post Chris is sharing is experience when moving is web site to Windows Azure.
• Declarative Architectures in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - In this post Buck is sharing method and third party to design architecture where the cloud is part of the solution.
• Windows Azure Store Preview - Quick post to introduce some feature of the new Windows Azure Store.
• How to use MongoDB from PHP in Windows Azure Web Sites - Really nice tutorial that explain how to create the just announced MongoDB as a service and use it from a Windows Azure website.
• Announcing Second Generation Standard instances for Amazon EC2 and a price reduction for M1 instances - AWS announce a new generation of EC2 instance with nothing less than 50% more computational capability/core.
• SQL Data Sync now available in the East and West US Data Centers! - Announce of SQL Data Sync availability in two data center.
• Where in the world is SQL Data Sync? - Nice catch, learn how from the new Azure portal to access the Azure data sync page.
• Episode 92 - iOS SDK for Windows Azure Mobile Services (Nick Harris, Nathan Totten) - Great episode that show how easy it is now to use Windows Azure with iOS.
• Episode 93 - Real-World Windows Azure with Mural.ly (Nick Harris, Nathan Totten) - An amazing video take 45 minutes and watch this podcast. It's energizing to see someone with so much passion. And try Mural.ly.
• Single Sign On with Windows Azure Active Directory: a Deep Dive - Nice deep dive that stay clear even if very detailed.

Programming

• Your Visual Studio, Your Colors - Great it will now be easier than even to customize the color of VS2012 with is new add-on.
• TechDays 2012, une nouvelle ère débute - A lot of great opportunities are coming this fall for all Canadian.
• Développer un site web avec node.js et tous les outils - Wow. Perfect tutorial to get started with Node.js. It explains how to setup a nice working environment, sometime saving tips, etc. (en francais)
• Windows Identity Foundation Tools for Visual Studio 2012 RTM (Vittorio Bertocci) - I missed that one when it came out... Great tool!
• The Hanselminutes - Glimpse gets a benefactor - can open source and commercial software live together? - If you’re doing web development you should listen this and you must try Glimpse.
• The Hanselminutes - What is Typescript and why with Anders Hejlsberg - Loud and clear. The best description of what is Typescript and why I should start using it.
• Podcast Update with Guest Spots and a New Show - October 2012 (Scott Hanselman) - A list of interesting podcast in different domains suggested by Scoot Hanselman.

Integration

• BizTalk Mapper Patterns: How to Map Hierarchical Schema to a Name Value Pair - Nice post that describe the pros and cons of four method to accomplish a mapping from hierarchical schema to a name value pair.
• BizTalk Server 2010 ESB Training Kit (Saravana Kumar) - Free resources, this is a link to bookmark.
• Service Bus Messaging: Queues, SB-Messaging Adapter (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - Great tutorial using Windows Azure Service Bus with BizTalk.

Miscellaneous

• Windows 8 upgrade: your hardware and software options explained (Sean Hollister) - The perfect post to help everyone to takes the good decision regarding Windows 8.A link to share.

~Frank