Reading Notes #125

Suggestion of the week

• Get Better Acquainted with Azure (Mark BrownMS) - Wow! All kinds of resources are coved here. A post to read to find your next book or blog to subscribe.
  
• With great Azure VM comes great responsibility(which is why you really want an Azure Web Site) - Great post that compares website and VW.

Cloud

• Announcing Reduced Pricing on Storage - How can we be not happy to pay less for a nice service?!
  
• 2013 Year in Review: New AWS Technical Whitepapers, Articles and Videos Published - Great recap of all the AWS resources published in 2013.
  
• Identity in your own apps with Windows Azure Active Directory (MVP Award Program) - Great tutorial that explains how to use Windows Azure Active Directory in a web project with the new VS2013.
  
• Measuring all the things with Azure Web Sites and friends - Great post, a lot of information on the tools available to help us tracking info in our Azure website.
  
• Introducing Windows Azure WebJobs – Wow, webjob is so simple to use compare to all the steps that we needed to with a worker role.
  
• Stupid Azure Trick #1 – Rename Your Windows Azure Subscription (Bill Wilder) - Nice tips to get a more structured subscription list in Azure.

Programming

• Roslyn performance (Matt Gertz) - Cool post that gives a good insight about how performance is treated in Microsoft team.
  
• Simple Git workflow is simple - Good post that explained the workflow. Now we just need to practice it.
  
• Why TDD Makes Me a Happy Developer - Interesting opinion about TDD. If you don't know what is TDD, this post is for you.
  
• NuGet Package Manager Console tip (Girish stuartle) - Nice tips, like the author I had never tried that before.

Architecture

• What makes models interesting (Nick Malik) - Interesting post about enterprise business model.
  
• Why is Software Architecture Important? - Very nice analogy.

Miscellaneous

• Why You Should Stop Pretending To Be So Important - Wisdom post that remembers us to give time, to be there for other.
  
• Yak Shaving Defined - I'll get that done, as soon as I shave this yak. - Ha ha ha. It explains also why retreated people have no free time...

~Frank

Reading Notes #35

Cloud

• Moving apps to the cloud - This great post help you to build a check list before, during and after moving to the cloud. Ask the good questions, found your spot in the cloud.
• Start-Up Encrypts Data in the Cloud - A new stat-up is offering THE solution for the safest encryption in the cloud...look promising.
• Deploying Your Applications on Windows Azure (Bruce Kyle) - Nice post enumerating all the possibilities available when deploying and testing your app in Azure.
• Solving SSL Certificate expiration problem with an existing Windows Azure Application (Avkash Chauhan) - Great post that must be kept somewhere you will retrieve it. It will save you a lot of pain when your certificate will expire... and that you will maybe don't have access to the original project.
• Comparing AWS/Box/Azure for Managed File Transfer Provider (R Seroter) - Interesting post that compare the features of 3 different cloud solutions.
• Don’t look now but Microsoft Azure is a kick-butt cloud (Barb Darrow) - Nice post about the fight between how will be the next Dropbox between Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
• Windows Azure service bus messaging with publish/subscribe pattern using topics and subscriptions - A fantastic tutorial that build a Azure service bus messaging application using topics.
• Part 1 Introduction and Architecture (Dave Crook) - A really nice post that demystify what are the part of the Azure architecture and what is the impact of each of them in a developer life.
• Windows Azure Blob Upload Scenarios (Avkash Chauhan) - Think to know before coding application that will upload file into Azure blob storage. Different scenarios are possible with pros and cons for each of them.
• Microsoft's Windows Azure Active Directory plans takes shape - Quick post that talk about recent Azure's news like the WAAD (windows azure active directory).
• Node.js, Windows Azure (and socket.io) (Neil Mackenzie) - A great post about Node.js in Azure. All the features, requirement are discuss.
• 4 Things to consider when researching an assignment for Saas - Nice post about 4 keys points to think of when looking for a Saas (software as a service).
• Migrating a SQL Server database to SQL Azure - A good story of someone doing a migration of an "old" MS SQL 2005 database to Azure SQL using multiple tools.
• Implementing MERGE command using SQL Azure Migration Wizard (Cihan Biyikoglu) - Quick post to introduce what should be Merge At command in an Azure Sql Federation database. Also this post refer to a lot more detail article on the how-to.
• Free samples that help you get started with Azure - Great group of link to get started with Azure.
• The Evolution of PaaS (davidchappellopinari) - Nice post that compare the features of the "usual" PaaS with some "new" version of this like Cloud Foundry.
• Microsoft Private Cloud Part 1 - Nice first post of a series comparing Azure with private cloud. This one is more about being prepare to the real comparison and define what is private cloud.

Programming

• Structurez votre code Ruby (Bruno Michel) - This nice post introduce the unused Struct. A simple but power class in Ruby.
• Soyez unique, utilisez des Sets (Bruno Michel) - Wow I didn't know the Set class in Ruby. I got to edit one of my script immediately.
• Asp.Net MVC 4 beta - Nice post that quickly present some of the main new features in the brand new ASP.Net MVC 4. Also video and slide reference.
  

  Spending limits are a new feature we added to Windows Azure last month, and ensure that you never have to worry about accidentally going over the resources included in a free offer and being charged.

  You can learn more about the spending limit feature here.

  The ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta release works with VS 2010 and .NET 4.0, and is side-by-side compatible with prior releases of ASP.NET MVC

  Bundling and Minification

  Database Migrations – ASP.NET MVC 4 includes the new Entity Framework 4.3 release,

  Web API

  new support for building mobile web applications and mobile web sites,

  Razor Enhancements – ASP.NET MVC 4 includes V2 of our Razor View engine.

  Async Support and WebSockets

• Fun with Ruby Block Parameters - Nice post going dipper in Ruby's Blocks capabilities...

Miscellaneous

• How to Master Any Skill - Nice post that will help to make a checklist when trying to masterize a new skill.
• 11 Easy Ways to Make Work Fun - Quick tips/ideas how to change the office in a more agreeable and more productive place.

~ Frank