Reading Notes #201

Cloud

• Tracing and logging with Application Insights (Andrei Dzimchuk) - You know the 101 about App Insights and you are looking for something more specific? This post if a must it shows how to transform an ordinary logger in a great source of information.

Programming

• Usage of into and let keyword in Query Expression C# – Humble bits (Ashish Kumar) - This post gives a very clear explanation of the key work let.
  
• Node v4.0.0 - This post explains the major features included in the last release of Node.js.
  
• Elastic database client library now open sourced (Silvia Doomra) - Nice post that explains the reason why a Microsoft library would like to be open source, gives a quick definition of the elastic database, of course. course.

Databases

• Moving Your SQL Databases to Azure – Things to Know - Fantastic post that explains, well, everything we must know to get started with Azure SQL Database.

Miscellaneous

• How to turn one tiny thought into a blog post worth reading - I like this post, it gives a lot of tips on how turn your brain dump (ideas) in something more productive.
  
• A Remote Worker's Guide To Staying Healthy - This is definitely not a technical post. However, since are all working sitting in front of a computer, it's time for a little reminder.
  
• Creating a Portable Windows 10 Environment with Windows To Go - Interesting... I knew this was possible with some Linux distribution, but I didn't know it was possible with Windows.
  
• Not in my job description (Marc) - I just love it. Nice post.

Reading Notes #196

Suggestion of the week

• Push-to-succeed: a look into Azure Notification Hubs for business (Alexander Laysha) - Interesting post that explains how Azure and his Notification Hubs could be really useful in marketing.
  
• Getting Started with Windows 10 - This week it's the Windows 10 week. And this post regroups many useful tutorial to get started.

Cloud

• July update for Web apps and App Service environments in the Azure preview portal (Ron Tardif) - This post is a great summary of the new July features.

Programming

• One of My Favorite PowerShell Functions - Nice and useful little piece of code.
  
• Describe Your PowerShell Variables - Nice quick tips to help us remember what we thought when we created those variables.
  
• Installing EF Power Tools into VS2015 (Julie) - Interesting tutorial that shows how to "upgrade" an extension to use it in VS...
  
• Five Common Daylight Saving Time Antipatterns of .NET Developers - Ah the "time"... The more you play with it, the more confuse you can be. Interesting post to avoid common mistakes.

Miscellaneous

• The Secret (and Oh So Simple) Way to Get People to Pay Attention to You (Betty Liu) - Interesting post about business relationship.
  
• How to stay productive while working from home (Xavier Nayrac) - Being myself a remote worker a found this post very close to the reality and inspiring.

~Frank

Reading Notes 193

Suggestion of the week

• Inside Azure Search: Chaos Engineering (Heather Nakama) - Great article about this really amazing way to test: chaos monkeys

Cloud

• Container Apps now available in the Azure Marketplace (Vybava Ramadoss) - Good news, marketplace just got a new "alley"...
  
• General availability: Azure Virtual Machine services in Azure Resource Manager - Great, ARM continue to grow.
  
• AzureSearchTool - the easiest option to query Azure Search! (Max Melcher) - This post introduces a very promissing tool, that is now available but in an early phase.
  
• Announcing the 1.0.0 release of Application Insights Windows SDKs (Joshua Weber) - Great new about this SDK, reaching an important milestone.
  
• My First Azure DocumentDB Account (Eitan Blumin) - Nice tutorial that explains how to create a new documentDB from scratch.

Programming

• Announcing Atom 1.0 - Woohoo. Version 1 finally makes it. Really happy.

Miscellaneous

• Windows 10 is coming...here's what to tell non-technical parent (Scott Hanselman) - Once again, really good video for non-technical people. This one explains how to get ready, and get your free upgrade.

Image from  Inside Azure Search: Chaos Engineering

Reading Notes #188

I was really happy to ear about Microsoft Azure Data Center that will be built in Canada. And it was definitely not only good thing that was published this week...

Suggestion of the week

• Create Multi-Geo Environments using Azure Resource Manager (Alexandre Brisebois) - Very interesting experience with ARM. The result is explosive.
  
• Press Release - Fantastic news!

Cloud

• MCSD: Azure Solutions Architect - Announced at Build, here is the detail about the new Azure certification.
  
• New Azure Infrastructure Services Implementation Guidelines (Joe Davies) - Great new! A free guideline for the IaaS.
  
• Import Sample Data to Azure DocumentDB (Stephen Baron) - Document playground is not the only tools available to get started. This post introduces the Data Migration tool.
  
• Spotlight Resources - This post lists some of the useful tools that can help you when working with Azure.
  
• Use the Azure Resource Manager Copy Operation to Deploy Duplicates - Always exploring the possibility with ARM, Alexandre Brisebois show us how to be very productive when deploying.
  
• Azure data services part 1 HDInsight (Alice Waddicor) - Nice introduction post about HDInsight.
  
• Microsoft to open data centres in Toronto and Quebec City (David Shum) - Watch this great announcement about the new Azure data center...in Canada!
  
• BREAKPOINT: Know Your App Inside and Out with Application Insights (Lachezar Arabadzhiev) - Great show about a great tool.
  
• Application Insights Pricing Effective June 1 (Dale Koetke) - Nice post that explains the cost and features.
  
• Announcing Custom Origin Support for Azure CDN (Manling Zhang) - Nice announce of a more convenient solution, more flexible.
  
• Microsoft to open data centres in Toronto and Quebec City (David Shum) - Watch the recorded video of the TV announcement.

Programming

• Was This Trip Really Necessary? (Rod Vagg) - Interesting thoughts about the Node's journey.

Database

• New Titan DB offering from ClearDB (ron Tardif) - Aah! I know a lot of WordPress users that will be very happy with this news.

Miscellaneous

• And the Release Date for Windows 10 Is... (Paul Thurrott) - The official date is finally out!
  
• Totally stressed out? Sync to Paper (Scott Hanselman) - ... And I thought I was different. ;)
  
• Visual Studio Time Saver – Presenting code in PowerPoint (David McCarter) - If you do technical presentation, this tool is a must!
  
• What's the deal with Windows 10 for the Non-Technical Friend (Scott Hanselman) - Because we are the head of IT support for our friends and family...
  
• Speaker style bingo: 10 presentation anti-patterns - This post provides a list of nice tips to be a better and more organize presenter.

Reading Notes #179

Suggestion of the week

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

Cloud

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

Programming

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

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #171

 

Different readings which kept my interest during the week.

Suggestion of the week

• Automatic deployment of multiple repositories to Azure - Very powerful tips to deploy with a less common repository structure.

• Walyou (Jasmine Henry) - This is why you should care about Windows 10.

Reading Notes #170

Suggestion of the week

• Rollup: Microsoft HoloLens, Surface Hub, Windows 10, Xbox One game streaming and more. (Scott Hanselman) - How 2015 could not be a big year for Microsoft with all this?

Cloud

• Scaling #Azure Cloud Services Up and Down Like Clockwork (Alexandre Brisebois) - Really interesting post that explains how scaling up & out and down &in can mean huge saving in our pockets.

• Azure is now bigger, faster, more open, and more secure (Corey Sanders) - This post describes what in the new release of Azure.

• Azure Search – How to Add Suggestions (auto-complete) to your Search Applications (Liam Cavanagh) - Interesting example of how Azure Search can improve the user experience on our website.

• Using Windows Azure Service Bus for communication across two ASP.NET MVC Applications - Great tutorial that shows step by step how to use the power of Azure Service Bus in our website.

• Data Pipeline Guidance (patterns & practices) - Interesting project using Azure Eventhub's best practices in an IoT context.

Programming

• Using the Wrapper Pattern (Scott DePouw) - This post explains a useful pattern for testing or other context.

• NuGet Package of the Week: Polly wanna fluently express transient exception handling policies in .NET? (Scott Hanselman) - Wow! Polly looks awesome. Looking forward to trying-it in my next project.

Podcast

• Computer Vision Explained with PyImageSearch's Adrian Rosebrock - While listening this podcast, I'm not sure if I was more scared or exited. However, one thing is sure, this episode is really interesting!

Miscellaneous

• Removing Distractions - Interesting post where the author share is experience while trying to be less connected.

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #157

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure Web Site Cheat Sheet - Wow! I really think that ALL the information about Azure website is on this page, and it's super clear. Amazing job.

Cloud

• Soup to Nuts: From Raw Hardware to Cloud-Enabled Device - Excellent article that shows very exiting Raspberry Pi projects with Azure Services.

• Cloud, cloud, everywhere - This post makes me realize how many different cloud solution I'm using.

Programming

• Three steps to use jQuery UI in ASP.NET MVC 5 (Dhananjay Kumar) - Direct to the point. This is a good tutorial to not losing time and gets our solution correctly configured the first time.

• 3 Essential Sublime Text Plugins for Node & JavaScript Developers (Scott Smith) - Great! Life is so beautiful when we have the right tools.

• Inception-Style Nested Data Formats (Scott Hanselman) - What seem to be a good solution at one point could put you in a big problem tomorrow. This post explains one possible cause.

• WordPress -> Ghost -> Harp (Remy Sharp) - Great post about customizing a Harp blog (node.js).

• **The Ajax Control Toolkit are now maintained by DevExpress - Good news for a very nice library.

• Visualizing Security Information with Fiddler (Eric Lawrence) - This post explains how to customize the view in Fiddler to see security information.

• I was wrong about AngularJS - In this post, the author explains why after a difficult start, he now prefers AngularJS to BackBone.

• Implement Step-by-Step Generic Repository Pattern in C# - Nice post to know more about howto implent this important pattern.

Database

• Azure SQL Database Point in Time Restore (Tony Petrossian) - Nice post to know more about Azure SQL database backup.
  
• Let's play with Azure SQL Database backup and the Point in Time Restore (Frank Boucher) - A simple post to demistify the new Backup/Restore service in Windows Azure. ;)

Miscellaneous

• The most marketable skill in the job market: communication! - Nice advice for all new people on the market.

• Markdown Style Guide - This post gives some simple tips to keep our Markdown document easy to read when not converted.

• Announcing Windows 10 (Terry Myerson) - Great news about features in the next Windows...

• Windows 10: First Impressions - Get some idea of how it feels..
• How to create a Virtual Machine for run Windows 10 Technical Preview (Sara Silva) - This post is perfect if you want to try by yourself the new Windows 10, it will guides you to be all set.

~Frank