Reading Notes #138

Suggestion of the week

• Logging with the .NET backend for Azure Mobile Services (Carlos Figueira) - Great post that optimizes a logger by adding layers over layers of customization at every paragraph.

Cloud

• Azure: 99.95% SQL Database SLA, 500 GB DB Size, Improved Performance Self-Service Restore, and Business Continuity - A database for 5$ / Month! That's nice. This post explained all the new features around databases.

Programming

• Getting Started on the Roslyn Journey (Erik Dietrich) - This post announced an interesting series where we should get started with Roslyn.
  
• "It's just a software issue"- Edge.js brings Node and .NET together on three platforms (Scott Hanselman) - Great project that could be very useful in many different situations.

Mobile

• The Full Story of Featured and Spotlighted Apps on Windows Phone (Sébastien Lachance) - Interesting post to prepare the launch of our next mobile application.
  
• Build Some Ears on Your App and then Listen! (Mark B Schramm) - This post that listed the best practices about how we should take care of our apps once they are live.

~Frank

Reading Notes #137

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Phone 8.1 has my attention now - This update is really exciting. It not only removes some irritants but adds really nice polish new features.

Cloud

• Automating Environment Creation using Microsoft Azure PowerShell - Nice scrit!
  
• Static Internal IP Address for Virtual Machines (Corey Sanders) - This post answered to a very frequent question about static IP for Azure virtual machine.
  
• Stupid Azure Trick #10 – Use SSL on MSDN Visual Studio Azure VMs (Bill Wilder) - This post explains an easy solution to fix some certificate issue present in the current Azure VM image when using SSL.

Programming

• Download PowerShell Script Browser 1.0 - Developer Top Scenarios and Solutions - That's a great idea.
  
• A World of Scripts at your Fingertips – Introducing Script Browser - Really good idea a scripts gallery, now available inside the tool.
  
• Source Code Control with Git and Mercurial -- Visual Studio Magazine (Terrence Dorsey) - This post is really complete. It is the post to get started with distributes source control. Reference to other sources of information, tools, and online repository are 0also presented.
  
• Why Katana should be on your radar (AnhPhan, Tom Dykstra - MSFT, Joost de Nijs, Yatajga, Ralph Rick_Anderson) - If you never eared about Katana, this post is for you.

Mobile

• Why jQuery Mobile didn’t succeed - Interesting thoughs about jQuery mobile.
  
• "Windows Phone 8.1 for Developers" series with 19 posts so far... - Nice reference to a great source of tutorial.

Miscellaneous

• Pas de croissance sans marketing (David Chabot) - Interesting post about what's really suppose to be the marketing.

~Frank

Reading Notes #136

 

Suggestion of the week

• Open Source is a thankless job. We do it anyway (Scott Hanselman) - A post that brings back the essence of what supposed to an open-source project and what it means to participate.

Cloud

• Creating an Azure Mobile Services .NET backend from scratch (Carlos Figueira) - Great tutorial here without magic. Every steps are well explained.
  
• Microsoft Azure Load Balancing Services (Marios Zikos) - Great article that explains how the load balancer work and how to configure it based on our needs.
  
• Information on Microsoft Azure and Heartbleed (Andrew Cushman) - This post explained when, even if running on Microsoft Azure, the Heartbleed vulnerability could affect your app.
  
• Size Matters… A LOT! - This post gives nice options to minimize the impact of a mobile application using the cloud as backend.
  
• Reading from a queue in an Azure WebJob - This post got us started with Azure webjobs.
  
• VM Image (Christine Avanessians) - Wonderful, so many new functionalities! I'm really looking forward to know more and try it.
  
• VM Agent and Extensions – Part 1 (Kundana Palagiri) - This post introduced the currently available extensions with a quick example. VMExtension looks a very promising feature with a lot of potential.
  
• Azure Updates: Web Sites, VMs, Mobile Services, Notification Hubs, Storage, VNets, Scheduler, AutoScale and More (Scott Gu) - I don't know where to start. This last release contained so many new features it's incredible. You must read this post.
  
• Les architectures émergentes, l'innovation en architecture et les nouvelles tendances - Annonce d'un événement à Montréal sur l'architecture notamment pour le "cloud".
  
• How to assign a private Static IP to a Windows Azure VM - Useful powershell script to manage your Azure's VMs.
  
• IT Pros ROCK! - This post explains very clearly all the options with their pros and cons when shutting down AzureVM.
  
• Automating Environment Creation using Microsoft Azure PowerShell - Nice scrit!
  
• Deep dive: Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC and Azure SDK 2.3 (Mohit Srivastava) - Great post that goes into details in all the major new features from the last Azure SDK and visual studio release.

Programming

• Developing for Windows Phone 8.1 using XAML (Nick) - This post got us started with the three choices we have to develop windows phone application.
  
• Announcing release of Microsoft Avro Library (Maxim Lukiyanov) - Great news, a new serializer for .Net and it's available on NuGet.
  
• Exploring ASP.NET Web Pages - A fully-featured MiniBlog using just Razor (Scott Hanselman) - This post introduced another but quite minimalist blog engine call miniBlog.
  
• Il était une fois… Modernizr (Anne B) - Outil très utile pour le développement web.

Miscellaneous

• Merge conflicts in csproj files - Nice post that explained why the merge method had to change in Git to merge Visual Studio project file.
  
• What price might you really be paying for Woolworths “free” wifi? - Aaah marketing, when will you stop to surprise me?

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.