Reading Notes #190

Suggestion of the week

• Cloud Success Comes in Completing the Cloud Handshake (James Staten) - Great post that places different tools or services in context one to the other, that helps to get a better view of the big picture.

Cloud

• Testing Visual Studio on Azure (Alexandre Brisebois) - If you need to deploy a dev environment, this post explains how to leverage the AMR to do the quick and smart way.
  
• Locking a Virtual Machine Resource - Azure Resource Manager Template (Alexandre Brisebois) - A post to read, period.
  
• Azure Bits #3– Adding a Message to an Azure Queue (Rik Robinson) - Nice tutorial that shows how to interact with Azure Queues from an Asp.Net MVC web site.

Programming

• Visual Studio Online Wunderlist extension on GitHub (Clemens Reijnen) - Interesting idea of a VSO extension.
  
• Deploying an Azure Web Site using the new build system in Visual Studio Online (Charles Sterling) - This post shows ow easy it is to build & deploy a simple website using VSO.
  
• Visual Studio Web Development Tip - Add Chrome Incognito Mode as a Browser (Scott Hanselman) - The great tips are often the simpler! That should be in by default.
  
• Why to avoid fat controllers (Gunnar Peipman) - Interesting thoughts about different types of architecture and their testability.
  
• Historical Debugging, Profiling, New Diagnostic Tools in Visual Studio 2015 (Scott Hanselman) - Another good reason to start using VS2015.

Miscellaneous

• Write Once, Publish Anywhere (Jonathan Rozenblit) - An energizing post that shows here to find writting oportunities
  
• How to Build Your Blog’s Audience with Long Form Evergreen Content (Darren Rowse) - Interesting reflection on how the length of our post affects the traffic of our blog.

~Frank

Reading Notes #189

Suggestion of the week

• Search enable your applications with Azure Search (Andrei Dzimchuk) - Very interesting introduction, the perfect post to get started with Azure Search.

Cloud

• Moving to Azure DNS (Alexandre Brisebois) - Another awesome post that shows the power of Azure Resource manager and powershell.
  
• Azure : Event Hub A First Look (Sacha Barber) - This post a good introduction to Event Hub. It adds context to the MSDN documentation.
  
• Demystifying Azure Cloud Services – Part 1 (Adarsha Datta) - This post explains very clearly what is an Azure Cloud Services and demystify the common confusion about it.
  
• Auto-update your Azure Site Extension (Zain Rizvi) - Nice tips to simplify the upgrade.

Programming

• How to Compare files in Visual Studio Code ? - Nice tips.
  
• Evolving ASP.NET Apps–Javascript (Simon Timms) - Interesting post that explains how to structure our Javascript code in our solutions.

~Frank

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 #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!

First VSCode Tasks in less than 5 minutes

I'm working on solution to automating the generation of my weekly post: Reading Notes. While this work is finished, I still need to do many steps manually. I introduced in a previous post VSCode, that already supports markdown. In fact, from any markdown file, you can press Ctrl+Shift+V to preview the oupput. However, today, it's not possible to do anything with this preview. This post explains how we can use VSCode task to fix this problem.

Goal

Create a task that will quickly transform my current open markdown file in HTML.

Step 1 - Get a Markdown parser

First, we need Markdown parser. I'm sure many different are available, but in this post, I will use markdown-js, a Node.js parser that is available on github. To install it, just execute the following command:

npm install -g markdown

Step 2 - Create a Task

Secondly, we need to create our task. Open Visual Studio Code, and type Ctrl+Shift+P to open the Command Palette and then start typing Configure Task. Press Enter or select “Configure Task Runner”. This will create a new file tasks.jon, with many different samples of tasks. Before you replace the content of the page by the following code, take a look at the comment block at the top of the page. You will see different context variables that are available.

// Simple Task to transform MarkDown to Html
{
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "command": "md2html",
    "isShellCommand": true,
    "args": ["${file}"]
}

This defines our task using the json format. The command name in this case is md2html and we pass the name of the current open file as parameter using the variable ${file}. Finally, the "isShellCommand" is set to true so the task will be triggered by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B.

Step 3 - Try it

To try it, open a markdown page, hit Ctrl+Shift+B, and voilà! You should see in the output the HTML code generated.

References

• Node.js
• Markdown-js
• Visual Studio Code - Docs

~Frank

Reading Notes #186

I finally watch most of the recorded sessions from Build, Ignite and MVPvConf, and I had more time to read.

Suggestion of the week

• Learning to git bisect (Rural) - Very, very interesting walkthrough, I never knew Git got that kind of feature.

Cloud

• Azure preview portal support for Cloud Services (Nick Harris) - +1 for the Preview portal.
  
• Azure Bits #1 - Up and Running (Rik Robinson) - Nice little tutorial that implement an asp.net website with queue and tasks.
  
• Azure Automation: New Graphical and Textual Authoring Features (Chris Sanders) - Perfect post to get started on Azure Automatiom.
  
• Azure PowerShell DSC Extension v1.10 released (Kris Bash) - Cool
  
• A taste of DocumentDB through our Query Playground (Andrew Hoh) - This post is a quick introduction of an interesting tool available for free on the Azure website.
  
• .NET Rocks! - Episode 1137 (Carl Franklin and Richard Cambell) - Nice episode where Sam Vanhoutte shares with us his impression about BizTalk in Azure in all it's different flavor: VM, SaaS, LogicApp.
  
• Debugging Desired State Configuration (DSC) on (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post explains every step of a debugging session with DSC using PowerShell.
  
• A Monster VM Azure Resource Manager Template (Alexandre Brisebois) - Nice deep dive into how to create a custom template for the Azure Resources Manager.
  
• Microsoft – the only vendor named a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrants for IaaS, Application PaaS, and Cloud Storage (Nicole Herskowitz) - Very interesting post that summarizes the Gatner document about today cloud leaders.

Microsoft is currently the only vendor to be positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service , Application Platform as a Service , Cloud Storage Services and Server Virtualization

• Getting Started with Azure Notification Hubs (xximjasonxx) - This is a nice post to get started with Azure Hub and nice tool Service Bus Explorer (available online).

Programming

• JustDecompile Engine Becomes Open Source (Iana Tsolova) - Time to go checks what's under the hood.
  
• Create Node Task for Visual Studio Code (Steve Michelotti) - Nice post that explains clearly how create a task in VisualStudio Code.
  
• Customize ASP.NET MVC 6 View Location Easily (Jeff) - Nice tips, and a very simple solution to make the Shared folder more visible.

Miscellaneous

• Task Management for Teams (JD Meier) - Interesting thoughts about the size of our planned periods.
  
• Getting Started with Azure Notification Hubs (xximjasonxx) - This is a nice post to get started with Azure Hub and nice tool
  
• Open Source: A Small Guide for Newcomers (Felix Rieseberg) - If you already know your base with git and would like to jump-on the open-source wave, this post is the perfect start point. It provides nice advices and good references for more detail information.

~Frank

Note about the image of this week: This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request here.

Microsoft MVP Virtual Conference, one more day to go

Yesterday, was the first day of the #MVPvConf 2015. I already write about this event presented by MVP for everyone.

I really enjoy switching from one path to the other following the best fits of my interest. I even got some real though decisions to take because two sessions were at the same time! But wait; there is more!


Today it's Day 2, and many great presentations will by available.

Developer track with topics like: Roslyn Windows 10 ASP.NET Azure Cross-Platform...

IT Pro track with topics like: DevOps System Center Hyper-V Migration Office 365...

Consumer track with topics like: Pivot Table Data Windows 10 Cortana OneNote Security...

LATAM track with topics like: Power BI Exchange Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) Office 365...

Brazil track with topics like: Azure Active Directory Hybrid Cloud SQL Server...

Build your own agenda, and come join-us!

Reading Notes #185

Suggestion of the week

• Building a Monster Virtual Machine on #Azure - Monster exists! Lear how to create an insane Azure VM with PowerShell in this nice tutorial.

Cloud

• Building a Monster Virtual Machine on #Azure - Monster exists! Lear how to create an insane Azure VM with PowerShell in this nice tutorial.
  
• Full-Text Search is now available for preview in Azure SQL Database (Mihaela Blendea) - Fantastic! This feature was missing for a long time.
  
• New DocumentDB Import Options (Stephen Baron) - If you didn't have tried DocumentDB yet, now will be a great time. With the import to that simplify the task... we have now more ways to bring our data in.
  
• BizTalk in Azure Platform as a Service - Fourth post of a series on Biztalk this one explains the fantastic tools we have in this PaaS world.
  
• A Custom DSC Module to Stripe Data Disks on (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post explains how to create Azure VMs with PowerShell using DSC, a new and powerful feature of Azure.

Programming

• Node.js Tools 1.0 on GitHub and VMs Available (Visual Studio Blog) - Very nice tool, if you are doing Nodejs it's a must. Even more since it's now included in the Azure community VMs...

~Frank

Meet my new best friend: Visual Studio Code

On the last week of April, Microsoft was having a huge event call //Build. During three (3) days many great conferences were presented. You can watch them on-demand on Channel 9. The keynote of day one is a must! It was during this keynote that Microsoft reveals many amazing news. One of them: Visual Studio Code. In this post, I indent to share my impression of this tool after one week of usage.

The Beast

You may be thinking: VSCode, it must be a light version Visual Studio... To that, I will reply it's not.

VSCode doesn't go without remembering other modern text editor like Sublime text, or brackets. The interface is far different from Visual Studio though. At this day, three themes are available but you can customize e v e r y t h i n g.

VSCode is free, and it runs on Windows, Linux and Mac, it includes great tooling for web technologies such as HTML, Asp.net, Nodejs, CSS, LESS, SASS and JSon. It has syntax highlighting and a true IntelliSense. It also included: package managers, repositories, Git experience, debug tools, tasks, and so more!

I could continue over and over, but all the features are well explained on the official website.

My experience

It took me less than a minute to install on my "old" surface one. The interface is fast, and everything was looking good... Until I try to do something.

First, I was a bit confused. How should I open or create a project? Where is the menu? How do I use the debugger? After few minutes reading the excellent documentation on the official website, everything became clear. Visual Studio Code is sharing his name with his big brother, but he is really different. VS Code is using a folder approach, and a lot of shortcuts (so you keep your hands on the keyboard). And you quickly learn to use the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P) to do more specific work.

My initial test was why Ghost. I cloned the repository directly from Github to my computer. Then from VSCode, open the folder. Without changing / editing anything, VSCode knew my project was in JavaScript, and the coloring and IntelliSense were working. And(F5), the debugger and I felt already more at home.

A little message informed me that I needed to specify the starting point in the configuration file and voilà! I was debugging a Node.js project, that was easy.

Verdict

After a really short adaptation, Visual Studio Code reveals to be a reel gem. I strongly suggest that you spend few minutes reading the documentation before, to enjoy all his capabilities! The further I use it the more I become completely addicted. Visual Studio Code is an indispensable tool for everyone doing web development or looking for a powerful code editor.

 

 

Reference:

• Visual studio code: Official website where you can find documentation and download VSCode for your favourite platform.

Reading Notes #184

Last week, Microsoft released tones of news during the //Build 2015. The event was broadcast live, but if you are like me, you probably work during the day.... That smile because the conferences were recorded and are now available on Channel 9

You should definitely take a look and create your own schedule, but in all cases, you must watch the day's one Keynote
Enjoy!

Suggestion of the week

• Sometimes You Just Have to Scale Up! (Alexandre Brisebois) - Awesome tutorial again from Alexandre, that put together a very useful script for us.

Cloud

• Improving the GitHub workflow for the Microsoft Community - Get the details about this release here.

Programming

• NPM for Everything - This post explains hw to use Node Package Manager (npm) to do... well everything.
  
• Preview the OneDrive API for Work and Life - That a real good news, and I know exactly how I can will use it. Perfect timing...
  
• Extensions for Visual Studio Online, REST APIs for TFS 2015 RC, and more from Build 2015 - Microsoft Application Lifecycle Management - Site Home - MSDN Blogs (Will Smythe) - A concentrated of the latest news about visual studio.
  
• Application Insights now supports ASP.NET v5 applications (Sergey Kanzhelev) - Perfect post to get started.
  
• Introducing Visual Studio Code for Windows, Mac, and Linux (Scott Hanselman) - Quick intro to VisualStudio Code, that was released at Build.
  
• Node.js Tools 1.0 on GitHub and VMs Available  - A very nice tool, if you are doing Node.js it's a must. Even more since it's now included in the Azure community VMs...

Miscellaneous

• Microsoft is becoming cool again  - Interesting post about the "new" Microsoft.

Reading notes #183

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing Azure Service Fabric: Reducing Complexity in a Hyper-scale World (Mark Russinovich) - A very exiting news. I am looking forward to play with that Azure Service Fabric.

Cloud

• Think #Microservices - Very interesting post that explains why microservices are so promissing.
  
• BizTalk in Azure Infrastructure as a Service - Nice post that shares all kinds of scenario for BizTalk in an Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) context.
  
• UPDATED for 2015: How to install the nodejs Ghost blog software on Azure Web Apps (and the Deploy to Azure Button) (Scott Hanselman) - It can be that easy, right? Well, it is!
  
• With Machine Learning, Amazon Wants to Multiply the Power of Big Data (Saroj Kar) - Amazon is joining the machine learning market. the future promise to be interesting.
  
• Tutorial: Using Ant and Jenkins to automate the deployment of Java projects from the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse - MS Open Tech (Martin Sawicki) - Very nice tutorial when java is your thing and Azureyour destination.
  
• Announcing General Availability of Azure Premium Storage - Good news, now we can get more performance from our storage.
  
• Azure PowerShell 101 - Managing the Cloud from the Command Line (Channel 9) (Scott Hanselman) - Great video that shows few tricks to get started with Azure powershell commands.

Programming

• Mobile app privacy insanity – we’re still failing massively at this - Interesting and scaring post about the lack of security in mobile apps.
  
• IoT: Do you really should have knowledge in electronics? (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - Interesting thoughts about how to get started.

Databases

• MongoDB vs. Azure DocumentDB - Interesting post that compares the new kid on the block with an older one.

Miscellaneous

• Windows 10 - The Fast Ring and BUILD 10061 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice video that shows us the evolution of the very processing windows 10.

The first ever Microsoft MVP Virtual Conference

Did you eared about that great free event that Microsoft and the MVPs are putting on in May? On the 14th and 15th (yes two days!), join Microsoft MVPs from the Americas’ region as they share their knowledge and real-world expertise during a free event, the MVP Virtual Conference.

by MVPs, for everyone

 

Gigantic event

The MVP Virtual Conference will showcase 95 sessions of content for IT Pros, Developers and Consumer experts designed to help you navigate life in a mobile-first, cloud-first world.  Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Developer Platform, Steve Guggenheimer, will be on hand to deliver the opening Key Note Address.
 

Still not sure if you will found what you are looking for?

The conference will have 5 tracks:

• IT Pro English
• Dev English
• Consumer English
• Portuguese mixed sessions
• Spanish mixed sessions

There is something for everyone! Learn from the best and brightest MVPs in the tech world today and develop some great skills!

Join Me!

Be sure to register quickly to hold your spot and tell your friends & colleagues.


 
 
 


The conference will be widely covered on social media, you can join the conversation by following @MVPAward and using the hashtag #MVPvConf.

Reading Notes #182

Suggestion of the week

• Orchestrating massive parallelisation of Azure WebJobs for fun and profit (Troy Hunt) - An awesome post. I really like those post where we learn step by step what has been tried and failed, and how to move from point A to Z.

Cloud

• Azure Mobile Services and APIs – RESTful and Custom (Adarsha Datta) - Nice tutorial about how to use Azure service Api and customizes it.
• How Azure Web Apps Hosts an ASP.NET 5 Application (tugberkugurlu.com) - Interesting post th0at shows how aspnet works with Azure under the hood.
  
• NoSQL database service Azure DocumentDB now Generally Available (John Macintyre) - Know everything you need to get started on DocumetDB, now in GA. Nice free import tool was also released.

released the DocumentDB Data Migration tool, an open source solution that imports data from a variety of sources, including JSON files, CSV files, SQL Server, MongoDB and existing DocumentDB collections.

• Mostly Cloudy - April 14th - This post is a nice overview of the Azure actuality for April.
  
• Think #Microservices - Very interesting post that explains why microservices could be so promising.

Programming

• How to Update a Forked Repository (blog.falafel.com) - Nice little how to for Github and sourcetree.
  
• Understanding Internationalization in ASP.NET MVC (About the Author) - Nice tutorial that explains the difference between: Internationalization, localisation, globalisation and how to use them to build a nice app.net website.
  
• New book: Node.js for .NET Developers (KimSpilker Kim Spilker) - Today nodejs is an unavoidable language, this book explains how it works from a c# point of view.

Miscellaneous

• Free ebook: Managing Agile Open-Source Software Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Online (KimSpilker Kim Spilker) - A free book, that's always welcome.
  
• Avoiding Common Executive DevOps Mistakes (Ericka Chickowski) - Interesting post about common mistakes when people are trying to do agile methodology.
  
• Microsoft BUILD Announces #BuildTour (MVP Award Program) - Great news!
  
• Dropbox can now open documents straight into Microsoft Office Online (Dave Yin) - Now that what I call a reel int0egration, and a great feature!

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #181

Suggestion of the week

• MVP Virtual Conference - A date to reserve, this conference look amazing.

Cloud

• The Kudu Debug Console, Azure Websites best kept secret (Jonathan Rozenblit) - This post is a nice introduction to a very useful debugging tool: Kudu.
  
• Node.js and Visual Studio: From Zero to a Cloud Foundry Deployment in 2 Minutes (Richard Seroter) - This great post shows us how to deploy a node.js app as in the same amount of time it took us to read the post.
  
• Azure API App and Logic App. In depth look into Hybrid Connector. Marriage between cloud and on-premise (Saravana Kumar) - Great tutorial / demo of an Azure logic app, the BizTalk way.
  
• First Look at Azure API Apps and Logic Apps (Ricardo Torre) - Great post that explains the similitude and difference between BizTalk and the new Azure Logic App.
  
• Introducing Azure Resource Explorer for the Azure Resource Management APIs (Scott Hanselman) - This project look great! It's a good opportunity to know more about what is happening under the hood. I'm looking forward to knowing more...
  
• Fail fast when the cloud fails you (Troy Hunt) - Very interesting true story about how to investigate an unpredictable problem involving the cloud.
  
• How we deploy Visual Studio Online using Release Management (Buck Hodges) - Interesting post that relates a reel d0eployment process.

Programming

• Node.js development with Visual Studio - Quick post to get stated with the new Node.js tool in Visual Studio.
  
• How to wait for DOM elements to show up in modern browsers - This post that explains how we should wait for an element in modern browser using javascript.
  
• How to Update a Forked Repository (blog.falafel.com) - Nice little howto for Github and Sourcetree.

Miscellaneous

• Making the Complex Simple - Not sure how to "classify" this post, is it a top list of the best bad practices, or literally "du bonbon"? A post to read, and relax.

From Ottawa to Montreal in April 2015

This April two event kept my attention, let me present them.

The MVP Cloud RoadShow - April 11

Where: Ottawa
Register: Meetup

Bored that every one is telling you to move to the cloud, but don't explain how to get there or are how it's working in the cloud?

The MVP Cloud RoadShow, is the perfect opportunity to meet Microsoft Azure MVPs. These specialists will talk about: Intune, Hybrid Identity, Rights Management, SQL Business Intelligence and Building a Lab in Azure.

Here all the information you need on the Meetup page.

Global Azure Bootcamp (Montreal edition) - April 25

Where: Montreal
Register: Meetup

This year is marks the third edition of this great event. In more than 190 locations around the globe, people will develop Cloud Computing applications for Azure, this is definitely a great learning opportunity. Many goods hands-on-labs:

• Infrastructure as a Service in Microsoft Azure (Virtual Machines)
• Getting started with Azure Websites and ASP.NET
• Building a web application with ASP.NET MVC using DocumentDB
• Get Started with the Azure WebJobs SDK
• Get started with Mobile Services
• How to Use Azure Redis Cache
• etc.

For all the detail about the Montreal edition be sure to go on the Meetup page. For more information about the global event go on http://global.azurebootcamp.net/

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #180

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure dev/test scenario considerations (Graham Smith, Kim Spilker) - Very useful articl0e with a lot of information. Many deferent scenarios are explained.

Cloud

• Microsoft Virtual Academy presents Developing Solutions with Azure DocumentDB (Ryan CrawCour) - A date to mark on our calendar. A free deepdive on DocumentDB.
  
• Azure, Cloud and Enterprise Icon Set - Nice icon pack.
  
• Azure Resource Explorer: a new tool to discover the Azure API (David Ebbo) - Nice post that introduces a nice tool. Azure Ressources Explorer is in preview but looks very promising.
  
• Delphi Automotive - Interesting post about IoT and the cloud.
  
• Microsoft Virtual Academy presents Developing Solutions with Azure DocumentDB (Ryan CrawCour) - Free training about documentDB... on the April 7.
  
• Getting interesting data into Azure Machine Learning (AzureML) (jennmar) - Nice post that explains what we needto get started with AzureML.

Programming

• What’s New in Fiddler 4.5 (Eric Lawrence) - Great news, this fantastic tool has just been updated.
  
• Node.js Tools 1.0 for Visual Studios - Nice post that explains how this new addon to Visual studio is helping us to debug our Node.js code.
  
• Continuous Integration for Node.js Projects with TeamCity - Nice tutorial that explains what are our free options to get started.
  
• Getting to know the new ASP.NET 5 configuration framework (Andrei Dzimchuk)- Great post that explains what are the new configuration options with the new .Net and how it works.
  
• On the importance of OpenSearch (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post. Looking forward to see more sites (and blog) using this feature.

Miscellaneous

• 9 Fundamental Laws of Effective Communication Skills - Interesting post about essentials skills.
  
• Microsoft reveals Surface 3 with Windows 8.1, starting at $499 and on sale May 5 - Nothing more to say...
  
• Deconstruct websites, get hired: hiding recruitment messages in source code (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post, and funny facts about site code.

~Frank B.

Microsoft Azure MVP 2015

With April came the MVP nominations, and I'm very happy to receive the 2015 Microsoft Azure MVP award, and to join the great MVP's family.

I would like to thanks everyone who helps me to share my passion, push me to always move forward, stimulate me to get outside my comfort zone to meet other passionate around the globe. Be sure that this is only the beginning!

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs is an award that Microsoft gives to exceptional, independent community leaders who share their passion, technical expertise, and real-world knowledge of Microsoft products with others. It is part of Microsoft’s commitment to supporting and enriching technical communities.

To know more about the MVP program, or to know how you could become an MVP, visit Microsoft MVP website.


See you soon.

~ Frank B

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 #178

Suggestion of the week

• Scaling #Azure Cloud Services to Zero - This post is a really important piece of the puzzle that a lot of us don't see clearly.
  
• The Zen of Code Reviews: Pre-Review Comments (Michael Sorens) - Very interesting post that all developers should read. This post is a must.

Cloud

• Application Insights: Moving from Visual Studio Online Portal to Azure Preview Portal (Rahul Bagaria) - This move is a good decision. It will simplify things.
  
• New additions to the Azure VM PowerShell DSC Extension (Kundana Palagiri) - Great news, very powerful command.
  
• Getting admin by adding a new user to sudoers when you're locked out of an Azure Linux VM (Scott Hanselman) - Oh! That a really nice ninja trick!
  
• Pragmatic IoT on Azure Part 1: Introduction - A truly interesting post about a very popular topic, a series to follow...

Programming

• Understanding ASP.NET 5 middleware (Andrei Dzimchuk) - Very nice tutorial about how to implement a middleware in AspNet.
  
• Rapid PowerShell Development with ISESteroids (Tobias Weltner) - An incredible tool that every developer should know and try.
  
• Bitbucket Launches Snippets for Teams (Steffen Opel) - An interesting new feature that a lot of people were waiting for...

Miscellaneous

• Tragedies of the Remote Worker: "Looks like you're the only one on the call" (Scott Hanselman) - As a remote worker myself, I can say that if feel less alone in my loneliness... ;)
  
• Wake Up and Get S#!t Done – A Practice of Awesome (James Chambers) - Wow. Your are I mind reader! I love this post.

~Frank

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.

Tons of statistics and metrics for Microsoft Azure websites (not only Asp.Net)

Your website is finally online. That great, good job. But now, you have a lot of questions: How much visits do I have? Which part of the site is mostly visited? Does the site performs well? In this post, I will show you some tools that exist in Microsoft Azure that will help you to get some answers.

Request and Error

When you create a website in Azure, you automatically got some monitoring. Go on portal.azure.com (the preview portal), and select your website.



This will be useful to see how many requests and errors you got. You could create some alerts, by clicking the "+" sign, and you would be notified by e-mail if the number of request is greater than x, over the last hour.

Analytics

The first time you will click on this section all the instruction will be given to you.

To collect end-user usage analytics about your application, insert the following script into each page you want to track. Place this code immediately before the closing </headtag, and before any other scripts. Your first data will appear automatically in just a few seconds.

To get analytics for the whole web site, in an Asp.Net MVC site, a good place will be: \Views\Shared\_Layout.cshtml.

In a Ghost blog, if you are using the default theme, the file will be /content/themes/casper/default.hbs. Otherwise, just replace "casper" by your theme name in the path.

Once your website is re-deployed, re-open the website blade and click again on the Analytics graph. And you will be able to see a lot of information: Session per browser, information on page's views, slowest pages, details on sessions, etc.





When you click on a graph, the Metrics Explorer blade will be visible. On the top of this blade, you will have many different options to customize your results. You will be able to add a chart, change the time range, add some filter and even set some alerts.





Moreover, if you click on those Charts, tables or even on a row, you will have more details and options to fine-tune the result.

Application Insights

You thought it was enough? Well, Microsoft Azure still has one more tool for you, that will cover in this post: Application Insights. With this one, you will be able to see the health of your application by adding some tests, custom events, logs, errors, etc.
Adding Application Insights to your Asp.Net website, can easily be done via Visual Studio, like I explained in a previous post.

Since Azure is compatible with many different languages, chances are that you are using one of those. Let say you are running a node.js Ghost blog, how could you add Application Insights? By using website extensions. To add an extension you could use the Kudu interface. This interface is easy to access. In a browser, type the URL of the website but inject "scm" between the name of the application and the azurewebsites.net. Something like http://mybookmanager.scm.azurewebsites.net/





Once you are in the Kudu interface, click on the tab Site Extensions, then section Gallery. Add the Application Insights Extension.
It's also possible to add a website extension using the website blade.





This will gives you a lot of information already, but to add more customs metric in .Net by sure to add the Application Insights SDK to your porject. In node.js use the applicationinsights package from npm,

~Frank Boucher

References

• Microsoft Azure
• Ghost
• Application Insights Extension
• Write custom telemetry with Application Insights API
• Applicationinsights package (npm)
• Kudu

Reading Notes #176

Suggestion of the week

• Autoscaling Azure–Virtual Machines (Kirk Evans) - Great tutorial that explains very clearly how to work scaling with azure vms.

Cloud

• Announcing Azure Preview Portal Improvements (February Update) (Leon Welicki) - A really nice update, good work.
  
• Introducing Get-AzureVMDscExtensionStatus cmdlet for Azure Powershell DSC Extension - Windows PowerShell Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs - Great, very useful new command.
  
• Using Windows Azure Mobile Services in ASP.NET MVC (Mahesh Sabnis) - Nice tutorial that shows how versatile are Azure Mobile Services.

Programming

• Make Debugging Faster with Visual Studio (Andrew B Hall) - A big deep dive in fine tuning Visual Studio to get the best performance session.
  
• Simplicity Principles and Anti-Patterns (Timothy Klenke) - Nice post that talks about pattern and anti-pattern, because simpler is often the better.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Thinking Tools for Minimizing Dependencies Between Products - (Mike Cottmeyer) - Interesting post about products planning best practices.
  
• One Example of How to Use an Agile Tool with Balance (peter) - Interesting post about how a team is using Jira.

~Frank B

Reading Notes #175

Cloud

• Running the Ruby Middleman Static Site Generator on Microsoft Azure (Scott Hanselman) - Really nice post. It looks very fun. It's amazing what we can do with git and Azure!

• Lift and Shift of a Windows Service to Microsoft #Azure (Alexandre Brisebois) - Nice tutorial with a lot of clear explications for every step.

• Another reason to like azure web sites - free analytics - Nice quick post that summarizes a great Azure Friday episode about statistics.

• Using Stream Analytics with Event Hubs (Kirk Evans) - Great post that plays with both Azure event hub and azure stream analytics.

Programming

• Proper benchmarking to diagnose and solve a .NET serialization bottleneck (Scott Hanselman) - Another great post that will help to ask ourselves some better question when it's time to investigate so performance issue.

• Atom-Shell for cross platform desktop apps with Paul Betts (Scott Hanselman, Paul Betts) - Nice episode that clarifies things around Atom-Shell.

• Bad Practices Building Microservices (Jan Stenberg) - Interesting post that talks about what why shouldn't be doing.

Miscellaneous

• Becoming Great Remote Developer - Interesting thoughts and tips about remote work.

• Microsoft or Google? - This post shares some thoughts about a very common question that a lot of people are asking.

~Frank