Reading Notes 2012-12-24

You will find below different links to the blog or Web site which kept Matricis' bloggers interest during the week ending on December, 24th.

Cloud

• Subscribe! (Clement Vasters) – An amazing new serie about the Windows Azure Service Bus, really good video.
  • Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 1: The Portal
  • Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 2: .NET SDK and Visual Studio
  • Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 3: Service Bus Explorer
  • Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 4: Queues
  • Getting Started with Service Bus. Part 5: Topics
  • Getting Started with Service Bus. (Final) Part 6: Relay

• New Windows Azure PowerShell Update – December 2012 (Michael Washam) – Nice update to the Azure PowerShell tool that gives more options to manage Virtual machine and Service Bus.
• Table Storage 2.0 (Tyler Doerksen) – Nice post that explains the new structure of the namespace in the library and gives some samples of code.
• Practical Azure #5: Windows Azure SQL Database – Perfect get started video about Azure SQL Database.
• Storing user uploads in Windows Azure blob storage (Maarten Balliauw) – Great solution to a simple real world question. Easily scalable and secure. I really liked it!
• Azure Remote PowerShell (Dustin Metzgar) – This post explains how the author managed to get more information from an instance running in Azure. The code sample is also available.
• PaaS not cheap enough? AppFog has a deal for you! (Barb Darrow) – New lower prices for Cloud Foundry.
• Applications are now open for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure – 2013 (Scott Gu)- Great opportunity for business to start using Azure with a lot of resources.
• Cross-Post: Announcing Windows Azure Media Player framework Preview for iOS (Craig Kitterman) – Great new for iOS developers that can now enjoy the awesome Azure Media Services.
• Deploy an on-premise VM to Windows Azure with App Controller (John Joyner) – Hurray! A lot of people were waiting for this feature! 

Programming

• 10 skills for developers to focus on in 2013 (Justin James) – Developers, if you didn't see these coming, here is the top list of what you should learn/ improve in 2013.
• Why All The Lambdas? – This post explains very clearly how the lambdas are so useful by using a well use sample of code in Asp. Net MVC @Html.TextBoxFor(Model.Rating).
• Use Big Data to gain insight about small business customers (David Gitonga) – Interesting post that explains how BigData could help you in your business… even if you are in a small company.
• What Refactoring is, and what it isn’t – According to Kent Beck and Martin Fowler (Jim Bird) – While doing some refac****. I mean re writing in a project. I found this post to be really interesting… and actual.
• 10 Tools To Get Kids Excited About Programming (Saikat Basu) – Wow those are great! I'm excited to show some of these to my kid. It's always good to transit passion
• Essential Command-Line Tools for Web Developers – Interesting tools that can save a lot of time doing repetitive tasks, specially during web development.
• JQUERY 1.9 BETA 1 RELEASED – Nice jQuery 1.9 is coming. Learn all about the new features ex: the multiple getter. Since big structural changes are maid in this version, the jQuery team is providing migration tools. Learn where to find these and how to use them in this post.
• Recreate a VM .. over and over again (Priyo Lahiri) – Nice script that is a time saver. I would have liked to have it one month ago when I was testing deployment… Let's keep it for the future.
• So long and thanks for the all the Expression… Expression Design & Web are End of Life'd (but now free) [oh, and the rest of the Expression Suite is dead too] – If you are still using VS2010 it's a good time to download Blend now. Also I wonder what application will replace/take the lead instead of SuperPreview (in Expression Web)? 
• Windows Azure Import/Export Service and External References – Important notice that can save you a lot of time when exporting a database in Windows Azure.
• Available Today: SSDT—December 2012 – New updated version of SQL Server Data Tool (SSDT) now support unit testing.
• Getting Started with SQL Server Database Unit Testing in SSDT – Nice post that explains how to get started with the new testing features available in SQL Server Data Tool. From converting the 2010 test projects to customization. 

Integration

• BizTalk360 Deployment and Configuration best practices (Saravana Kumar) – You must read/bookmark this great post. It explains all the best practices related to BizTalk360, all in one single post. 

Miscellaneous

• 15 Social Media Mistakes that are Strangling Your Success (Georgina Laidlaw) – This post suggested simple "rules" that are easy to follow, and that will make you more likeable on social media.
• Surface & iPad Collision Course – Nice post that compares what could be compared beween an iPad and a Surface… Nothing unexpected put still something to read.
• Backing Up WordPress? Don’t Make These 9 Mistakes – If you are a developer, you probably backup your machines and your code. That is good. Do you do the same for your blog? You should, here is how to do it the good way. 

These posts are from François Boucher. François Boucher's posts are also posted on http://www.frankysnotes.com/2012/12/reading-notes-76.html.