Blogs|Mar 12, 2018

Implement a CAPTCHA with Azure Functions

CAPTCHA’sĀ are those things that site administrators love because they stop comment and form spam but user hate because they are impossible to read. Regardless though, they have become a mainstay in Internet usage, particularly on websites that allow for unauthenticated feedback. CAPTCHA’s are intended to prevent automated responses from computers by generating a test that…
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Blogs|Mar 7, 2018

Host a Website with Azure Functions and Node.JS, Part 2 — Logging

In part 1 of this series, we looked at how you could use Azure Functions to host a static website. The function basically served up static files it read off the file system and delivered them as HTTP responses. Websites though are not complete without logging! Logging is already supported in functions when one calls…
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Blogs|Mar 2, 2018

Host a Website with Azure Functions and Node.JS, Part 1

Azure Functions are Microsoft’s answer to “serverless” computing. Functions enable applications developers to write event-driven code (ie. “functions”) than can be triggered by timers, manual integration, HTTP requests, service buses, message queues and many other integration points. These functions can be written in a number of different languages including C#, NodeJS (which this example uses),…
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How To|Feb 19, 2018

Getting Started with Kubernetes Webinar

In this intro to Kubernetes webinar, weā€™ll give you a primer on Kubernetes and show you how to get started using Kubernetes for container orchestration. Weā€™ll talk about the pieces of Kubernetes, show you how they work together, and finally show you how you can get your containers running on Kubernetes locally and in a…
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Blogs|Feb 18, 2018

Building on App Center

In my previous (and first) blog post on App Center I talked about getting started, adding the SDK to your code, and looking at Analytics and Crash reporting.Ā  In this post I’d like to discuss building your app on App Center; which allows you to distribute your app to Beta testers and others. There are…
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Choices
How To|Feb 14, 2018

Choosing Between Containers and Serverless

Choosing the right tool for the job is not always as easy as it seems. Sometimes, there is more than one tool for doing something, and such is the case for cloud-based applications. In my last “Choosing between” post, I looked out how to choose between containers and virtual machines, and here the same tension…
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Blogs|Jan 31, 2018

Handling “Open File – Security Warning”

It seems like a simple enough task. Use an Azure File share to store an executable and use a PowerShell script to execute the application on a new virtual machines. In practice, however, you might find that the executable is quietly failing to run. Running the executable on the server manually, the problem becomes apparent…
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How To|Jan 31, 2018

Data Analysis in Python with Pandas Webinar

Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI are all trends dominating modern computing and revolve around one important thing ā€“ data. All that data needs, is to be cleaned, and transformed in specific ways, to take full advantage of the algorithms available. During this webinar, weā€™ll cover Pandas, one of the best libraries in Python to…
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Blogs|Jan 29, 2018

Getting Started with VS App Center

There is no doubt that Microsoft’s VS App Center is an incredible resource for mobile application programmers.Ā  The problem is that it seems hard to get started.Ā  The good news is that once you get started, it turns out to be wicked easy! For this blog post, I’m going to assume that you are already…
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Docker + Python
Blogs|Dec 20, 2017

Containerize a Python App in 5 Minutes

Python for better or worse has found cemented itself as the lingua franca of data science. With its rise in popularity also comes how it is deployed. Simultaneously with the rise in Python has also been the rise in container deployments. Like Python, containers are being used in data science as well to run processes…
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Node Docker
Blogs|Dec 4, 2017

Containerize a Node App in 5 Minutes

Node and Docker are a match made in heaven because the strengths of Node play to the strengths of Docker. Node microservices typically are built on top of the Express web server which can be configured with ā€œjust enoughā€ server and run an application. Additionally, the Node package manager, NPM, makes installing and running Node…
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Blogs|Nov 28, 2017

Creating Web Apps for Your Machine Learning Models with Dash

In the last post, we created APIs for our machine learning models so they could be deployed and clients could invoke them. However, what if you just wanted a simple web page that included interactive and attractive graphs? Thatā€™s where Dash comes to the rescue. Dash is similar to Shiny, a framework to build interactive…
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