azure-and-cloud-computing|Nov 25, 2015

Azure PowerShell 1.0 and Azure Portal Enhancements Released

Microsoft has released the 1.0 version of the Azure PowerShell cmdlets for automating processes with Azure including better support for Resource Manager, VM disk encryption with Azure Vault, and inclusion of Azure Data Lake and Notification Hub cmdlets.  Also released were new user experience improvements in the Azure Preview Portal such as notification enhancements and…
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c|Nov 23, 2015

Connect() 2015 Videos Available

Microsoft’s Connect() conference last week included not only the keynote with the announcements but more than 60 individual breakout sessions on technologies from Azure to Office365.  Those videos are available now for streaming on Channel 9.  The format for the videos include several Q&A sessions with the keynote speakers such as Scott Guthrie, Anders Hejlsberg,…
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machine-learning|Nov 18, 2015

Visual Studio Code Goes Open Source and more from Microsoft Connect() 2015

Microsoft is holding it’s 2015 Connect() virtual conference today which was kicked off by a lengthy keynote from Scott Guthrie.  In the keynote there were several new announcements including a sneak peek into Visual Studio 2015 Update 1, new features in Visual Studio Code, and a new model for getting Microsoft developer tools.  Here’s an…
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How To|Nov 16, 2015

Azure Event Hubs Primer

Event Hubs are part of the Azure Service Bus service and are designed for extremely high speed ingestion of data such as in an IoT environment.  At full scale, they can process 1 million events per second and are the basis for Azure’s Application Insights service.  Event Hubs implement a stream model that can be…
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How To|Nov 6, 2015

First Impressions of the Xamarin Inspector

One of the pain points of using Xamarin Forms is that, just to see updates of any UI updates via XAML, you still need to save your changes, recompile, and relaunch the application. What’s more, is that you’d have to do this on each platform you’re targeting to make sure the UI looks good on…
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News|Nov 3, 2015

Microsoft Connect() Virtual Conference Preview

Last year Microsoft reached out to developers via a global virtual conference aptly named Connect().  During that conference they announced the .NET Open Source initiatives for Linux and Mac and also revealed the Visual Studio Code editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  This year’s conference promises more revelations with keynotes and presentations from developer favorites like…
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news|Nov 2, 2015

Cloud Foundry for Azure Released

Microsoft has announced general availability of the open source DevOps platform Cloud Foundry for Azure.  Microsoft has worked with the Cloud Foundry community to provide Resource Manager Templates to enable fast deployment of BOSH tools. By merging the Azure Cloud Provider Interface (CPI) into the upstream, open source Cloud Foundry repository, Cloud Foundry on Azure…
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survey|Oct 28, 2015

Has Microsoft’s Recent Successes Inspired New Developer Enthusiasm?

For years Microsoft was seen as a corporate monster gobbling up young startups and generally stumbling into markets either too early, as in the case of tablets or too late, as in the case of smart phone hardware.  As a result companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung now rule the consumer electronics space and with them have…
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News|Oct 26, 2015

New Microsoft Project Oxford Features including Open Source SDKs

Microsoft has announced new features for their Language Understanding Intelligent Services (the natural language engine that powers Cortana) as it comes into public beta.  New features include Chinese language support, the ability to import and export langage-to-system data as JSON objects, and increased usage of internally built language models.  They have also open sourced the SDK code…
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net|Oct 22, 2015

Claim Up To $15,000 In CoreCLR and ASP.NET 5 Bug Bounty!

Now you can join the ranks of Boba Fett and Dog the Bounty Hunter!  Microsoft is taking the stability of their open source CoreCLR and ASP.NET 5 stacks to the people by offering up cash rewards for developers who can find, and prove, defects in the CoreCLR or ASP.NET 5.  Not every bug is created…
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How To|Oct 20, 2015

What Developers Need to Know About Docker

Docker is an application virtualization service based on features of the Linux operating system.  It provides a way to share a host OS, and using a virtualized filesystem, install and run Linux based apps in an isolated environment called a container.    The following diagram shows how Docker is different from Virtual Machines. Docker Architecture Docker…
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