Developing in Windows Azure is at once not that much different from what you’re familiar with in on-premises systems, and different in significant ways. Because of these differences, developers often ask about the specific process to develop and deploy...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for January 2012 was: The Elements of Persuasion by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman...

I recently joined a software development project that involves not only myself and other internal Microsoft employees, but a partner and a customer as well. We are building a hybrid solution that uses assets on premises as well as Windows Azure for processing...

I served in the U.S. Military for a while, and as part of my training we had to maintain a “Bug-Out Bag”, which was a large duffle-bag full of certain items that we could live on/fight with in an emergency. I’ve carried the spirit of that idea forward...

Recently I had an tweetversation with a couple of friends on some confusion around two of our products: SkyDrive and Live Mesh . Like most of our software, there’s no single way to do things. That can be a strength or it can cause that confusion. They...

When I was very young, I asked my uncle for career advice. He went silent, thinking for a bit, and then said: “People who work sitting down make more than people who work standing up.” I’m not certain how true that really is, but my career as a technology...

The new year has begun. It’s traditional to make “Resolutions” at this time, but as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t do that. I make goals instead. I like things to be measurable, and I hold myself accountable to those goals - some of which deal with my...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for December 2011 was: Think Stats, by Allen B. Downey .  Why I chose this Book:...

Windows Azure Storage has three primary components - a Queue, a Binary Large Object (BLOB) store (two types of these), and Table Storage. Storage of data on-premises is fairly well understood - but there components of it that you may not consider. When...

One of the advantages of using Windows Azure to run your code is that you don’t have to constantly manage upgrades on your platform. While that’s a big advantage indeed, it immediately brings up the question - how do the upgrades happen? Microsoft upgrades...

When you create a Windows Azure application, you’ll pick a subscription to put it under. This is a billing container - underneath that, you’ll deploy a Hosted Service. That holds the Web and Worker Roles that you’ll deploy for your applications...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for November 2011 was: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott...

A new term - well, perhaps not that new - has come up and I’m actually very excited about it. The term is Data Scientist, and since it’s new, it’s fairly undefined. I’ll explain what I think it means, and why I’m excited about it. In general, I’ve found...

Note - please pay attention to the date of this post. As much as I attempt to make the information below accurate, the nature of distributed computing means that components, units and pricing will change over time. The definitive costs for Microsoft Windows...

I’ve explained before that Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service - at its simplest, that means that you write software and Azure runs it for you. But what if you are a shop that normally buys “off the shelf” software, and the only software you write...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for October 2011 was: The Cloud of Unknowing, Anonymous : The role of faith in life. Once...

Fair warning: This isn’t a technical post. This is my opinion, and not Microsoft’s. I’ve been a public speaker at events since 1980. Interestingly, even though I’ve done this, it’s never been my paid job. I’ve spoken...

Last week Microsoft announced several new offerings for “Big Data” - and since I’m a stickler for definitions, I wanted to make sure I understood what that really means. What is “Big Data”? What size hard drive is that? After all, my laptop has 1TB of...

The Windows Azure Queue component, like all Windows Azure components (Roles, Storage, App Fabric, SQL Azure) can be used by itself or with other Windows Azure components. That’s why I refer to Windows Azure as “Distributed Computing” rather than “cloud...

One of the most natural development use-cases for the Windows Azure platform is with mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets and even embedded computers in cars and other devices. The reason this paradigm works so well is that most mobile devices...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for August 2011 was: Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden...

I was asked recently how to query SQL Azure along with an on-premise data source. There are actually lots of ways to do this, but a quick and simple method is to use LINQ - or Language Integrated Query. There are always pro's and con's for any data access...

As most of you know, I don’t like the term “cloud” very much. It isn’t defined, which means it can be anything. I prefer “distributed computing”, which is more technically accurate and describes what you’re doing...

“Git-Go” is something we say in the South that means “right at the start”. I’ve seen several applications for on-premise systems that don’t have much in the way of diagnostics - the developers rely on a debugger, the event logs on the server and client...

This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here . The book I chose for August 2011 was: Favorite Folktales from Around the World, by Jane Yolen . Why I chose...