Part 1 covered a few fundamental aspects of Android and Windows 8 development from the perspective of applications that are self-contained. In part 2 we will focus on the application integration with external services through the platform’s built-in networking...

Introduction This two-part series ( Part 1 & Part 2 ) is aimed at the Android developers who are looking for opportunities to build Windows Store applications. In order for the easy onboarding of an Android developer to the Windows 8 platform, we...

Brad Calder, a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft,  recently blogged about higher scalability targets for Azure Storage enabled by Flat Network architecture: Windows Azure’s Flat Network Storage and 2012 Scalability Targets . Windows Azure’s implementation...

Many of you may be thinking of deploying SharePoint farms on Windows Azure Virtual Machines… here are three hands-on-labs that will speed up your learning on this subject:  1. Active Directory Set up: https://github.com/WindowsAzure-TrainingKit/HOL...

A colleague of mine, Aaron Stannard,  posted an excellent article on managing Windows Azure hosted services from Mac, Linux and Windows: http://www.aaronstannard.com/post/2012/06/08/Managing-Your-Windows-Azure-Services-from-OS-X-Linux-or-Windows...

Linux deployment on Windows Azure requires PEM or DER encoded x509 public key at the provisioning time to enable authenticated remote login through SSH. This  post is complimentary to http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/linux/how-to-guides/ssh...

Here is the process for signing up to the Azure Virtual Machines feature: Step 1: Log into the portal and display the management console Step 2: Click on “Visit the Preview Portal” in the footer. Step 2: Click on "+NEW” Step 3: Hover your cursor...

Bill Laing, Corp VP, Server and Tools Business announced today about the availability of Windows Azure Virtual Machines, Windows Azure Virtual Network, Windows Azure Web Sites, and a whole lot of enhancements through his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b...

Introduction This post is inspired by Tomasz’s Hosting Node Applications on IIS write up that focused on the benefits of running Node.js on Windows server through iisnode. In this post, I wanted to focus on giving it a Windows Azure color and list the...

Here are a list of products, in no particular order, which will help improve the quality of end user experience for Azure hosted applications. This list is an organic aggregation of tribal knowledge and is not a definitive one. If you have any suggestions...

A colleague of mine Brian had put together this nice Azure Service Bus demo: http://www.brianloesgen.com/blog/2012/1/23/new-azure-servicebus-demo-available.html -Hanu

My colleague Peter put together the following list of useful SQL Azure resources: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/peterlau/archive/2012/02/28/get-started-with-sql-azure-resources.aspx   Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing , SQL Azure , Windows Azure

  MSDN subscribers get to try Windows Azure through this free offer: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/msdn-benefits/ . -Hanu

Here is a list of CMS systems that are available on Windows Azure from various ISVs: Ektron CMS for .NET on Windows Azure: http://www.ektron.com/Solutions/Technology-and-features/Features-and-Tools/Ektron-Azure-Edition/ Telerik Sitefinity: http://www...

Just come across the following resources and thought these might be useful for others as well: Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games: http://watgames.codeplex.com Windows Azure Social Gaming: http://windowsazure.com/social-games A Reference Game Implementation...

  Technical Overview of the Security Features in the Windows Azure Platform: http://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/?langid=en-us&docid=11 . Windows Azure Security Overview: http://www.globalfoundationservices.com/security/documents/WindowsAzureSecurityOverview1_0Aug2010...

This is a nice reminder to me as well and thought it might be useful to you as well: http://www.globalknowledge.com/articles/generic.asp?pageid=3010&country=United+States

When network administrators shutdown your internet access due to a bot or rootkit infection and suggest you some internet based tools, you are in a paradoxical situation. I am sure you already experienced this if you have kids in college   Here is...

Microsoft press release is located here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jun11/06-01corporatenews.aspx Technorati Tags: Windows 8 , BUILD , PDC 2011 , PDC2011

Just come across this tool from Microsoft research: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/5c8189b9-53aa-4d6a-a086-013d927e15a7/default.aspx . This desktop utility measures your upload and download throughput from your computer and Windows Azure...

  Keynote Tech·Ed North America 2011 Keynote Address Don't miss the opportunity to hear from two senior Microsoft leaders -- Corporate Vice President,Server and Tools Marketing,Robert Wahbe and Corporate Vice President,Visual Studio,Jason Zander...

Benefits of cloud computing are often outlined at a great detail as understood by business leaders and IT leaders. However, very little coverage can be found on the benefits that can be related to developers and architects. Here is an article I wrote...

Joe Belfiore announced the Mango features including the following at MIX 11 : IE9 support leverages HTML5 rendering engine similar to the one on desktop. That means hardware accelerated HTML5 Audio and Video (H264) playback is supported without the need...

Microsoft just announced Windows Azure Traffic Manager CTP (Community Technology Preview) during the keynote at MIX 11. The Traffic Manager allows the deployment of the same application to topologically dispersed data centers enabling the distribution...

At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference today, Microsoft announced IIS Smooth Streaming through Windows Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network) infrastructure. Previously Windows Azure CDN only supported structured and unstructured file...