Whether you’re an experienced developer with years of programming experience, or you’ve never written a line of code in your life, this video shows just how easy it is to use the ZipApp tool to create beautiful apps that can bring in all your content: twitter, videos, pictures, blogs, articles – it’s...

We’re running another camp for IT Pros who need to get up to speed with Windows Azure. At the end of the day you’ll walk away from the camp with a complete Sharepoint infrastructure deployed with AD, SQL Server and a Sharepoint Farm of 2 servers. It’s basically your first pop-up lab. They are great days...

I notice so many people using the terms “Windows Azure VM Role” and “Windows Azure Virtual Machines” interchangeably; as if they are the same thing. They’re not. And maybe that’s what describes a tiny bit of the confusion regarding the death of VM Role. Windows Azure Virtual Machines are often described...

I thought this would be interesting since WIndows Azure VMs and Virtual Networks were released as a Generally Available (GA ) service With the diagrams live-drawn in “cartoony” format, this video shows how to build a really simple lab consisting of 2 IIS web servers connected to a load balancer with...

Here’s the video of my DevWeek talk on Azure Websites.

Posterous was bought by Twitter on the 12th March last year and is about to be shut down on the 30th April this year. If you have a blog on Posterous Spaces, you have until the 30th April to move it. After that date, your content will be gone and it will no longer be possible to get hold of it. If you...

Devs, IT Pros, Architects, Marketeers, Salespeople, Business-oriented people – they are all rapidly becoming part of the pop-up lab phenomenon. Until now it was very difficult for private individuals with an interest (whether casual or professional) in large-scale IT, to build large IT labs – the capital...

Young children read pop up books; books whose pages pop up in to some form of structure for the child to admire and then pop back in again when the page is turned. As the page is turned it produces a different structure. Perhaps the first one was a lion or a space-rocket. The next page would probably...

18th March – Reading, UK. You’ve got your beautiful new app ready to run on a tablet, smartphone or other mobile device, and are ready to hook into an infrastructure cloud service for the back-end. Your main concern is making sure it’s reliable - you can’t risk even a small chance of an outage of your...

I was at the TIGA gaming conference with Rob Fraser who was a speaker addressing “realising the opportunity afforded to games developers by exploiting the cloud”. I took a couple of FlipCams and screen capture software to edit together this talk. A couple of rough edges here and there, but very watchable...

I’m sure we’ve all seen Computeractive on the shelves of our newsagents. When Microsoft releases a new version of Windows, Computeractive does a feature article. This time as well as the print article, they’ve developed a Windows 8 application that uses an Azure back end to deliver video lessons straight...

The 4th step in Microsoft UK’s “6 Steps to Azure” programme, concentrating on Open Source software is to run as an in-person event on the 11th February in London. There is a great line-up of community speakers, all involved in the UK Windows Azure User Group, who will bring the real-world, roll-your...

Who is this camp for? You’ve probably heard of Windows Azure but not done anything with it. Maybe you’ve seen a few demos at an event or an online video. Maybe you’ve even got as far as trying the introductory lab in the freely downloadable training kit. But now you are at the stage of wanting to get...

I posted this video on to Channel 9 before Christmas but I can see something has gone wrong with the indexing and it’s pretty undiscoverable on the site. Thought I’d make it known through the blog.

Six Steps to Windows Azure launched last week with over 160 attendees over the 2 days at our London kick off events which were run in partnership with the UK Windows Azure User Group.  Our first event Azure in the Real World showcased some fantastic real life solutions. Our second day focused on...

We’ve just announced a fresh round of free one-day hands-on camps in the UK for Windows Azure developers and IT Pros.     Windows Azure Camps for developers: Join us at a developer camp which focuses on the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) features of Windows Azure. Mostly this means Windows Azure...

The IT Pro camps have proved super-popular. One of them filled within 10 minutes of its announcement on the blogs of my colleagues Simon May and Andrew Fryer. SO there will be online sessions added to the schedule. These are running on the 30th and 31st October. Day One (30th October) 9:30 –12:30 Windows...

  This camp is aimed at the IT Pro. On it you will build and deploy an entire SharePoint infrastructure with a dual-machine server-farm, Active Directory Domain Controller and SQL Server. On the road to that infrastructure you will create a dual-server, load-balanced IIS website, a WIndows Azure...

Yes – we’re now looking after the IT Pro with Azure! If you just want to register – go here : If you want more info – have a read of the text below, or go to http://azurecampsuk.azurewebsites.net for the same. Here is a video to give you a feel for what a camp is like.   UK Windows Azure Camps We...

  Just a reminder that the first of the latest round of free UK Windows Azure Developer Camps kicks off next week in our London Office in Victoria. The Windows Azure Developer Camp will take you from knowing nothing about the cloud to actually having deployed a simple application to the cloud and...

A description of the new elements in the Virtual Machines features of the Windows Azure June 2012 release, all done in that cartoony format that the original June Release Azure Video was done in.   Planky

Anybody who was there knows the demo in the talk I gave timed out. So I’ve done it again and added it to the talk using the magic of video editing! With all the excitement around the IaaS features such as Virtual Machines and Virtual Network, and then the added cool of Azure Websites, it seemed to me...

Includes IaaS Virtual Machines, Virtual Network, Web Sites, Cloud Services, Identity, Service Bus, Cache and so on.

I just heard from James Conard in our corporate headquarters that the June 2012 version of the Windows Azure training kit has been officially released. The June 2012 update includes 42 step-by-step hands-on labs and 20 presentations covering the new Windows Azure features.  Some of the highlights...

My 11 year-old son was watching videos of Minecraft on YouTube the other day when my wife asked him “…what happens to all the rubbish videos on YouTube? Do they keep them?”. “Yes of course they do” came his reply. My wife quizzed further – “but isn’t that just a load of rubbish that’s taking up resources...