Browse by Tags

Abstract: Brian Hitney and Peter Laudati review and demo some of the latest updates and features made to Windows Azure such as the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service, Azure Web Sites, the Azure SDK 2.0 for .NET and the new ...read more

I’ve gotten a few requests about how to do a mashup in Dark Skies … so, thought I’d do a blog post on how it was put together. First, what’s a mashup? A mashup is an application that combines data from multiple sources into what is, hopefully, a more ...read more

Let’s see how long it takes Jim Christopher to jump in with a better PowerShell solution. :) I had a directory full of .avi files that contains RAW, uncompressed data at 60fps from a camera (for astroimaging). Even capturing just a few minutes of data ...read more

When developing locally, often times you don’t want to use SSL for a variety of reasons.  There’s no real point, since the request isn’t going over the wire.  Most of the time, connections are done via the loopback 127.0.0.1 address (although ...read more

A lot of apps require internet connectivity to function – like my app, Dark Skies .   One thing I overlooked when first releasing Dark Skies was a graceful check for network connectivity.  If the app launches and there is no connectivity ...read more

In the first post , we introduced the problem.  We’re writing a program that solves the problem of finding 100 point words, where each letter in the word corresponds to its position in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, Z=26).  In the second post , we ...read more

In my last post , I introduced the problem we’re trying to solve via an introductory computer program:  finding 100 point words where each letter of the alphabet corresponds to its place in the alphabet (A=1, B=2 … Z=26).  At this point, we ...read more

Microsoft RD Jim Duffy and I are hosting a series of events, kicking off with a Windows 8 DevCamp in Raleigh on Sept 25th!  I’m the brains, Jim is the talent, so don’t miss it.  Sign up here!  (Just kidding about Jim being the talent ) ...read more

My daughter, a 5th grader, has shown an occasional interest in programming but having so many frameworks and platforms available today is both a blessing and a curse.  I began to learn programming by hacking Maxit, Hunt the Wumpus, Adventure, and ...read more

The Windows Azure team recently posted about the Windows Azure Trust Center .   One of the most frequent conversations that comes up when discussing moving applications to the cloud revolves around security and compliance, and it’s also one ...read more

On most (or perhaps even all?) of the production servers I’ve worked on, antivirus/antimalware detection apps are often not installed for a variety of reasons – performance, risk of false positives or certain processes getting closed down unexpectedly ...read more

Two years ago, Jim O’neil and I developed a quick Azure training program called “@home with Windows Azure” – a way to learn Windows Azure and have some fun contributing to a well known distributed computing effort, Folding@home .  A few months later ...read more

I love Windows Home Server.   I’ve been using Windows Home Server for years, and just purchased a Windows Home Server 2011 (WHS) box from Newegg (great deal on a HP Proliant micro server).  Many have asked me why I like WHS so much – it ...read more

Jim , Peter , and I are gearing up for another road trip to spread the goodness that is Windows Azure! The Windows Azure DevCamp series launched recently with a two-day event in Silicon Valley, and we’re jumping on the bandwagon for the East Region. We ...read more

One of the great new features of the Windows Azure platform is the Azure Traffic Manager, a geo load balancer and durability solution for your cloud solutions.  For any large website, managing traffic globally is critical to the architecture for ...read more

Many years ago, I was a reasonably active person in computer chess and OTB (over-the-board) chess playing, though admittedly I was more interested in the computer science behind chess rather than my own chess playing strength.   I owe this resurgence ...read more

Thanks to the folks at Infragistics , there’s a new reporting site for Worldmaps!   This Silverlight application not only looks great, but provides many new ways to drill down into the data: One of the cool things you can do is easily compare ...read more

I recently sat down with Peter Laudati, my cloud colleague up in the NY/NJ area, and discussed Worldmaps and the migration to the cloud in Peter’s and Dmitry’s Connected Show podcast .   Thanks guys for the opportunity! Connected Show - Episode ...read more

Over the long weekend I decided to start cleaning out the garage – a project, by my estimates, will take several years to complete.  I came across some old software that has been hiding in some box for … well, decades.  I found many 5 1/4” floppy ...read more

Most of the people who know me know I’ve invested a lot of my time in Windows Azure.  “I’m all in.”  :)   Last year, we began doing presentations on Azure after it was announced at PDC 2008.  Over the months, from SDS to SQL Azure ...read more

I’ve had a number of requests for slides and resources for the recent Azure roadshow in NC and FL – here are the slides and resources.  The slides are for sessions 2 and 3: slides.zip Worldmaps application:  http://www.myworldmaps.net Stumbler ...read more