NJ Geeks - New Jersey's IT Community

Tomorrow is the April meeting of the NYC Windows Azure user group.  The group has been picking up the steam throughout the winter with talks by myself on the Azure Platform and Jim Priestley on Real World Azure Solutions.  Tomorrow night, we’re following it up with Ira Bell discussing Azure and mobility.  Mobile is the hot topic these days whether it’s tablets, phones, or other devices on the go.  Having the cloud tie these things together is enabling all sorts of new user experiences. 

Join us Wednesday evening, April 18th, 2012, for Ira Bell’s talk:

"Azure, Mobility and the Enterprise"

Mobility is at the forefront of strategic initiatives in the enterprise. Connecting people and information across a growing number of devices and systems can be a complex undertaking. Ira Bell will explore how organizations can use Azure to accelerate mobile development.

The NYC Windows Azure User Group meets at the Microsoft NYC Office in mid-town Manhattan at 6:30pm.  The address is 1290 Ave of The Americas, NY, NY 10104.

If you have been thinking about writing a Windows Phone App but didn’t know where to start my fellow teammate, Dani Diaz, has got something for you!  He’s been hosting a webcast series that started on April 3rd.  There are still three left in the series that you can catch live. But via the links below from Dani, you should be able catch the recordings of the previous ones!

Via Dani…

Join us for HackReady, the new online learning series designed for developers to bring you the vital bits you need, without the fluff you won’t miss. Full of key information and demonstrations, this series gives you a solid understanding of the tools, techniques, and resources you need to become HackReady.

The HackReady.Phone series brings you seven episodes, from start to marketplace. Whether you are a new Windows Phone developer thinking about your first app or well on your way to publishing, these sessions help you get there. Join us for one or the whole series—pick and choose as you like.

(Tue 4/3 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 1: Introduction to the Windows Phone Platform (Level 100) -http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone1

(Thur 4/5 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 2: Working with Internal and External Data in Windows Phone (Level 200) -http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone2

(Tue 4/10 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 3: Understanding Windows Phone’s Application Lifecycle and State Management (Level 200) - http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone3

(Thur 4/12 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 4: Working with Windows Phone Sensors and Other APIs (Level 200) -http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone4

(Tue 4/17 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 5: Enhancing the User Experience and App Usability with Live Tiles, Push Notifications, and Background Agents (Level 200) - http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone5

(Thur 4/19 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 6: Enhancing Performance and Application Testing (Level 200) - http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone6

(Tue 4/24 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 7: Ready, Set, Publish: Everything You Need to Know About Releasing Your Apps (Level 200) -http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone7

Don’t you hate OSX’s launchctl? You have to give it exact filenames. The syntax is annoying different from Linux’s nice, simple init system and overly verbose. It’s just not a very developer-friendly tool.

With Lunchy you can start and stop services with ease. Example:

Tip. If you use ZSH and want to stop seeing this message:

You can add this alias:

we recommend using PostgreSQL (or some traditional RDBMS) first, then investigating other solutions if and when you find them necessary

Age-old advice: don’t worry about scaling until you have scaling issues.

On March 15th, the Microsoft Store announced they are opening new stores in New Jersey!  The two newest stores will be in Freehold, NJ at the Freehold Raceway Mall and in Bridgewater, NJ at the Bridgewater Commons Mall.

You can read the news in the Jersey Shore’s paper of record: The Asbury Park Press

I was at the Freehold Raceway Mall this past weekend, and the temporary store front looks great!

For anyone that uses Microsoft products (pretty much MOST folks!), it will be great to have these new stores in the area finally!  If you haven’t heard about the Microsoft Store, learn more by visiting their website.  The Microsoft Store makes it easy to buy software from Microsoft and Microsoft partners in an environment where the folks know what they’re talking about. 

If Aunt Betty needs a new copy of Office for her PC, she can hop over to the mall and pick one up while shopping.  Want to check out the XBox Kinect in action and get the latest video game accessories?  Considering the hot new Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone that just came out this week?  These will all be things you can do at the Microsoft Stores when they arrive here in Jersey!

The best thing about these stores, is that if you’re looking for a new PC (whether it’s a laptop, slate, or desktop), EVERY PC sold comes with “Microsoft Signature” on it!  What is that?!  Have you ever purchased a new computer that was loaded with trial-ware and sample software that just slows the machine down?  Yeah… I think we all know that experience.  With Microsoft Signature, you get a PC with no extra “junk” that is tuned to run with the best performance the moment you start it up for the first time!

If you ever have a problem with a PC purchased at the Microsoft Store, you’ll be able to take it to there and get someone to help you out.

That alone is one of the things I’m most looking forward to when these stores open!  For now, we’ll have to wait.  Until then, visit http://www.microsoftstore.com to keep up on the latest information, including opening dates when they are announced!

Tomorrow (Thursday, 4/12/2012) at noon ET (9am PT) we have our fifth screencast in the @home series: Async Patterns In The Cloud!

During the first week of March 2012, my teammates Brian Hitney, Jim O’Neil, and I announced the re-launch of the @home with Windows Azure project. On March 15, we hosted a kick-off webcast providing an overview of the project.

This is the fifth in a series of five where we are diving into various aspects of Windows Azure.  In this fifth webcast, we’ll explore various patterns for how you can build a scalable application in Windows Azure.  From the abstract page:

In our fourth webcast about Windows Azure, we look more deeply at scalability in Windows Azure and how to use queues to effectively scale applications both up and out. We also take a look at the Windows Azure Auto-Scaling Application Block (WASABi) to help with autoscaling and using performance counters to monitor applications.

If you can’t make this one, be sure to check out the recordings of this one, and the rest of the series at the @home with Windows Azure website. The recordings should be available within a few days from the webcast.

Microsoft provides a 90-day free trial of Windows Azure where you can learn to kick the tires and run an application in the cloud 24x7 cost-free.  The @home with Windows Azure project is an online activity where you use those 90-days of free compute time(or your MSDN Subscriber benefits) to contribute to Stanford University’s Folding@home distributed computing project.

The Folding@home project helps scientists provide insight into the causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow disease, ALS, and some cancer-related syndromes, by running protein folding simulations on thousands of machines world wide,

You deploy Stanford’s Folding@home application to Windows Azure, where it will execute protein folding simulations in the cloud, thus contributing to the research effort. In essence, your participation is a donation of your free compute time to the Folding@home project!

Additionally, from the start of March 2012, Microsoft is donating $10 (up to a maximum of $5000) to Stanford’s Pande Lab for everyone that participates!

You can learn more about the project and sign up to view a series of web-casts we will be delivering over the next month at the project’s website:

Hope you will join Brian, Jim, and I tomorrow!

Yesterday, I posted about Visual Studio Live! and the new discount offer available from Andrew Brust.  Today, I wanted to let folks know about one of Andrew’s newest adventures.  Many folks here in the New York metro area know Andrew Brust as the co-leader of the NYC .NET Developers Group.  Andrew started that group a long long time ago with Stephen Forte and Bill Zack.  Andrew is also the leader of the NYC MS Business Intelligence User Group.  He’s known throughout the greater Microsoft community in the US via his participation in Microsoft’s Regional Director program.

For those of us into cloud computing (like myself), there’s been a lot of buzz and focus around the emerging technologies of “Big Data”.  What is “Big Data”?  Well, besides being the latest buzz word (like “Web 2.0” or “SOA”), it generally is a reference to managing and making sense of large quantities of non-relational data.  If you follow technologies like NoSQL data stores (Azure Table storage, MongoDB, Cassandra, etc) and Hadoop, then you already know what “Big Data” is all about.

Andrew has always had a focus on data-related technologies, especially around data analysis and business intelligence. It seems only natural that “Big Data” would be a hot topic that gets his technology passion going.  I’m happy to share that Andrew is now authoring the new “Big on Data” blog at ZD-Net!  Andrew is now part of a team of well-known and respected technology bloggers including Mary Jo Foley, Larry Dignan, Jason Perlow, and Ed Bott amongst many others.

For keeping up with the latest trends around Big Data, I recommend Andrew’s new blog:

Formal bio for Andrew:

Andrew J. Brust has worked in the software industry for 25 years as a developer, consultant, entrepreneur and CTO, specializing in application development, databases and business intelligence technology. He has been a developer magazine columnist and conference speaker since the mid-90s, and a technology book writer and blogger since 2005. Andrew is also Founder and CEO of Blue Badge Insights, an analysis, strategy and advisory firm serving Microsoft customers and partners.

So many great quotes…but you really need to just watch it.

Hat tip to Joe Morel of link.

PageKite is a hosted TSL (SSL) (Transport Layer Security) service[1]. Or put more simply:

A very easy way to share your local development server with the world.

Previously I had used the following similar services:

• ShowOff - a beautifully packaged service with abysmal support. I had to cancel my account on principal.
• LocalTunnel - free service which works pretty well for the price. I find the lack of a dedicated address very frustrating (not to mention the errant requests to old addresses).[2]

Back to PageKite:

• Pay for only what you use is a nice touch
• SSL support
• Easy setup (at least on OS X)

And my absolute favorite feature: It Just Works.

I have been using it for all of 60 minutes, but so far it appears to be very solid. In addition, the founder of PageKite appears to be dedicated and engaged.

If you need a dedicated ‘tunneling’ service, I would recommend checking out PageKite.

[1] Bjarni corrected me in the comments that PageKite uses TLS instead of SSH which allows it run in places SSH may not be an option (Windows, Android, etc). It is also available via OSS if you want to run it on your own.

[2] LocalTunnel is also OSS, so you could host your own instance, but as I have stated before, I have zero desire to actually ever manage a server on my own again.

It’s finally here!  Nokia has just launched it’s Lumia 900 Windows Phone in the US.  The phone is available at AT&T for $100 with a new 2-year contract.  There are other offers where you can get it for even less.  

I’ve had a Nokia Lumia 800 (the smaller version sold in Europe) for about a month now as a test device at work.  I’ve been ‘drooling’ to get my hands on the bigger Lumia 900. I’m hoping to do that sometime this week.   It’s been getting some great reviews that you can check out here.

Check out the HUGE party Nokia threw in Times Square on Friday night April 7th:

Last month, I announced here that Visual Studio Live! is returning to New York on May 14-17th, 2012.  Andrew Brust, who is the co-leader of the NYC .NET Developers Group (and newly minted ZD-NET “Big Data” blogger), is one of the co-chairs of the Visual Studio Live! conference.  Andrew has just passed along a great offer to me.  If you register today and use promo code UGNY1, you will receive an exclusive discount available only to user group members – you’ll save $400!

From Andrew:

Visual Studio Live! features some of the best content and speakers you will find at a technical conference. I should know: Rocky Lhotka and I work to determine the content coverage and select the speakers. For May’s event, we’ve put together an excellent lineup of sessions on Visual Studio 2010+ and .NET 4+; HTML5; the Cloud; Windows Phone 7, Silverlight and WPF; Data Management; Windows 8 and WinRT.

The full agenda, organized by topic, is posted here:
http://vslive.com/events/new-york-2012/tracks/track-list.aspx

Visual Studio Live! will be hosted at the Brooklyn Marriott in Brooklyn, NYC. 

For all of those folks in Jersey, don’t let that discourage you. It’s just one subway stop beyond lower Manhattan if you’re coming into the city via train at Penn Station.  That’s how I’ll be arriving.  And, assuming the weather is nice in May, you should make a point to walk back to Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge at some point during the conference.  It’s one of those quintessential New York “things” that sometimes us suburbanites need to do!  (The base of the bridge is just steps away from the Marriott.)

I’ll be speaking at VS Live! myself on Windows Azure.  Hope to see some of your there!

My teammate Brian Hitney has just posted a new article on some minor updates we have made to the @home with Windows Azure application.  Two minor changes have been implemented to allow new options for Folding@home “pros”:

• You can now use Stanford University’s Folding@home SMP client to achieve better results with multiple CPUs in Windows Azure.
• You can now configure the @home with Windows Azure application to set team membership the Folding@home client.

We have made these changes in response to feedback from those wanting to get ‘more’ out of their 90-days of free compute time from Windows Azure.

On March 19, I wrote a post detailing whether you can run multiple-instances of the @home with Windows Azure application.  The answer is yes, but you will burn through your monthly allocation free compute time in less than a month, resulting in your account being disabled until the following month when you receive a new allocation.  This would be an example of scaling out in Windows Azure by running the Folding@home client on multiple single CPU machines.

It turns out that Folding@home rewards speed over quantity. It is better to complete a single work-unit faster than to work on multiple work-units at a slower pace.  This is an example of where scaling up in Windows Azure with a larger VM with multiple CPUs is a better solution.  For this to work, you need to use the SMP version of the Folding@home client. 

We had previously only included the single threaded version of the Folding@home client in the @home with Windows Azure application. With this update, the SMP client is now included, allowing you to scale up to multiple CPUs if you choose.  However, as with running multiple instances, this involves a tradeoff of burning through your monthly allocation of free compute time in less than a month.  Brian details how far your monthly free allocation will go with multiple CPUs in his post.

By default, when you run the @home with Windows Azure application, your Folding@home contributions are reported back to Stanford as part of team “Windows Azure” (#18415). We’ve heard feedback from participants that they may already be folding for Stanford as part of another team.  In addition, to receive credit for your ‘speedier’ efforts, Stanford offers a passkey that uniquely identifies your contributions.

The @home with Windows Azure application now contains additional configuration settings that enable you to provide an alternative team name and a passkey.

For full details on how all of this works, see Brian’s post:

Microsoft provides a 90-day free trial of Windows Azure where you can learn to kick the tires and run an application in the cloud 24x7 cost-free.  The @home with Windows Azure project is an online activity where you use those 90-days of free compute time(or your MSDN Subscriber benefits) to contribute to Stanford University’s Folding@home distributed computing project.

The Folding@home project helps scientists provide insight into the causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow disease, ALS, and some cancer-related syndromes, by running protein folding simulations on thousands of machines world wide,

You deploy Stanford’s Folding@home application to Windows Azure, where it will execute protein folding simulations in the cloud, thus contributing to the research effort. In essence, your participation is a donation of your free compute time to the Folding@home project!

Additionally, from the start of March 2012, Microsoft is donating $10 (up to a maximum of $5000) to Stanford’s Pande Lab for everyone that participates!

You can learn more about the project at: http://distributedcomputing.cloudapp.net

This goes in the top 10 of the dumbest things I have ever heard:

27 million people is not too shabby, but it’s nowhere near the scale you need to make a massively large business.

Instagram may prove me wrong and end up being a huge financial success…but I doubt that is going to happen.

The first thing that comes to mind after watching that video is they are scared. What if they get it wrong? What if people are really just using them because they are free? What if no one wants to interview them anymore?

What’s even worse are the number of people who look up to this ‘lottery’ business model.

Build something of value. Charge money for it. Build it some more. Have the guts to say I built something and it is worthy of your time and money in return.

A couple of new Windows Azure announcement were made today.  As my colleague Bruce Kyle covered earlier, the Windows Azure team announced the availability of two new datacenters in the US:  East US & West US.  For what I assume are security purposes, the exact location of these data centers was not released.  (I’m guessing they are east & west of the Mississippi River respectively.)

Speaking of security, the Windows Azure team also announced something that I’m sure will answer a lot of frequently asked questions I get when speaking about Azure with customers: A shiny new Windows Azure Trust Center on WindowsAzure.com! 

One of the most frequent category of questions I get about Windows Azure relates to the general topic of security:  Is my data safe technically?  Physically (data center)? What regulations and certifications does Azure comply with?  etc, etc.   Now you can have all of those questions answered in one location!

Check out the new Windows Azure Trust Center at: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/trust-center/ 

…creating value is unrelated to busyness.

Just got word that my teammate Rachel Appel, and Melissa Demsak (of NJ SQL fame) are hosting a Women in Tech event in NYC on Saturday, May 5th, 2012.  Back in November, I wrote about “Keeping it Professional in Tech” and the importance of supporting women in the technology industry. I’m excited to hear about this event.  Details below from Rachel…

1290 Ave of the Americas, 6th Floor, NY NY 10104

Featuring presentations on Technology, Personal Growth and Perspectives to propel us into the future.

Why? Because when we connect, we become inspired and we can accomplish anything!!

Who should attend: Any Technical Women in the NYC Metro Area. College students are also strongly encouraged to attend.

Speakers: Email Melissa Demsak (melissa.demsak@gmail.com) or Rachel Appel (Rachel.Appel@microsoft.com) with your topic, abstract, speech length and bio by 4/9/12.

Volunteers: If you have an interest in volunteering to make this event the best it can be, please email Melissa or Rachel.

Agenda:
8:30am: Registration
9am-11:30am: Kick-Off/Presentations
11:30am-1pm: Lunch on your own / Networking
1pm-3pm: Presentations / Closing

Event Site: http://njwomenintech.wordpress.com/

Dig has probably been around forever, but this one is new to me. Really helpful information.

Speaking of Redis, every developer needs to read Karl’s book, The Little Redis Book.

I learned so much reading this and I use Redis just about everyday.

Skip the first 10 minutes or so (*cough* Kill Your Introduction)

I use Redis a lot, but apparently there is a lot I still need to learn. Lots of interesting stuff in Paul’s talk.

Tomorrow (Thursday, 4/5/2012) at noon ET (9am PT) we have our fourth screencast in the @home series: Debugging and Troubleshooting in the Cloud!

During the first week of March 2012, my teammates Brian Hitney, Jim O’Neil, and I announced the re-launch of the @home with Windows Azure project. On March 15, we hosted a kick-off webcast providing an overview of the project.

This is the fourth in a series of five where we’ll dive into various aspects of Windows Azure.  In this fourth webcast, we’ll explore how you can debug, troubleshoot, and monitor your applications in Windows Azure.  From the abstract page:

In this fourth webcast episode, we talk about debugging your application. We look at debugging locally and how the emulator works for local development, and we talk about configuring diagnostic data to capture logs and performance counters. For the especially tricky troubleshooting issues, we discuss IntelliTrace, an advanced debugging tool, to gather more information about your application—essentially building a timeline of events that can be examined to quickly find the root of a problem. We also look at remote desktop options for troubleshooting.

If you can’t make this one, be sure to check out the rest in the series by watching the @home with Windows Azure website – there’s one more left in the series scheduled for next week on 4/12/2012 at the same time. You can also watch the recordings of these webcasts as they become available on the site.

Microsoft provides a 90-day free trial of Windows Azure where you can learn to kick the tires and run an application in the cloud 24x7 cost-free.  The @home with Windows Azure project is an online activity where you use those 90-days of free compute time(or your MSDN Subscriber benefits) to contribute to Stanford University’s Folding@home distributed computing project.

The Folding@home project helps scientists provide insight into the causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow disease, ALS, and some cancer-related syndromes, by running protein folding simulations on thousands of machines world wide,

You deploy Stanford’s Folding@home application to Windows Azure, where it will execute protein folding simulations in the cloud, thus contributing to the research effort. In essence, your participation is a donation of your free compute time to the Folding@home project!

Additionally, from the start of March 2012, Microsoft is donating $10 (up to a maximum of $5000) to Stanford’s Pande Lab for everyone that participates!

You can learn more about the project and sign up to view a series of web-casts we will be delivering over the next month at the project’s website:

Hope you will join Brian, Jim, and I tomorrow!