IUpdateable from Eric Nelson

Visual Studio 11 Beta and .NET 4.5 Beta due February 29th

ericnel — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:52:23 +0000

Which is a great use of an extra day in February

I have Thursday 1st set aside to get this all sweetly installed – perfect timing as Six Weeks of Windows Azure will have ended and I can safely think about rebuilding my pc.

Some more details:

And I will be most definitely install Team Foundation Server Express – FREE for individuals and teams of up to 5 users! Oh and yes… Visual Studio Express gets TFS integration. Sweet.

Deploying PHP and ASP.NET Sites in a Single Azure Web Role

ericnel — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:44:54 +0000

One of the companies on www.sixweeksofazure.co.uk asked us about the specifics of deploying into a single web role two solutions – one built in PHP and one built in ASP.NET.

I reached out to Brian Swan for help. Brian is one of the Microsoft team focused on making PHP developers very happy on the Microsoft technology stack.

Brian created a great post in response to the customers question. Thanks Brian.

Slides, Notes and Recordings for Week 1 and 2 of #6weeksazure are all now available

ericnel — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:21:27 +0000

Head over to www.sixweeksofazure.co.uk and click on Week 1 and Week 2 to get details.

It is not too late to join us – there is after all still 4 more weeks to go and we have recordings of the first two weeks.

Note: This is primarily targeting UK companies – but we do not turn anyone away

What others have said (none are my relatives…):

Recordings from Monday 23rd January #6weeksazure sessions now available

ericnel — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:41:09 +0000

Note: for me this service has sometimes not worked today (24th Jan). I have reported it to the events team.

Next session is Wednesday 10am – Designing for the Cloud.

44WW076 – Six Weeks of Azure – Weekly check-in (AM recording 23.01.2012)

“The one where the all internet connectivity vanished with 5 mins to go”

WWE Support has invited you to view a Microsoft Office Live Meeting recording.
View Recording

44WW076 – Six Weeks of Azure – Technical webinar (PM recording 23.01.2012)

“The one where it didn’t”

WWE Support has invited you to view a Microsoft Office Live Meeting recording.
View Recording

Slides and notes from Monday 23rd January #6weeksazure sessions now available

ericnel — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:16:16 +0000

Now available on SkyDrive. Check out Week1 for slides and “Webinar Notes” for todays notes. We will expand the Notes a little further tomorrow once we go through the Q&A.

Six Weeks of Windows Azure webinar join links now live #6weeksazure

ericnel — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:08:12 +0000

The webinar join links are now live on the website http://sixweeksofazure.wordpress.com/joinwebinar/

We start at 12pm today (Monday 23rd January) but we will have the meeting open during the morning. Hence I would encourage you to join now to check your PC connects fine.

See you all at 12pm

Eric and the team

Just published my first node.js Windows Azure application

ericnel — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:44:41 +0000

Turned out to be simplicity itself (thanks to this sweet tutorial). Great work team on the Windows Azure SDK for node.js and some lovely Powershell integration.

Which in the management portal shows up as:

Currently running (Thursday 19th Jan 2012) at http://ericnelnode1.cloudapp.net/ with the exciting output of:

Related Links:

Source code for SDK available on github https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-for-node
Get help from Microsoft UK with Windows Azure

We kick off 12pm Monday 23rd of January using Live Meeting 2007 #6weeksazure

ericnel — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:57:05 +0000

Next Monday we start Six Weeks of Windows Azure with:

The 12pm opening session will look ahead at what you can expect from the six weeks and will offer advice on how best to make use of the time. It will also share tips, tools and resources to help you get going from day one. This is a great time to ask us questions about Six Weeks of Windows Azure and ideally should not be missed.

David and I look forward to seeing you there.

Eric

Live Meeting and Microsoft World Wide Events registration:

We will be using Live Meeting for all the webinars and hopefully by now you (and your colleagues) have signed up via Microsoft World Wide Events to get access to the webinar information (and timely reminders). If you haven’t then please do so asap – register on Microsoft World Wide Events (live id required).

Please take a few minutes between now and Monday to get Live Meeting 2007 installed on your pc and familiarise yourself with how it works.

If you are registered with World Wide Events then you will have details about how to install the client and join the meeting.

However the following link explains more: Joining a Meeting

I have also created a test Live Meeting you can join (live from today until end of Sat 21st) – join now

No audio?

The issue a very small % of users run into is no audio when they join the Live Meeting. These may help:

Setting up audio http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944600
Try a USB headset.
Try not using a USB headset
Contact Live Meeting technical support http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939099

Pause for thought – 4 great questions on Cloud Computing

ericnel — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:31:49 +0000

Ashwin Raghavan contacted me via this blog about the dissertation he is working on for his MBA and whether I would be able to answer some questions for him. I thought his questions were bang on. I’ll share my answers later … but for now, ponder on these

In your view, do you agree with the term ‘Cloud Computing’ being just a rebranding, then how is it different from Legacy systems?
Please highlight a list (top 3 or 4) of benefits and drawbacks of ‘Cloud Computing’ services by priority? Please provide your justification, if any?
What is your general view on UK SMEs technology competitiveness (are they exploiting it well to gain advantage in the business)? What is your stance on ‘Cloud Computing’ rendering competitiveness to SMEs*?
In your view, what do you see to be the list (top 3 or 4) drivers and barriers for UK SMEs? Please add your brief comments on how to overcome the identified barriers?

*In UK, Small and Medium size enterprises (SMEs) are those with a workforce ranging from 0-250 people.

Very handy utility – hurl.it

ericnel — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:56:59 +0000

This is a very handy utility when working with web apis – I assumed I was last to discover it, turns out I’m not

Hurl makes HTTP requests.
Enter a URL, set some headers, view the response, then share it with others.
Perfect for demoing and debugging APIs

And… as is the trend these days… it is a utility delivered as… a web site. Sweet.

http://hurl.it/