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

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

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

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

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

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

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 🙂

1. In your view, do you agree with the term ‘Cloud Computing’ being just a rebranding, then how is it different from Legacy systems?
2. Please highlight a list (top 3 or 4) of benefits and drawbacks of ‘Cloud Computing’ services by priority? Please provide your justification, if any?
3. 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*?
4. 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

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/

Another superb example of why I love Battlefield 3

Multiplayer gaming can lead to beautiful and unexpected moments as you interact with real humans in a virtual world filled with weapons, vehicles and funky environments. I’ve had my share over the years including variations on the scenario below – but alas I don’t run video capture when I play. Thankfully this chap does. Enjoy!

My top 3 improvements in Windows Azure from the December update

In December we announced many improvements to Windows Azure… a month on and I was reflecting upon which were my favourites and which had resonated best with our early adopters. There were a lot to choose from but I’ve narrowed it down to three in reverse order:

3. SQL Azure Database Size increased to 150GB

We tripled the maximum database size of SQL Azure from 50GB to 150GB for greater flexibility to meet growing storage needs. For a small but vocal number of companies I met, 50GB was perceived as “probably large enough but not definitely”. 150GB removes that concern. Related, we won’t be charging anything extra once you go over 50GB. That is correct … 150GB for the price of 50GB. Sweet.

Related:

• We released SQL Azure Federations – elastic scalability

2. Improved Subscription Management, Real-Time Usage Visibility and better billing

This area has been clunky since day on. Our early adopters have welcomed new abilities to easily change rate plans without creating a new subscription, cancel unneeded subscriptions and view up to the minute usage and billing details directly from the Windows Azure Management Portal. We also will be moving to single day invoicing each month for customers with multiple subscriptions.

1. Windows Azure team gave Open Source a big hug

The Windows Azure team demonstrated just how much importance we are giving to making technologies other than .NET work great on Windows Azure. My favourite was the work around Node.js – yep, we now have a Windows Azure SDK for Node.js. This download includes Node.js libraries for Windows Azure blob, table, and queue storage for development and deployment of Node.js applications and we made the source code for Node.js client libraries available through GitHub. Check out the Windows Azure Node.js developer center.

Related:

• .NET Windows Azure SDK on GitHub – alongside Java and Node.js.
• Preview of Hadoop on Windows Azure
• Updated Eclipse Windows Azure Plugin
• Simplified using MongoDB on Windows Azure
• Simplified using Solr/Lucene on Windows Azure
• Simplified using Memcached on Windows Azure

Related Links:

• Get help from Microsoft UK with Windows Azure

Metro UX meets Windows Azure.., via Solidsoft marketing :-)

One of the partners helping us deliver Six Weeks of Windows Azure is Solidsoft.

This graphic made me smile – nice use of Metro UX. Well done folks.

And if you would like to know more about Metro, check out:

• Windows Dev Center – Metro Style App Development
• Channel 9 Windows 8 UX Video 8 traits of great Metro style apps