Wednesday, 31 July 2013
E Pluribus Unum - U.S. House of Representatives publishes U.S. Code as open government data
Three years on, Republicans in Congress continue to follow through on promises to embrace innovation and transparency in the legislative process. Today, the United States House of Representatives has made the United States Code available in bulk Extensible Markup Language (XML).
“Providing free and open access to the U.S. Code in XML is another win for open government,” said Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, in a statement posted to Speaker.gov. “And we want to thank the Office of Law Revision Counsel for all of their work to make this project a reality. Whether it’s our ‘read the bill’ reforms, streaming debates and committee hearings live online, or providing unprecedented access to legislative data, we’re keeping our pledge to make Congress more transparent and accountable to the people we serve.”
House Democratic leaders praised the House of Representatives Office of the Law Revision Counsel (OLRC) for the release of the U.S. Code in XML, demonstrating strong bipartisan support for such measures.
“OLRC has taken an important step towards making our federal laws more open and transparent,” said Whip Steny H. Hoyer, in a statement.
...
“Just this morning, Josh Tauberer updated our public domain U.S. Code parser to make use of the new XML version of the US Code,” said Mill. “The XML version’s consistent design meant we could fix bugs and inaccuracies that will contribute directly to improving the quality of GovTrack’s and Sunlight’s work, and enables more new features going forward that weren’t possible before. The public will definitely benefit from the vastly more reliable understanding of our nation’s laws that today’s XML release enables.” (More from Tom Lee at the Sunlight Labs blog.)
...
“Last year, we reported that House Republicans had the transparency edge on Senate Democrats and the Obama administration,” he said. “(House Democrats support the Republican leadership’s efforts.) The release of the U.S. Code in XML joins projects like docs.house.gov and beta.congress.gov in producing actual forward motion on transparency in Congress’s deliberations, management, and results.
For over a year, I’ve been pointing out that there is no machine-readable federal government organization chart. Having one is elemental transparency, and there’s some chance that the Obama administration will materialize with the Federal Program Inventory. But we don’t know yet if agency and program identifiers will be published. The Obama administration could catch up or overtake House Republicans with a little effort in this area. Here’s hoping they do.”
House of Representatives - US Code Most Current Release Point
Public Law 113-21
(Titles in bold are updated at this release point)
Information about the currency of United States Code titles is available on the Currency page.
USC in XML
The United States Code in XML uses the USLM Schema. That schema is explained in greater detail in the USLM Schema User Guide. For rendering the XML files, a Stylesheet (CSS) file is provided.
Each update of the United States Code is a "release point". This page contains links to downloadable files for the most current release point. The available formats are XML, XHTML, and PCC (photocomposition codes, sometimes called GPO locators). Certain limitations currently exist. Although older PDF files (generated through Microcomp) are available on the Annual Historical Archives page, the new PDF files for this page (to be generated through XSL-FO) are not yet available. In addition, the five appendices contained in the United States Code are not yet available in the XML format.
Links to files for prior release points are available on the Prior Release Points page. Links to older files are available on the Annual Historical Archives page.
While pretty cool, I was expecting something different. Seems the XML is really pretty much XHTML. So while it IS XML, it's still a display markup schema...
Guess we'll have to wait for this to complete, Legislative Data Challenge - Win $5k challenge by helping the Library of Congress make US laws machine readable.... Still I applaud the effort!
Related Past Post XRef:
Legislative Data Challenge - Win $5k challenge by helping the Library of Congress make US laws machine readable...
From A to W... The US Gov goes Git (and API crazy too). There's an insane about of data, API's and OSS projects from the US Government...
Benjamin Nevarez - A Tour of the Hekaton AMR Tool
SQL Server 2014 CTP1 has a tool to help you decide which tables and stored procedures you can move to Hekaton or In-Memory OLTP. In this post I will give you a quick tour of this tool, the AMR (Analysis, Migration and Reporting). The AMR tool is integrated with the Data Collector and to enable it you have to enable the new Transaction Performance Collection Sets on the Configure Data Collection Wizard as shown next.
This will create two new collection sets, Stored Procedure Usage Analysis and Table Usage Analysis, in addition to the three system data collections sets previously available with the Data Collector.
Once you configure the Transaction Performance Collection Sets on the Data Collector you are ready to test the AMR tool. First, you need to create some database activity. In my case I am testing with the following stored procedures on a copy of AdventureWorks2012.
...
In summary the AMR tool will be very helpful in providing recommendations as to which tables and stored procedures you might want to consider migrating into Hekaton. You could even upgrade your database to SQL Server 2014 and run this tool for analysis of your real performance data and iteratively move tables and stored procedures to In-Memory OLTP as required.
..."
A nice look at how you can eval moving your SQL Server 2014 tables/SP into the next performance level with Hekaton...
Related Past Post XRef:
Playing with SQL Server 2014 (and VS2013) the Azure VM way
"Microsoft SQL Server 2014 CTP1 Product Guide" - One new SQL Server, 12 PDF's...
Dev:"But it's new and shinny! Let's upgrade!" DBA:"Over my..." - Preparing to upgrade your SQL Server
TechEd NA 2013 Day 1 Announcement Round-up - VS 2013, TFS 2013, InRelease, SQL 2014, Server 2012 R2, BizTalk Services, Azure-in-a-box and even more Azure...
Brian Harry’s blog - The Improved Microsoft Developer Network
Today we launched the new Microsoft Developer Network site. As I've mentioned before, my team is responsible for much of the infrastructure and experience for MSDN. I’m very proud of what we have and at the same time see opportunities for improvement.
There are two primary use modes for the MSDN web site. The biggest one is search. You want to know what the CommentRegex class is and its properties? Just Bing “CommentRegex” and your top results will be the MSDN pages for the class reference. Lots and lots of people experience MSDN this way.
However, there’s another way. You might, for instance, be new to developing for Microsoft platforms or you might just want to catch up on the latest happenings in the community, announcements, etc. That’s always been the domain of the MSDN home page. However, over the past few years, it has atrophied and become mostly a routing layer for the variety of platform dev centers around the company. It hasn’t really provided a comprehensive picture of the Microsoft developer platform. We decided we could do better than that.
Working with the Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism team and others we’ve worked to create an improved experience we’re calling the Microsoft Developer Network. It is a major update to the MSDN home page and gives you a more modern place to go as a central landing page to find out everything you want to know about developing for Microsoft platforms.
There were a few things we targeted in the Microsoft Developer Network:
- Simple: We designed the site to help developers get started with Microsoft more easily, and get them to the information that they need. We heard from the community that finding the right information, often spread between different locations, could be challenging. The Microsoft Developer Network addresses that feedback by providing a single point of entry for all developers.
- Relevant: We want to meet developers where they are and talk with them on their terms. With the Microsoft Developer Network, an iOS developer, for example, can quickly understand the opportunity available from our platform and then easily navigate to the educational or technical content he needs to get started.
- Community Driven: Microsoft has an incredible developer ecosystem, and we wanted to provide even more opportunity for the community to engage with us and with each other. We designed the Microsoft Developer Network with that in mind creating a “Perspectives” section with community blogs, an integrated social feed, and a “Connect” area that allows developers to tell their stories, get advice and connect with us directly.
...
Microsoft Developer Network
The new MSDN Library looks interesting too. I was on it just a bit ago, and thought, "wow, I don't remember it looking like this... hey, it's kind of useful now!" Now, I know why... ;)
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
Microsoft Downloads - Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012
Testing is potentially an obstacle to agile software deployment. The smallest change in your code could require the whole application to be retested. This book shows you how to minimize these costs by using the testing infrastructure of Visual Studio 2012. The code samples gives you a starting point to test your infrastructure.
Version: 1.0
Date Published: 7/30/2013
- TestingForContinuousDeliverywithVisualStudi2012-EPUB.epub, 10.7 MB
- TestingforContinuousDeliverywithVisualStudio2012.pdf, 12.9 MB
- TIG.EXE, 1.7 MB
This book is aimed at test engineers, managers, developers, and folks interested in understanding the changing world of test. Over the last several years, software testing has changed a great deal. In the past, test plans were on paper, filed away and out of sight. Today they are—or can be with Visual Studio—living documents, as manual and automated tests are integrating into the test workflow supported by the test infrastructure.
Today you no longer have to set up physical boxes; instead you can set up and automate virtual environments composed of virtual machines to meet your testing environment needs. With Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server, the pain of dealing with a heterogeneous test infrastructure is reduced, the cost and effectiveness of testing a product is improved, and regression testing becomes cost effective instead of a nightmare.
Knowing how to test is important, but understanding how this new infrastructure is changing the business of testing and software delivery is critical. Today's businesses require nimble teams that can support continuous delivery and deal with updates and bugs in an agile fashion. It's what your customers have come to expect.
In this guide, we follow a team as they move from a conventional approach to testing towards one more suited to the needs of present-day development. We see how they address the costs and the pain of their old methods by adopting the testing infrastructure of Visual Studio 2012
Looks like a re-release of "Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012" eBook (Think Story based approach to presenting "Testing for Continuous Delivery"), but now with an ePub version. The date info in the PDF is still 12/2012...
But still, a nice reminder about this resource won't hurt. :)
Related Past Post XRef:
"Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012" eBook (Think Story based approach to presenting "Testing for Continuous Delivery")
"Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012 RC" Free eBook (PDF) and code samples from Microsoft Patterns & Practices
CodePlex - Windows 8 App Management Toolkit for Powershell
Windows 8 App Management Toolkit for Powershell is the must have cmdlet for automating and managing Windows Store apps.
The toolkit enhances the functionality of the existing Get-AppxPackage method by adding methods to
- Launch, suspend, and terminate Windows Store apps
- Check if the Start screen or any Windows Store apps are visible on any monitors
- Discover the capabilities of applications such as background tasks
One of note is that the source of all the above mentioned cmdlets is available. So you can see the C#, P/Invokes that makes the magic happen...
(via Secret Microsoft Communications - In case you get this: We couldn't get your developer license for Windows 8.1 Preview. Our Server is unavailable right now. Please try again later.)
BuzzFeed - 27 Things Only Developers Will Find Funny
...
LOL, That's ME! LOL
Fat Greg working...
Skinny Greg looking...
Anyway... The other items in this list are pretty funny too... :P
(via Rob Caron - Top 10 Microsoft Developer Links for Tuesday, July 30th)
Apps for Office and SharePoint blog - Now available: Refresh of Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 developer training
The developer training for Office and SharePoint 2013 now contains updated information about new features and capabilities for Office and SharePoint developers. In this post, learn about the 20 training modules, meet the presenters, and find answers to frequently asked questions.
We are excited to announce a refreshed version of the developer training materials for Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 to help administrators, architects, and developers learn about new developer capabilities. The developer training package is publicly available from the Apps for Office and SharePoint Dev Center to help you get started building apps for Office and SharePoint today.
What was released?
The original training package released at Preview in July 2012 contained in-depth developer training content for many new features in Office and SharePoint. This version refreshes the previously released training package and provides updated materials to match the release-to-market (RTM) version of Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013. All videos are instructor-led and include slide shows. Most videos contain at least one demo that shows the concepts in detail.
The developer training package includes:
- 56 videos
- Over 20 hours of video instruction
The material is separated into the following 20 modules. Each module contains one or more videos lasting anywhere from five minutes to an hour.
- Introduction to Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 development
- Develop apps for Office 2013
- Create document-based apps for Office 2013
- Create mail apps for Outlook 2013
- SharePoint 2013 app model for developers
- SharePoint 2013 developer tools
- Create SharePoint-hosted apps in SharePoint 2013
- Create cloud-hosted apps for SharePoint 2013
- SharePoint 2013 client object model (CSOM) and REST APIs
- OAuth and application identity in SharePoint 2013
- Develop SharePoint 2013 remote event receivers
- Workflow changes and features in SharePoint 2013
- Business Connectivity Services changes in SharePoint 2013
- Search features and changes in SharePoint 2013
- Enterprise content management changes in SharePoint 2013
- Social features in SharePoint 2013
- Office Services in SharePoint 2013
- Create mobile apps for SharePoint 2013
- Project 2013 training for developers
- Create apps with Access Services 2013
Developer training | apps for Office and SharePoint
- Module 1: Introduction to Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 development
- Module 2: Develop apps for Office 2013
- Module 3: Create document-based apps for Office 2013
- Module 4: Create mail apps for Outlook 2013
- Module 5: SharePoint 2013 app model for developers
- Module 6: SharePoint 2013 developer tools
- Module 7: Create hosted apps in SharePoint 2013
- Module 8: Create cloud-hosted apps for SharePoint 2013
- Module 9: SharePoint 2013 client object model (CSOM) and REST APIs
- Module 10: OAuth and application identity in SharePoint 2013
- Module 11: Develop SharePoint 2013 remote event receivers
- Module 12: Workflow changes and features in SharePoint 2013
- Module 13: Business connectivity services changes in SharePoint 2013
- Module 14: Search features and changes in SharePoint 2013
- Module 15: Enterprise content management changes in SharePoint 2013
- Module 16: Social features in SharePoint 2013
- Module 17: Office services in SharePoint 2013
- Module 18: Create mobile apps for SharePoint 2013
- Module 19: Project Professional 2013 training for developers
- Module 20: Create apps with Access Services 2013
Apps for Office and SharePoint Developer Training
Description
This app allows you to view the MSDN training videos on developing apps for Office and SharePoint and store your progress as you work through the entire course. Stop viewing any video in any module, and you can return later.
Orange dots indicate partial progress through a module, and green dots indicate completed modules.Release 2: Updated video player supports closed captioning and full-screen view. Assorted UI and bug fixes.
...
Office 2013 is starting to pick up a little steam as is its new app dev model. Given that Office 365 is also doing well, I think now's the time to get looking at this...
Brian Harry’s blog - VS 2012.4 (Update 4) will exist!
Sometime this spring, though for the life of me I can’t find it, I wrote a blog post where I said I thought Update 3 (VS/TFS 2012.3) would be the last update in the VS/TFS 2012 update line. I often say that nothing that is said about the future is more than a guess with varying levels of confidence. So, it turns out that I was wrong. A month or two ago we decided that we were going to need to do a 2012.4 release.
The primary motivation is addressing compatibility and migration/round-tripping issues between VS 2012 and VS 2013 and the various platform releases to make adoption of VS 2013 as smooth as possible. The planned timing will be around the same time VS 2013 releases (and, of course, I can’t give any more detail at this time other than saying that it will be before the end of the year). Once we decide to ship a release like this, it then becomes a vehicle to deliver anything else that would be valuable/important to deliver in that timeframe. So, for instance Update 4 will also include a roll up of fixes for all important customer reported by the time it locks down.
Like Update 3, Update 4 will be a very scoped release just focused on these compatibility fixes and key customer impacting bug fixes. We will not be delivering significant new features in Update 4. I qualify it with “significant” because what is a feature and what is a bug fix is in the eye of the beholder.
Today we released the first Release Candidate for Update 4....
Here are some resources for RC1:
..."
Microsoft Downloads - Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC 1
This is a release candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4.
Version: 2012
Date Published: 7/29/2013
- tfs_express.exe, 735 KB
- tfs_server.exe, 735 KB
- VS2012.4 RC TFS Express enu.iso, 483.3 MB
- VS2012.4 RC TFS Server ENU.iso, 1.1 GB
- VS2012.4 RC.exe, 1.3 MB
Visual Studio 2012 Update is providing continuous value to customers, adding new capabilities year-round to features in the main product release. These releases will be aligned with the core software development trends in the market, ensuring developers and development teams always have access to the best solution for building modern applications.
This is a release candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4. These cumulative updates to Visual Studio 2012 include a variety of bug fixes and capability improvements. More details can be found here.
Statement of Support:
Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC and Team Foundation Server 2012 with Update 4 RC are “go-live”. This means that customers can use these builds in production environments. These are still pre-releases, so there may be some bugs that will be fixed for the final release. Upgrade from Update 4 RC to Update 4 RTM is supported. In order to upgrade to future releases, the customer must first upgrade from Update 4 RC to Update 4 RTM....
Description of Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC 1
Currently looks like mostly TFS and LightSwitch updates...
Monday, 29 July 2013
McKinsey - Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum - eBook: Big Data, Analytics, and the Future of Marketing & Sales
The goldmine of data available today represents a turning point for marketing and sales leaders
Table of Contents
Introduction
- Putting big data and advanced analytics to work (& Article)
Business Opportunities
- Use Big Data to find new micromarkets (Article)
- Value of big data and advanced analytics (Video)
- Big data, better decisions (Presentation)
- Marketing’s $200 billion opportunity (Video)
- Smart analytics: How marketing drives short-term and long-term growth (Article)
- Know your customers wherever they are (Article)
Insights and action
- Five steps to squeeze more ROI from your marketing (Article)
- Case: advanced analytics disproves common wisdom (Video)
- Getting to “the price is right” (Article)
- Gilt Groupe: Using Big Data, mobile, and social media to reinvent shopping (Interview)
- Under the retail microscope: Seeing your customers for the first time (Article)
- The sales science behind Big Data (Video)
- Name your price: The power of Big Data and analytics (Article)
- Data: The real promise of social/local/mobile (Video)
- Getting beyond the buzz: Is your social media working? (Article)
- Big Data & advanced analytics: Success stories from the front lines (Article)
How to get organized and get started
- Get started with Big Data: Tie strategy to performance (Article)
- What you need to make Big Data work: The pencil (Article)
- Need for speed: Algorithmic marketing and customer data overload (Article)
- Simplify Big Data – or it’ll be useless for sales (Article)
- The challenges of harnessing big data to better understand customers (Video)
- Contributors
- Connect with us
Not a dev thing, but still, big data is big, right?
Sunday, 28 July 2013
As I mentioned in the first post, "Haswell is coming...", I've been given an opportunity to review the latest and greatest Intel chipset, Haswell, in the form of a engineering reference ultrabook from Intel. Today I'm going to share the unboxing and my initial impressions (hint, 95% positive, 5% whines). Next post I'll share the spec's and more real world using impressions...
This is the first time I've done this kind of thing, so please bear with me if I'm over doing it a bit. :)
The Unboxing
For people like us, you and me, is there anything better than that first unboxing of your latest geek treasure? (okay maybe puppies, ice cream and rainbows, but you get the idea) It's like Christmas, birthdays and finding a lost treasure all rolled into one brown box.
Yeah, I know a box! Like, wow! Oh what's inside the box? I bet you can't guess!
A box! Ahhh, but it's a shiny cool Ultrabook box.
Opening the box made me laugh. You know those cards that play a sound when you open them?
Yep, you guessed it. On opening this box I was greeted with the Intel jingle. At first I thought the ultrabook had turned on and it was a jingle on boot. Nope, just a jingling box... lol
(The audio is there, it's just really low... Sorry about that...)
Here's the rest of the stuff in the box,
Those little cable adapters? Mini HDMI to Full and to VGA and a USB to Ethernet.
"Wait, Greg, that isn't the power brick is it? That's like the size of a deck of cards!"
Yep, that's it. Maybe it's just me, but this is the smallest power brick I've ever seen for a notebook.
So how big is this thing? Let's compare it to a Surface Pro
Surface Pro, without cover on the left, Ultrabook on the right. Yeah, you're seeing it right, they are about the same thickness. Length/width, as you would expect the ultrabook is bigger.
Weight? The Ultrabook is almost the same.
Finally, first boot!
Initial Impressions
To set a basic baseline, my impressions and comparisons will be between this ultrabook against my current primary personal notebook, an Alienware M11xR3 (which I've upgraded to 16GB RAM & 512GB SSD). While the M11 is pretty portable, it's not ultraportable nor touch enabled, so for portability/touch I'll also be comparing against the Surface Pro too.
To make this a fair review, I'll be using this Ultrabook as my new primary personal device for the next month. And of course, my comments will be personal and subjective...
Okay, we good? Got it? We on the same sheet of music now? Good!
Initial impressions... In a word, wow.
The screen is awesome. The performance is pretty much blinding. The battery life is OMG...
Yesterday, I unplugged as I left from work, used the notebook throughout the day, keeping it awake for most of the time and when I got home 12 hours later the power as at 24%. I want to repeat this, but I've not seen a device this size with that kind of battery life.
I think this will give you a feel for the battery life I am seeing.
Oh it's not perfect (here comes the whines). 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, which I don't know if they are upgradable (but doubt it) and fan that's irritating in a quiet room. It's erratic in that it speeds up/down, on/off seemingly randomly (but again, you only really hear it in a quiet room).
Summary
In short, it seems the promise of Haswell, with it's ground changing battery life, is going to be fulfilled. Thinking about a Surface Pro with Haswell makes me drool... :)
Here's the planned post schedule:
- Part 0 - "Haswell is coming...", July 20
- Part 1 - "Hello Haswell" - Unboxing and initial impressions, July 28 [This Post]
- Part 2 - "Life with Haswell" - A couple week with Haswell, September 15
- Part 3 - "It's been a Haswell Summer", October 13
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Saturday, 27 July 2013
Channel 9 - Getting Started with PowerShell 3.0
This Jump Start is designed to teach the busy IT Professionals about this powerful management tool. Learn how PowerShell works and how to make PowerShell work for you from the experts Jeffrey Snover, the inventor of PowerShell, together with Jason Helmick, Senior Technologist at Concentrated Technology. IT Professionals, Admins, and Help Desk persons learn how to improve your management capabilities, automate redundant tasks and manage your environment in scale
..."
You all PowerShell, right? I mean it's THE way to commandline your way to system mastery, so I'm sure you are all using it and bending it to you will?
Well if not, here's a jumpstart just for you, presented by the invertor of PowerShell. Hard to beat that as a subject matter expert. :)
Friday, 26 July 2013
Elegant Code - Byte Magazine Archives
Earlier this week I accidentally stumbled on archive.org where they are hosting an extensive backlog of old issues of Byte magazine. This magazine was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s (and well before my time).
I’ve been skimming through a couple of these old magazines, and I got quite intrigued by some of these old topics....
Byte Magazine Archive
Byte 0-1
How cool is that? I love that this is lost... I miss Byte... :(
Amazon Web Services Blog - AWS SDK Support for Windows Phone and Windows Store Applications
Over the last few months, we have released a number of enhancements to help customers and partners build their Microsoft Windows centric workloads on AWS. Just last week, we announced guidance for running Exchange Server in the AWS Cloud which builds on our guidance for SQL Server and SharePoint. When it comes to .NET developers, we have provided tools such as our AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio and the AWS SDK for .NET. In fact, we recently started a .NET Development blog so Windows developers can get tips and tricks on how to best program .NET applications using AWS.
Our Microsoft tooling doesn't stop there. If PowerShell is what you use to automate Windows, we have the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell. We recently enhanced our PowerShell tools with automatic paging for large result sets and improved support for piping the output of a one cmdlet to another cmdlet.
Today, I’m happy to announce the Developer Preview of the next version of our AWS SDK for .NET. This release of the SDK adds two major enhancements for .NET developers.
The first is support for the Microsoft Windows Store and Windows Phone applications. With the new SDK, you can connect your Windows Phone or Windows Store apps to AWS services and you can build a cross-targeted application that's backed by AWS. With this release, we add Windows Phone support to our growing SDK support for different mobile operating systems including our SDK for iOS and SDK for Android.
The other big enhancement is our support for the task-based asynchronous pattern. This pattern uses the async and await keywords and makes programming asynchronous operations against AWS easy. For example, you can now upload files to S3 asynchronously like this:
...
.NET Development - AWS SDK for .NET Version 2.0 Preview
Today, we are excited to announce a preview of our upcoming version 2 of the AWS SDK for .NET, which you can download here.
One of the most exciting new features of version 2 is the ability to have Windows Store and Windows Phone 8 Apps use our SDK. Like other SDKs for these new platforms, all method calls that make requests to AWS are asynchronous methods.
Another big improvement we made to the SDK for asynchronous programming is that when you target Windows Store, Windows Phone 8, or .NET 4.5 the SDK uses the new
Task-based pattern for asynchronous programming instead of the old style using pairs ofBeginandEndmethods. Version 2 of the SDK also consists of a version compiled for .NET 3.5 Framework that contains theBeginandEndmethods for applications that aren't yet ready to move to .NET 4.5.For a deeper dive into the differences in version 2, check out our migration guide.
...
Good to see Amazon provide this kind of support. It sure will help make building AWS WinStore/WinPhone app's much easier!
Nokia Developer - Simpler installation of the Imaging SDK, using NuGet
When it comes to installing the Nokia Imaging SDK to your Windows Phone 8 projects, the easiest way is to use NuGet. Until today, you still had to complete the installation by manually editing your project file (.csproj), but thanks to the fantastic input of PetroQ, an active member of the SDK discussion board, the installation is now significantly simpler. Kudos PetroQ!
The steps to install the Nokia Imaging SDK are now:
- In Visual Studio, from the NuGet Package manager, install the Nokia Imaging SDK to your project.
- Remove the “All CPU” configuration from the project, to leave only “ARM” and “X86″.
- Close and reopen your project.
That’s it! Detailed installation steps are documented here.
..."
Yeah, that does make it much easier! :)
Related Past Post XRef:
Reimagining images with the Nokia Imaging SDK for Windows Phone 8
The Verge - US government announces first national app privacy code of conduct
Mobile apps and consumers' expectations of privacy are not always in sync. But now the government is on the case. The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the Commerce Department, has finished working on the first version of a voluntary national "privacy code of conduct" for mobile apps. The NTIA has been working on the code of conduct for over a year, and written (and rewritten) numerous drafts, trying to balance the input of industry players including AT&T and the Internet Commerce Coalition (which represents AOL and Ebay among others), with privacy groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. But now, it has finally managed to come up with a draft that it says should satisfy all sides, while also helping protect consumer privacy.
The code of conduct is again, strictly voluntary and not enforced under any laws, so it's up to app developers and ecosystems to adopt it at their will. But the NTIA is hopeful that they will in short order...
SHORT FORM NOTICE CODE OF CONDUCT TO PROMOTE TRANSPARENCY IN MOBILE APP PRACTICES
I. Preamble: Principles Underlying the Code of Conduct Below is a voluntary Code of Conduct for mobile application (“app”) short notices developed through the Multi-Stakeholder Process on Application Transparency convened by the United States Department of Commerce. The purpose of the short form notices is to provide consumers enhanced transparency about the data collection and sharing practices of apps that consumers use. This code does not apply to software that a consumer does not interact directly with or to inherent functions of the device. This code also does not apply to apps that are solely provided to or sold to enterprises for use within those businesses.
This Code of Conduct incorporates guidance from privacy, civil liberties, and consumer advocates, app developers, app publishers, and other entities across the mobile ecosystem. The transparency created by displaying information about application practices in a consistent way as set forth in this code is intended to help consumers compare and contrast data practices of apps. These short notices seek to enhance consumer trust in app information practices without discouraging innovation in mobile app notice or interfering with or undermining the consumer’s experience.
This preamble explains the goals of the Code of Conduct and provides some guidance to developers regarding implementation. However, it does not impose operational requirements beyond those set forth in Sections II., III., and IV. below.
Where practicable, app developers are encouraged to provide consumers with access to the short notice prior to download or purchase of the app. When appropriate, some app developers may elect to offer short form notice in multiple languages.
App developers should be aware that there are other Fair Information Practices (FIPs) beyond transparency; app developers are encouraged to adhere to the full set of FIPs. This Code of Conduct addresses short form notices about collection and sharing of consumer information with third parties. App developers should be aware that California’s Online Privacy Protection Act and other privacy laws may also require app developers to post a long form privacy policy...
I so want to insert something snarky, but I'm frankly tired of that (well I'm never tired of being snarky, but the prism, NSA, kinect is a spy, tin foil hat, omg my cat's going to kill me in my sleep, yada, yada, stuff). Anyway, it's good to see some active guidance that looks reasonable and actionable...
Microsoft Press - Free ebook: Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model
We’re pleased to announce the availability of Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model (ISBN 9780735679603), by Marc Farley, as a free download! You can download the PDF version of this title here (120 pages; 3 MB).
We will update this post soon with links to EPUB and MOBI files. We expect these files to be available by the end of the month.
...
Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model describes a storage architecture that some experts are calling a game changer in the infrastructure industry. Called the Microsoft hybrid cloud storage (HCS) solution, it was developed as a way to integrate cloud storage services with traditional enterprise storage.
The author, Marc Farley, works at Microsoft on hybrid cloud storage solutions as a senior marketing manager. The book includes a Foreword by storage industry expert and noted blogger Martin Glassborow, better known in the industry as Storagebod.
The book includes seven chapters:
Chapter 1 Rethinking enterprise storage
Chapter 2 Leapfrogging backup with cloud snapshots
Chapter 3 Accelerating and broadening disaster recovery protection
Chapter 4 Taming the capacity monster
Chapter 5 Archiving data with the hybrid cloud
Chapter 6 Putting all the pieces together
Chapter 7 Imagining the possibilities with hybrid cloud storage..."
You know me, Mr I Wanna Cloud guy... And this approach of using the cloud as a storage extension sounds interesting. I mean who really likes adding more and more and more local storage? (or instead we add more and more and more cloud storage, paying for every bit... um.... err... well, I guess I need to read this eBook to see the justification and details! ;)
Related Past Post XRef:
"Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure" free ebook RTW's
“Windows Azure Architecture Guide, Part 1 – Moving Applications to the Cloud” now available as an interactive guide.
Moving Applications to the Cloud 2nd Edition guide (and Hands on Labs)
"Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure" free ebook and code (RC)
Privatize your cloud with help from these two new Channel 9 Series "Build a Private Cloud with WinServer & System Center" and "Move to Hybrid Cloud with System Center and Azure"
13 Modules, six weeks, 2 exam preps and a whole lot of private cloud building going on...
What's this Private Cloud thing? Here's a free online conference on just that... "Building the Private Cloud"
Building a private IaaS Cloud with Windows Server 8 whitepaper
Microsoft Free Virtual Private Cloud Event, Jan 17th
Microsoft Private Cloud Solution Hub
Thursday, 25 July 2013
NextGov - History of the Atom Bomb Goes Online
The Department of Energy has started to post online the internal history of the first atomic bombs.
It was commissioned by Lt. Gen Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, which managed the nationwide complex of labs and factories that developed and produced the raw material for the first atom bombs in a crash three-year project that eventually employed 130,000 people and cost $26 billion in current dollars.
The Manhattan District History consists of 36 volumes grouped in eight books, with a third of the volumes, or parts of volumes, still classified. DoE said the rest of the volumes have been declassified, with some made available to the public on microfilm.
One of the online documents offers fascinating insights into Operation Peppermint, which aimed to determine whether the Germans had developed a radiological weapon, using among other things film distributed to troops to detect radiation fogging.
...
Classified volumes will be declassified with redactions, and the remaining unclassified parts made available to the public, posted incrementally as review and processing is completed.
...
U.S. Department of Energy - Manhattan District History
General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Engineer District, in late 1944 commissioned a multi-volume history of the Manhattan Project called the Manhattan District History. Prepared by multiple authors under the general editorship of Gavin Hadden, a longtime civil employee of the Army Corps of Engineers, the classified history was "intended to describe, in simple terms, easily understood by the average reader, just what the Manhattan District did, and how, when, and where." The volumes record the Manhattan Project's activities and achievements in research, design, construction, operation, and administration, assembling a vast amount of information in a systematic, readily available form. The Manhattan District History contains extensive annotations, statistical tables, charts, engineering drawings, maps, photographs, and detailed indices. Only a handful of copies of the history were prepared. The Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources is custodian of one of these copies.
The history is arranged in thirty-six volumes grouped in eight books. Some of the volumes were further divided into stand-alone chapters. Several of the volumes and stand-alone chapters were never security classified. Many of the volumes and chapters were declassified at various times and were available to the public on microfilm. Approximately a third of the volumes, or parts of volumes, remain classified.
The Office of Classification and the Office of History and Heritage Resources, in collaboration with the Department's Office of Science and Technical Information, have committed to making available full-text on this OpenNet website the entire thirty-six volume Manhattan District History. Unclassified and declassified volumes will be scanned and posted as available. Classified volumes will be declassified with redactions, i.e., still classified terms, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs will be removed and the remaining unclassified parts made available to the public. The volumes will be posted incrementally as review and processing is completed.
Following is a listing of the books, volumes, and stand-alone chapters of the Manhattan District History. Links to pdf copies are provided for those volumes and chapters that currently are available.
...
Book 1 - Volume 8 - Personnel
Not something you might want to take on vacation for light reading, but I love this kind of stuff...
ProPublica - NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails
The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture.
But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' email? The agency says it doesn’t have the technology.
"There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.
The system is “a little antiquated and archaic," she added.
I filed a request last week for emails between NSA employees and employees of the National Geographic Channel over a specific time period. The TV station had aired a friendly documentary on the NSA and I want to better understand the agency's public-relations efforts.
A few days after filing the request, Blacker called, asking me to narrow my request since the FOIA office can search emails only “person by person," rather than in bulk. The NSA has more than 30,000 employees.
I reached out to the NSA press office seeking more information but got no response.
It’s actually common for large corporations to do bulk searches of their employees email as part of internal investigations or legal discovery.
..."
Well of course THEIR emails are not going through their uber-supper-duper email tracking/search thing! That wouldn't be secure! :P
InternetExplorer/modern.IE-static-code-scan
modern.IE
The modern.IE scan analyzes the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of a site or application for common coding issues. It warns about practices such as incomplete specification of CSS properties, invalid or incorrect doctypes, and obsolete versions of popular JavaScript libraries.
It's easiest to use modern.IE by going to the modern.IE site and entering the URL to scan there. To customize the scan, or to use the scan to process files behind a firewall, you can clone and build the files from this repo and run the scan locally.
How it works
The modern.IE local scan runs on a system behind your firewall; that system must have access to the internal web site or application that is to be scanned. Once the files have been analyzed, the analysis results are sent back to the modern.IE site to generate a complete formatted report that includes advice on remediating any issues. The report generation code and formatted pages from the modern.IE site are not included in this repo.
Since the local scan generates JSON output, you can alternatively use it as a standalone scanner or incorporate it into a project's build process by processing the JSON with a local script.
The main service for the scan is in the
lib/service.jsfile; it acts as an HTTP server. It loads the contents of the web page and calls the individual tests, located in/lib/checks/. Once all the checks have completed, it responds with a JSON object representing the results.Installation and configuration
- ...
Testing
...
JSON output
...
Exploring IE - modern.IE updated for IE11 – Parallels offer and free VMs for download
With the release today of the Internet Explorer 11 Developer Preview for Windows 7, we’ve also updated modern.IE – a set of tools and resources that make developing for the web (and IE) just a little bit easier. We want the web to move forward. And, we want to help web developers spend more time innovating and less time testing.
Today, we announce three new enhancements:
1. Limited offer: 25% off Parallels Desktop 8 virtualization for Mac.
2. New virtual machines for testing IE11 on Windows 8.1 and Windows 7.
3. A new, free screenshot tool that lets you see how a site looks across browsers and devices.
Additionally, the modern.IE scanner is now available open source (under Apache 2.0 license) to download from GitHub for your own projects.
...
Limited offer: 25% off Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac
...
IE11 Preview available on Virtual Machines
Virtual machines have proven to be a great way for developers to test in their preferred environment. We’ve made these available across various versions – from IE6 on Windows XP to IE10 on Windows 8 and in-between. Today we’ve added new VMs for IE11:
- Windows 8.1 Preview with IE11
- Windows 7 with IE11 Developer Preview
And they are available across many common virtualization platforms:
- Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
- Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 & Windows 8 Pro w/Hyper-V
- Virtual PC for Windows 7 (note that VPC cannot run Windows 8 VMs)
- VirtualBox on Windows , Mac OSX and Linux
- VMWare Player for Windows and Mac OSX
Start downloading the new VMs here.
How your users see your site. On Android. In Safari. With an Xbox.
...
That should be enough things and IE stuff to play with for a couple days at least. I wonder if there's an Azure VM in the gallery for this yet? That way we could starting playing with IE11 in just minutes...
Channel 9 - Windows Azure Developer Experience Videos - New Windows Azure Benefits for MSDN Subscribers!
MSDN Subscriber? You already have free Windows Azure credits as part of your subscription - up to $150/mo! Use them to build development & test environments on demand with Virtual Machines, Web Sites, Databases and more.
Activate and try your Windows Azure MSDN benefits before September 30, 2013 and you could WIN an Aston Martin V8 Vantage Sports Car!
Click here to activate & enter:
http://www.windowsazure.com/car
You’ve got it. Now use it.
Activate the Windows Azure benefits included with your MSDN subscription and you could win* an Aston Martin.
Windows Azure accelerates the development and testing of your applications. Self-provision as many virtual machines as you need for your application development and testing in the cloud without waiting for hardware, procurement or internal processes. Activate your Windows Azure MSDN benefit today and start developing and testing your applications with up to $150 in credits on Windows Azure. You can also use your MSDN software such as SQL Server for no additional fee.
To enter the MSDN Windows Azure Sweepstakes:
ActivateCreate and deploy a Windows Azure Web Site or Virtual Machine
Move fast! The sweepstakes ends September 30, 2013. View the terms and conditions
* No purchase necessary. Trade promotion open only to MSDN subscribers as of June 2, 2013. Ends 11:59 p.m. PT on September 30, 2013. See Official Rules for details.
No purchase necessary! Here's your excuse...err... umm... chance... yeah... to play with Azure and maybe even win a car. At not cost, except a little bit of your time (maybe 5 minutes?) I afraid to play too much as I might get azure-ddicted... :)
