Summer is almost over, but the Windows Phone Dev Center Summer Break special price isn't! It's staying at $19 for now...

WMPowerUser - Microsoft To Continue Windows Phone Dev Center Registeration Fee As $19 Back in June, Microsoft announced a “Summer Break” offer for developers who want to build Windows Phone apps. The Dev Center registration was reduced to a $19 annual registration fee (normally $99 for individuals and companies). Todd Brix from Windows Phone team today tweeted that Microsoft will continue its dev center fee as $19 even though the  “Summer...

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Horton hears a Hadoop [set of icons]

Hortonworks - A Set of Hadoop-related Icons The best architecture diagrams are those that impart the intended knowledge with maximum efficiency and minimum ambiguity. But sometimes there’s a need to add a little pizazz, and maybe even draw a picture or two for those Powerpoint moments. We’ve built a small set of Hadoop-related icons that might help you next time you need that picture focusing on the intended function of various components....

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Place your bets now on who's going to be the next Microsoft CEO...

TechCrunch - You Can Bet On Who Will Be Microsoft’s Next CEO (Marissa Mayer Pays Out 33 To 1) A betting service has compiled a list of potential candidates for Microsoft’s soon-to-be-vacant CEO role that you can wager on. It’s a partially serious, partially silly list. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner as CEO? Perhaps. Apple CEO Tim Cook as the new Microsoft boss? Probably not. But Turner pays out but 6 to 1 while Cook is a 100 to 1 longshot, so...

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[Humor] NSA Job Application Flowchart

AllThingsD - NSA Job Application Flowchart ...

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Reminder, you only have a couple days left to buy a TechNet subscription... Get'm while you can...

THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA - Last chance to buy Technet Plus - this time on a VL contract In just a few days, the window will close on the ability to purchase TechNet subscriptions.  From then on a retail purchase it will be good for a year.  As a partner your TechNet subscription will expire and not be renewed. But if you purchase TechNet over a three year volume license spread payments contract you can lock in TechNet subscriptions...

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Featuring Agile Planning and Portfolio Management with TFS2013 in these Hands On Labs

Brian Keller - New Lab: Agile Planning and Portfolio Management with Team Foundation Server 2013 When we shipped the Visual Studio 2013 ALM Virtual Machine earlier this month we were still in the process of finalizing one of the hands-on-labs / demo scripts. This work is done and you can now access Agile Planning and Portfolio Management with Team Foundation Server 2013. If you are not yet familiar with the agile planning tools introduced...

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The .NET Universe Poster for 2013 is now available

Microsoft Downloads - .NET Universe 2013 Poster .NET Universe Poster (2013) showing the main .NET SDKs, libraries and packages classified by application type and package type (NuGet, official support, etc.) Version: 0.9 Date Published: 8/22/2013 NET_Universe_Poster_2013.zip, 15.6 MB This poster shows how the trends are changing in .NET as we´re moving from a single large .NET Framework to a more loosely coupled and autonomous libraries...

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Putting that new 3D printer to use... printing fossils!

Nextgov - A Database of 3D Fossils, Ready for You to Explore and Print Fossils are a marvel to behold. Coils of shell, lines of bone, spreading branches of a plant -- these are the records of the lives that once graced our planet, a reminder that our moment is not only the present alone, but an accretion of the years before it. Beyond their beauty, fossils are also physical objects, with heft and depth, contours and textures. These qualities...

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Wrapping your head about Azure, one infographic at a time... Windows Azure Infographics

Alexandre Brisebois - These Windows Azure Infographics are Amazing Communication Tools! The Windows Azure Infographics are a great way to get to know many of the Windows Azure services. Zoom into details, download and print them in order to teach, share and explain Windows Azure to your peers. Most of these posters and all future posters will link to deeper technical content through the mobile tags for a more complete set of information....

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Cool LA Metro Rail Ridership Visualization (and developer.metro.net news too)

LA Metro Ridership (via reddit/LosAngeles - Metro Rail Network Ridership - class project from last spring I've wanted to show off for awhile (crossposting from dataisbeautiful)) Also of note: http://developer.metro.net/ APIs / Feeds / Data Realtime API Trip Planner Information GTFS Data GIS Data Bikeways Data Developer Resources Welcome to Metro’s developer site – this is a website for...

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Buying your own Mobile Launch Platform from NASA, bid now...

DVICE - Bid on a piece of NASA history Have you ever wanted to own a piece of NASA history? Here's your chance: NASA is currently seeking bidders for three of its launch pads used during moon missions. Originally built in 1967, each 3700 ton pad was officially used at the Kennedy Space Center to not only carry the Apollo moon program's rockets from an assembly area to the launch site, but to also send those rockets into space. The launch pads...

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You can have my WP8 when you pry it from... these monkey's fingers...

Windows Phone Central - Even monkeys in Finland enjoy using Windows Phones Who said it were only humans who could work a smartphone? Pictured above is a cheeky little chap who's currently wielding a Lumia Windows Phone. Visitors were not only able to take shots of the monkey enjoying some tunes through Xbox Music, but they probably found themselves being filmed for the others in the pack to have a gander at later on in the evening. So how...

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[Limited time offer, open unit Sept 6th!] You know you can use TFS 2013 in production, right? But pre-release stuff is scary? How about if there were some Microsoft Experts on standby to help you upgrade? Sign up now for the Team Foundation Server 2013 Upgrade Weekend, September 13-15

Team Foundation Server 2013 Upgrade Weekend Are you excited to upgrade to Team Foundation Server 2013? Are you comfortable running pre-release software in production? If so, you might want to consider scheduling your upgrade for the weekend of September 13-15. During this weekend, Microsoft experts will be standing by to help support you in the event that you have questions or something goes wrong. If you are interested in taking advantage of...

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Taking the Bus to the next stop... Why you, Dev and IT, should be looking at the Windows Azure Pack.

In the Cloud - What’s New in 2012 R2: Enabling Modern Apps with the Windows Azure Pack Don’t let the title fool you – this post is critically important for Developers and IT pros. The reason I call out this warning up front is that often, when I’m speaking at conferences around the world, as soon as I start to discuss the developer perspective and developer tools, many IT Pros in the room starts playing Angry Birds while they wait for the...

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Trie in C# - Example of prefix string search and substring search to implement auto-completion/Intelli-sense like features

George Mamaladze - .NET Data Structures for Prefix String Search and Substring (Infix) Search to Implement Auto-completion and Intelli-sense Background Typing a complete word in a search box is out. So if you are implementing a modern user friendly peace of software you will very probably need something like this: I have seen many questions about an efficient way of implementing a (prefix or infix) search over a key value pairs...

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Avoid virtual stagnation - "INFOGRAPHIC: Top virtualization skills to boost your career"

pluralsight - INFOGRAPHIC: Top virtualization skills to boost your career Are you a dev pro who dabbles in IT? If so and you’re not building up your virtualization skills, what’s holding you back? It’s possible you’re not sure where to begin your training, and if that’s the case, we’re here to help. If you haven’t heard, we recently acquired TrainSignal, the leading provider of IT training online. Over the next few months, we’re working to...

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Free eBook #2 for the day: Dependency Injection with Unity

Microsoft Downloads - Book Download: Dependency Injection with Unity Unity is a dependency injection container. It is full-featured, with support for instance and type interception and custom extensions. Unity 3 also supports Windows Store apps. Version: 1 Date Published: 8/20/2013 DependencyInjectionWithUnity.epub, 1.0 MB DependencyInjectionWithUnity.pdf, 3.3 MB Authors: Dominic Betts, Grigori Melnik, Fernando Simonazzi, Mani Subramanian. Foreword by Chris Tavares. Over the years software systems have evolutionarily...

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Free eBook #1 of the day: Windows Azure SQL Reporting Succinctly

Syncfusion - Windows Azure SQL Reporting Succinctly Windows Azure SQL Reporting provides a flexible platform for managing and viewing reports. Its cloud-based architecture means that its services are instantly scalable for any number of users—adding and removing servers through Windows Azure is significantly simpler than managing on-site servers—and maintenance costs are kept to a minimum. With Windows Azure SQL Reporting Succinctly by Stacia...

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Paul Thurrott shares his latest Windows Phone 8 book online (and free) (651 pages, all about using WP8 and many of its app's...)

Paul Thurrott's Windows Phone 8 - Windows Phone Book - Version 1.02 This is an embedded Microsoft Office PDF, powered by Office Web Apps. I've embedded the SkyDrive version of Version 1.02 above, IFrame style. If it doesn't come through, click through and you can get it via his Skydrive/DropBox/Google Drive links. Here's a snap of it in SkyDrive (which seems to be a pretty darn nice web representation of the PDF) Here's some snips from the...

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Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel (Insert lame "Fuzzy, wuzzy was an Excel..." snip here)

Microsoft Downloads - Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel The Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel performs fuzzy matching of textual data in Excel. Version: 1.0.0.0 Date Published: 8/16/2013 FuzzyLookupAddInForExcel.zip, 1.5 MB The Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel was developed by Microsoft Research and performs fuzzy matching of textual data in Microsoft Excel. It can be used to identify fuzzy duplicate rows within a single table or to fuzzy join similar rows between two different tables. The matching is robust to a wide variety of errors including...

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Oh Concierge, can you NuGet me [a related package recommendation?]... Hello NuGet Concierge...

NuGet blog - Introducing NuGet Concierge Twelve weeks ago, Microsoft’s Azure Applications Platform & Tools team welcomed three 2nd-year college students, Jaspreet Bagga, Jeremiah Jekich, and Melissa McNeill, and gave them an opportunity to contribute to NuGet. Package Discovery Discovering NuGet packages can be a daunting process. The best way to do so is either via word of mouth or online search. However, your friends aren’t always...

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North by Northwest [Cadence] - Up coming casts from Northwest Cadence

Northwest Cadence - Upcoming Events and Training Courses Northwest Cadence hosts regularly-scheduled events designed with our clients and community in mind. Come ready to ask hard questions, gain new knowledge, and be part of the social occasion. What’s more fun than talking about tough technical topics, showing amazingly cool demos, and sharing insiders tips learned through years in the trenches? ... Aug. 27. 13 | 9:00AM PT | Webcast | Register | Agile Development using Visual Studio ALM Sep. 3. 13 | 9:00AM PT | Webcast...

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Get the Getty... Getty Trust opens 4600 free (and original resolution) images in its Open Content Program...

groovy post - Getty Trust Launches 4600+ Free Images in Open Content Program Are you a fan of classic art? John Paul Getty was also. And this week the Getty Trust launched a new Open Content program that is making available high-res digital reproductions of all classical artwork which the Getty Trust holds the rights to including works from the J. Paul Getty Museum collections, Getty Research Institute and the Getty Conservation Institute. The...

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Free Payment icon's for your online web purchasing...

Six Revisions - Free Online Payment Icon Set (PSD and PNG) This free set of icons contains the logos of top online payment solutions and credit cards like PayPal, Google Wallet, Visa, and MasterCard. This icon set contains 12 icons and is perfect for use in e-commerce websites. We have also included the PSD file in case you want to make changes to the icons. This free icon set is brought to you by Responsive, a design and development studio...

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"The Developer Evangelist Handbook" - A Handbook for hopeful, new or even current, developer evangelists

The Developer Evangelist Handbook A developer evangelist is a spokesperson, mediator and translator between a company and both its technical staff and outside developers. If you think this would be a good role for you, here's the developer evangelist handbook which gives you some great tips on how to do this job. Using the handbook you'll learn how to: Find great web content and promote it. Write for the web and create engaging...

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It's official, we've got a Windows 8.1 GA/release date...

Blogging Windows - Mark your calendars for Windows 8.1! I know a lot of folks are eager to find out when they will be able to get Windows 8.1. I am excited to share that starting at 12:00am on October 18th in New Zealand (that’s 4:00am October 17th in Redmond), Windows 8.1 will begin rolling out worldwide as a free update for consumers on Windows 8 through the Windows Store. Windows 8.1 will also be available at retail and on new devices starting...

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Eight tips for the Windows Live Writer Power Blogger...

Jon Galloway - 8 Windows Live Writer tips Windows Live Writer really is an amazing application. It does one job really, really well. I've been using it on several blogs including this one (running on Community Server, Herding Code podcast (running on Wordpress). I've also used it to manage content in a variety of ways, including posting content to "hidden" blogs which were really content repositories for consumer facing sites. Scott Hansleman's...

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WPF/SilverLight IG Theme is now free from Infragistics

Brian Lagunas - FREE IG Theme for WPF and Silverlight Microsoft Controls It’s that time again!  Time for another free WPF and Silverlight theme for the Microsoft controls.  The last free theme I gave away was the Metro Light and Dark Themes for WPF and Silverlight Microsoft controls.  Soon after I released that theme, there was an overwhelming positive response from the community.  So, I am fulfilling the promise I made in...

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