In my first Azure Miniseries post, I showed setting up a new cloud service project and migrating an existing ASP.NET application into Azure.   Before I dive into other topics, I figured I’d jump to the end and discuss deployment – getting your Azure application into the cloud.  

Link to original post with download links.

I’m starting to put together some short form screencasts on Windows Azure related topics.  I’ll use my blog to dive into specifics or display code samples/downloads where appropriate – but first up is a quick look at getting a project setup and migrating existing applications into an Azure webrole.

The recent update to Windows Azure went quite well!  The site is now using a single Azure webrole, a single Azure worker role, Azure Queues for workload, and Azure Blobs for storage.  It’s also using SQL Azure as the database.   From a user’s point of view, not much has changed but the performance and scalability has been much improved.  On the stats page, I implemented a few new stats …

First up is the hourly breakdown of hits to a site.  Below is Channel 9’s current breakdown.   Neat way to tell when the traffic is heaviest to your site.  In this case, C9 is busiest at 3pm GMT, or about 9am-4pm EST. 

In addition, Worldmaps includes country breakdown information:

And, Stumbler has been updated a bit so be sure to check it out and watch traffic in real time!

Finally, there’s change to the registration process.  To add some scalability, Worldmaps now stores data in one of two schemes.  The older scheme has been migrated to what is called a “plus” or enhanced account.  The newer scheme is the default, and it stores data in a much more aggregated way.   What determines how information is stored?  This is based off of an invitation code on the Create Map form:

If no invitation code is provided, the newer scheme is used.  If a valid invite code is provided, the old, more detailed method is used.  If you’d like an invite code, drop me some feedback.What’s the difference?  Currently, the difference is pretty small.  On the stats page, current number of Unique IP's can not be calculated, so it looks like so:

Future report options are a bit limited as well, but otherwise, all data (and Stumbler) is still available.

The other day, I had the honor of sitting down and rambling endlessly with Michael Kimsal in this podcast.  It was a lot of fun, despite the overly loud announcement system in the background (“…table 3, your order is ready” type of thing).   Michael is one of those insanely smart kind of guys that has a really balanced view of technology and a lot of fun to talk to.   Michael publishes (among other things) jsmag, a must read for javascript developers.  Check it out!   Also, if you use coupon HITNEY on the site, you can get a free issue!  (Thanks Michael!)

Hi folks!  I wanted to take the opportunity and outline a few changes for Worldmaps – both changes in the service, the backend, and new features.

First up: Stumbler.  A link to Stumbler was added to the nav menu at the top of the page.  If you haven’t played around with Stumbler, check it out.  It maps users in near real time to websites.

One of the biggest changes is the update to the new Bing Maps Silverlight control.  This doesn’t change much from the end-user point of view, but a few new features have been added so the UI in Stumbler is a bit cleaner around pushpins and effects.  In addition, there’s a new setting in the settings dialog to choose whether or not to scroll the map automatically.  Normally you zoom around the map automatically, but now you can turn that off to stay focused on a certain area.

The other big new feature is multiple/extensible leaderboards.  The way it worked until now was there a single leaderboard for all users.  This “master leaderboard” is still there, but having sub leaderboards is a lot more interesting.  I defined a few leaderboards like “Tech Blogs” and “Personal Sites,” but will add more over time (leave feedback on new leaderboards!).  On the leaderboard page, the default view is the all-up leaderboard, while each leaderboard is displayed on the left nav. 

To pick a leaderboard, log in to your account and edit your maps.  In the detail section, you’ll see a drop down that allows you to select a leaderboard (see image to the right).  I should also point out that the sub-boards are sorted based on hits per day, not total hits. 

The other big change to outline is the end-of-year change.  At the end of the year, the individual hit data is reset.  This means all the red dots on the map will be wiped clean and start over again.  Data will be archived and available in some fashion, but this hasn’t been implemented yet.  Additionally, next year (2010) the main leaderboard will be sorted based on average hits per day. 

Now to address the biggest architectural change:  if you’ve created an account on Worldmaps but haven’t gotten an email yet with the approval, fear not.  Unfortunately the volume is such that with limited infrastructure, there’s not much more that can be done.  This will soon change.  Worldmaps has been moved to Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.  This should give Worldmaps a nice bump in scalability (limited really only by funds).  So stay tuned in early 2010 for more info.

We’re back!  Starting early November, we’ll start our fall MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow series.  Right now, we’re scheduled here:

Check out our sessions below!

Introduction to ADO.NET Data Services

The new wave of Web applications are built on technologies such as AJAX and Microsoft Silverlight, which enable developers to build better, richer user experiences. These technologies bring a shift in how applications are organized, including a stronger separation of presentation from data. In this session, you’ll learn how ADO.NET Data Services enables applications to expose data as a REST-based data service that can be consumed by Web clients within a corporate network and across the Internet. We’ll look at how the data service is reachable over HTTP, and how URIs are used to identify the various pieces of information available through the service. You’ll get a solid understanding of data service concepts like HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE) and data formats (ATOM/APP and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)).

Parallel Programming in .NET 4.0 - Much more than Threading!

Come learn how the next version of Visual Studio and the Microsoft .NET Framework can help you write better performing and more scalable applications. We take a tour of new .NET APIs, including the Task Parallel Library (TPL) and Parallel LINQ (PLINQ). We also introduce new features in the debugger that help you quickly identify concurrency issues and visualize the internal state of your application. You don’t need any experience with writing multi-threaded code to benefit from this session

Windows 7 and Windows Server – Exciting New OS Developer Features

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 come packed with loads of new developer goodies.  Computers are starting to come with more and more hardware built-in – from Ambient Light Sensors to Accelerometers and GPS.  Come learn about how the Windows 7 Sensor API can integrate with your applications, and help them rock with these new hardware capabilities.  Not to be outdone, Windows Server R2 has seen some really incredible boosts to IIS with version 7.5 and the extensibility models.  Now you can manage your databases, delegate control to multiple IIS servers, and configure package deployment from all within one location!

Thanks for those who came out to the roadshow over the past few weeks!   In this post, I’ll include the sample files and slides used in my ASP.NET 4.0 overview talk.  A couple of notes:  each presentation on the show was a bit different.  In some cases, some slides were not used.  Also, the VS2010 demo solutions here are “approximate” as they were done a bit differently at each venue.

The webforms solution demos routing in web form as well as using the QueryExtender control.  This requires an AdventureWorks database, or replace with one of your own.  The AJAX sample demos client-side templates and data binding, the latter of which also requires the adventure database exposed by ADO.NET Data Services.  You can easily change this to your own datasource by creating a new Entity Data Model, changing the ADO.NET Data Service to this new type, and modifying the AJAX (in Demo3) to point to the correct resource.

The Worldmaps users queue is getting big!  Just wanted to thank everyone for their interest, but in response to so many emails, I thought I should explain how to get signed up on Worldmaps. 

After creating an account, it must be approved before the account can be used.  The main reason for this is to slowly ramp up on bandwidth to make sure the service (both website and database) are providing a good experience.  During high volume, the service is processing many requests per second – obviously, not a ridiculous load in the scheme of things, but for a small service with no budget, it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.  Currently, however, the service is getting more user requests than are approved daily, so there’s a backlog forming.  We’ll get through it in time, but it does require culling the sites that don’t fall into the acceptable use parameters.

Technical blogs and personal sites will generally get approved first.  At this time, commercial sites cannot be approved.  Over the coming months, I’ll be looking more at a Windows Azure implementation that will allow more growth and hopefully, allow just about all sites to “play.”  One new feature hopefully to be released with this implementation will also be website categories – instead of just a single leader board, there will be multiple leader boards and users can select the one most appropriate to their domain.  Stay tuned! 

I’m on a FAIL kick lately, and this one deserves a post.  I used to be a huge fan WinRAR, a file compression tool that was easy to use and supported a wide array of options like file spanning and encryption.

I’m all for integrated ads – that is, ads that leverage the same font/color scheme of the site.  Now, both of these ads in the page below are for the same product, RegistryBooster 2009.  The ad in the top right is obviously an ad, but it’s pretty close to crossing the line.  What do I mean by crossing the line, and how integrated is too integrated?  Crossing the line is when there’s a strong likelihood users will accidentally or inadvertently click on a link, not realizing it’s an ad. 

The second arrow (the ad in the middle) crosses that line.  While it’s true that it’s marked as “advertisement,” it’s done in a clever enough way that attempts to trick the user to click on the link (let’s face it: we usually skim pages).  This is because the placement of the wording would make users feel that clicking “download now” is actually downloaded the intended WinRAR application.  Further, the green “run system scan” link implies I’ve clicked this link before, and consciously or unconsciously, we feel safer in clicking previously visited links.

So what do you think?  I’m not claiming this is the worst I’ve seen, but it’s enough that makes me question the integrity of both RARLabs and Uniblue (makers of RegistryBooster). 

I was in a store not too long ago and saw the Ultimate Matrix collection on blu-ray, but sadly, I have the same set on HD-DVD.  Can’t really justify buying it again even though I’m not going to use my HD-DVD player much longer. 

But, I stumbled on a cool site by Warner Bros that allows you to upgrade many of your HD-DVDs, including some boxed sets like the Ultimate Matrix collection.  It’s not free, but for the most part the costs are reasonable and is done by sending in the album art, not the disc.

Now, I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle, but you could pick up some closeout HD-DVDs and then upgrade them.  For example, buy the Ocean’s 11/12/13 HD-DVD boxed set for under $20, upgrade it for $10.  That’s $30, where the same box set on blu is at least double that.  Good deal!   The site is red2blu.com … check it out!

On a related note, I recently started using the Windows Home Server plug in My Movies.  My Movies basically lets you store your movies on your WHS box, and includes some utilities to download album art, do some auto-ripping, etc.  I’m still in trial mode (some of the utilities aren’t free) but, assuming I purchased the utilities I’d need, it does auto-ripping so you drop the DVD in the machine, and it takes care of business and pops it out when done.  You can then stream it through Windows Media Center … it will work on extenders like the XBOX 360, but it’s a bit more tricky.  Essentially, for extenders like the 360, the format needs to be changed on the fly using a transcoder, since the XBOX 360 can’t natively stream the VOB files.  It’s a fairly seamless process, but takes a bit of time to ramp up on what’s going on. 

I’m not sure it makes sense to do high def movies (though it can be done) given the space requirements, but it is supported.