Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Kudu the engine behind git deployments in Azure Web Sites has an interesting logo: The Kindle FreeTime logo is a funny extension of the Kindle logo ..which has a boy reading under a tree

Based on this forum post on StackExchange Also see:  What do you give someone who already owns a lot of gadgets?

This Week I Learned - *  AppLocker is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 that ...allow you to create rules to allow or deny applications from running based on unique identities of files and to specify which users or groups can run those applications. *  The URL of a country-specific Amazon Reviews page for a product has this pattern: http://www.amazon.{ccTLD}/product-reviews/{ASIN}/ . For example, the reviews for the book with ASIN or product code of 0143031031 on Amazon.in are available at this URL: http://www.amazon.in/product-reviews/0143031031/ *  It was interesting to see more comments & acknowledgement for reviews of a book than the actual number of reviews *  Today 75 percent of adults in Kenya have accounts with a bank or mobile-money provider, up from only 42 percent in 2011. *  The annual budget of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has risen from Rs.1,995 crore in the year 2012-13 to Rs.5,550 crore for th...

The number of Microsoft Azure Services have steadily grown since it started in 2010. To know the approximate (not bothering about whether a service is in Preview or General Availability mode) count of Azure Services are currently available to satisfy my curiosity, I have relied on the Status page that Microsoft maintains to show the health status of Azure Services across the world . To make the counting easy, I've used the IMPORTHTML formula in Google Sheets to extract the list of Azure Services in the table within the Status page : = IMPORTHTML ( "https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/" , "table" , 1 ) = IMPORTHTML ( "https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/" , "table" , 4 ) [10-Sep-16 Update] - The layout of the Azure Services Status page has changed so the formula in Google Sheets has to be changed The Services are currently distributed under the following ten categories: Compute Web & Mobile Data & Storage ...

The MVA video course DevOps: An IT Pro Guide  (Level 300 | Published: 06 June 2014) comes with a great slide deck. The second part of the 5-part series compares TFVC vs Git, TFS vs VSTS (or Visual Studio Team Services, the new name for Visual Studio Online). Click on the images below for a slightly better view of the text or download the related  PowerPoint Presentation  for the slides. It is interesting to note that VSTS being a SaaS based product, the updates to TFS first appear in it before they appear in an installable copy of TFS. Related: *  Notes from the MVA course "Fundamentals of Visual Studio Online" *  Book Review: Pro Team Foundation Service

This Week I Learned - *  DevOps is a process transformation that automates every step of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) so that it flows like a manufacturing line * Google is crowd-sourcing the improvement of its Indian language translation quality. As part of second Translatathon in India, it allows participants to translate English words and these will be validated by volunteers themselves. Having validated some words, I realized why validation is important as well. * Flipkart clearly marks if the routers sold through it have an inbuilt modem unlike other Indian online shopping sites. This note seems to have come up after several complaints from first-time router purchasers who actually needed a modem+router but mistakenly bought just a router . *  Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a sodium salt derived from the amino acid, glutamic acid (also known as glutamate). It was discovered in 1908 by a Japanese professor named Kikunae Ikeda when he isolated the su...

The Azure Powershell 1.0.1 MSI installable package is hosted on Github which serves this installable file from Azure's competitor Amazon's S3 file storage service Back in 2012, Hotmail's sign-up page used to rely on Google's ReCAPTCHA service .

If you are developing for the Microsoft Azure platform, you not only need to learn about new developments but also keep track of name changes so that you can follow old documentation. Anyone authoring a book on Azure has a tough job on his hands. Here's a look at the current Azure related nouns now and what they were in the past - Old name New name Windows Azure Microsoft Azure Team Foundation Service , Visual Studio Online Visual Studio Team Services SQL Azure Microsoft Azure SQL Database Azure Web Sites Azure Web Apps Project Oxford Microsoft Cognitive Services DocumentDB Cosmos DB work in progress...

This Week I Learned - * Each Azure region is paired with another region within the same geography (with the exception of Brazil South which is paired with a region outside its geography), together making a regional pair. Brazil South is unique because it is paired with a region outside of its own geography. Note that Brazil South’s secondary region is South Central US but South Central US’s secondary region is not Brazil South. *  At this time G-Series VMs cannot be in the same Cloud Service as A-Series, D-Series or DS-Series VMs. These different VMs can be place into the same Virtual Network as long as it is a Regional Virtual Network . *  While the platform-initiated reboot is disruptive, what can be even more time consuming is root causing whether the VM reboot is caused by the platform or one of their own services. If you navigate in the Portal to your Cloud Service where the VM is hosted, you can see a new quick link to “View Reboot Logs”. Please note that the only ...

“I was an entrepreneur many times over. I failed a couple of times; I succeeded three or four times. If you fail six or seven times, then it is better to work for a big company because it is not good for your health.”  -  Kavitark Ram Shriram , Silicon Valley investor,  one of the first investors in Google, 58-year-old Google board member having a net worth of about $1.9 billion (Rs. 12,663 crore). Also see:  Hey RAM

This Week I Learned - * 41 percent of developers are self-taught , according to the 2015 Stack Overflow Developer Survey * The Datamuse API is all about finding words and phrases, whether for helping your users search, or helping your users write more effectively. It does not have features for describing words and phrases (definitions, example sentences, etc.)  * There are a good number of SQL Server command prompt utilities * Check the  Microsoft certification exam retirement page before taking the exam * Myntra & LocalOye are abandoning the app-only strategy of selling goods and services within their walled gardens. Flipkart worked alongside the Chrome team at Google to develop its mobile website (discontinued earlier in favor of their app), the idea for which was floated  by technology head Peeyush Ranjan, a former Googler himself. The company opted for deeper integration with Chrome, giving it the ability to push notifications ...

Having experienced an unforeseen issue with software automation, this week's series of Dilbert cartoon strips on the theme of robots resonated with me. Bots come in various forms and they are gradually taking over control. Writing about two fatal aeroplane crashes due to autopilot mode getting turned off, he feels - "...there’s a fundamental vulnerability in the way that humans interact with automatic systems in a crisis. In the normal course of things, we come to rely on the automation so much that our own abilities fade away. Then, when the automated system suddenly goes haywire and shuts itself off, we don’t have the skills to expertly handle the situation. To make matters worse, the sudden stress of a life-or-death crisis tends to shut down our capacity for reasoned thought and leaves us prone to mentally freeze up." ..an eclectic bunch of investors and iconoclasts in the Valley have also plummeted head long into worries over AI coming too soon, and changin...