Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

This Week I Learned - * By using Emulator Express , you can test and debug a cloud service without running Visual Studio as an administrator. Emulator Express isn't compatible with IIS Web Server. * The Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE): Cloud Platform and Infrastructure certification validates that you have the skills needed to run a highly efficient and modern data centre, with expertise in cloud technologies, identity management, systems management, virtualisation, storage and networking. It includes 2 certifications ( 70-473: Designing and Implementing Cloud Data Platform Solutions and 70-475: Designing and Implementing Big Data Analytics Solutions ) in addition to the 3 (70-532, 70-533, 70-534) that are also part of MCSD: Azure Solutions Architect . *  Sequoia Capital is the legendary investor behind Google, Apple, Youtube, and Whatsapp. They have single handedly created more than $1.3 Trillion of value in the US economy! In India Sequoia is the investor...

This Week I Learned - * You can think of microservices as “SOA done right,” with principles and patterns like autonomous services, Bounded-Context pattern and event-driven all having their roots in SOA and DDD. As the name implies, microservices architecture is an approach to build a server application as a set of small services, each service running in its own process and communicating with each other via protocols such as HTTP and WebSockets. Over the long term, microservices enable superior maintainability in large, complex and highly scalable systems by designing applications based on many independently deployable services that allow for granular release planning. Azure Service Fabric is a new platform built from the ground up and especially designed for hyperscale and microservices-based systems - MSDN Mag *  Two professors of National Tsinghua University in Taiwan, have used machine learning to create a system where bots watch a video, determine its highlights,...

I enjoyed reading Verghese Kurien's memoir "I Too had a Dream"  (written in association with Gauri Salvi). It is one of the finest autobiographies I've read. It is well-paced, engaging and light-hearted. The writing flows so well that you can visualize the adventures of the Amul man as if it were a movie. The book talks about numerous twists and travails in the life of Kurien, a Syrian Christian from Kerala who studied in the US to be a metallurgy engineer but ended up in a remote village in Gujarat to start a revolution in the dairy industry in India. Verghese Kurien is an inspiring figure - he was bold, irreverent & autocratic. He was not afraid of take up cudgels against the high and mighty. He is instrumental in making India the largest producer of milk & achieving self-sufficiency. The book in a way also tells us the story of India, its politics and bureaucracy. India needs more like Verghese Kurien's ilk and success stories like Amul & Anand....

This Week I Learned - *  Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) works by using Windows Management Interface (WMI) and remote registry reads to capture information about servers in your environment . *  “The 6 R’s” of cloud migration - Rehosting, Replatforming, Repurchasing, Refactoring/Re-architecting,  Retire, Retain or do nothing (for now) *  The terms SSL and TLS (Transport Layer Security) are often used interchangeably as both provide authentication and data encryption between a client and server. There are several versions of SSL, the successor to the last version of SSL (SSL 3.0) is called TLS – it is an improved version of the original SSL protocol. HTTP/2 is the latest version of HTTP that was developed using Google’s SPDY protocol. This version of HTTP provides enhanced speed, efficiency and security. Although HTTP/2 supports secured and non-secured connections, browsers like Chrome and Firefox allows the use of HTTP/2 only over...

Have trouble reading fine print? Most packaged products & medicines these days have labels with text so tiny, even those with perfect eyesight can have trouble deciphering what's printed. Rather than buy & carry a magnifying glass to tackle this issue, your own smartphone can be of help. Most smartphone cameras come with a digital zoom option that can come in handy to magnify text printed in a small font size.  After your camera app is on, point your camera at the text you want to read and then pinch two or more fingers together or spread them apart to zoom in or out for desired size . Source: Quora Digital zoom refers to the level of additional magnification achieved through a camera’s internal cropping abilities, by way of software. Optical zoom is the phrase used to indicate the strength of a given lens’ optical magnification. I had almost written off my  Lyf Wind 3 smartphone but after three months of usage, I'm starting to be impressed with the fe...

This Week I Learned - * Intruders exploit every unprotected resource that travels between your websites and your users. Images, cookies, scripts, HTML … they’re all exploitable. Intrusions can occur at any point in the network, including a user’s machine, a Wi-Fi hotspot, or a compromised ISP, just to name a few. One common misconception about HTTPS is that the only websites that need HTTPS are those that handle sensitive communications. Every unprotected HTTP request can potentially reveal information about the behaviors and identities of your users. HTTPS is a key component to the permission workflows for new web platform features and updated APIs like geolocation -  Web Fundamentals * Twilio now runs texts, alerts and voice calls on the Uber app in most parts of the world. Its largest customer, Whats­App which accounts for about 13 percent of its revenue, uses Twilio to verify customer accounts and logins. Founded in 2008, Twilio is exceedingly simple to use a...