The Blog

I have a new version of xPollinate waiting in the wings, with new support for HelloTxt. With this new feature, you won’t have to choose between Ping.fm or HelloTxt – you can use one, the other, or both (just try not to spam the hell out of your friends with duplicate posts!).

I’ve submitted my application for approval at HelloTxt, and hopefully it’ll be a quick approval process. I can’t release the version for testing yet, because it only works with my own user key right now until it gets reviewed and approved (sort of a chicken and egg thing if you ask me).

In the meantime, I thought I’d post a quick screen shot of the new tab and highlight some features:

New xPollinate tab for HelloTxt

After entering your API key, xPollinate will pull in your Tags, and all of your defined services (networks). You can either choose a tag to post to (which will select only those networks in the tag), or you can choose All Networks and then individually select the networks to post to.

Notice that the account name of each service is posted next to the service name. This is because HelloTxt support multiple accounts with the same service (i.e. more than one twitter account).

Account names 

Just like Ping.FM, you can choose to post either as a status/microblog update using a template, or post as a blog entry.

Blog or status options

I’m excited to get this release out, and hope the application gets accepted soon.

I installed eight 5″ recessed can lights in my living room about five years ago. I haven’t yet had to replace a single one of the bulbs I first installed. The GE Reveal R30 flood lamps have lasted a long time, and provided a really pleasant, pure white light.

GE BR30 Reveal Light Bulb

In my new kitchen can lights, a cheap contractor pack of Sylvania 65W flood lights didn’t even last one year before all 13 bulbs burnt out. I’ve replaced them all one-by-one with the GE Reveal bulbs, and none have burnt out, over one year later.

I’m sure the performance has a lot to do with having dimmers. I’ll bet it’s a lot more gentle on the filaments when you turn on a light with the dimmer down to begin with. Even still, these Reveal bulbs are great.

So I don’t forget it, and lose it when reimaging my machine, I’m posting my mp3tag file rename script. It takes the audio files that I have tagged, prefixes with a padded track number, formats as 001 – album – title.ext and shortens the name if it starts to get too long and nears the windows 256 file/path character length limitations.

$num(%track%,3) – $validate($replace(%album% – $iflonger(%_folderpath%nnn – %album% – %title%.%_extension%,256,$left(%title%,$sub(230,$len(%_folderpath%nnn – %album% – ))),%title%),.,-),-)

Permalink

    Session #1:

    Windows Azure Platform:

  1. Windows Azure
  2. SQL Azure
  3. AppFabric

    …plus developer tools and "Dallas"

    Azure does "Compute" "Management" and "Storage"

    SQL Azure is a relational DB as a service.

    Demo is of a tickmaster-type application that uses Azure.

    TicketDirect Architecture:

    "Compute" using Web and Worker roles to process tickets

    Using the service bus to communicate with on-premise services.

    Storage of data in SQL Azure

    Printing of tickets is offloaded to the site (i.e. venue).

    Site receives a message via service bus to print the ticket for pickup at role call

Another Demo, sample app, of basic CRUD web app.

CRUD is standard ASP.NET SqlDataSource control with SQL commands, that works with SQL Express but runs in the cloud

Demo’d using Trace.Write which writes out to the development console logger and can also write to the Azure Storage logging subsystem

Migrated to SQL Azure by just changing the connection string

Storage (BLOBs, Tables, and Queues)

NEW – Add ability to mount Azure storage as NTFS drive

Coming soon – Ability to manage VMs with admin privileges

Create snapshots of your VMs

When up-scaling, Azure will deploy your app on top of your custom VM image

SQL Azure:

Only pay for what you use

Do not worry about disaster recovery

Change a connection string an have effortless switch to SQL Azure

Sync framework to sync SQL DBs in the cloud with on-premise data

Service Bus:

Securely connect apps (on-premise with cloud)

Tunneling technology

Services bus is a middle man for communication between

Access Control:

Provides outsourcing of claims-based RESTful services

Integrates with ADFS v2