Things I learnt at the Windows Azure Camp in Hyderabad

Here are some of the new things I learnt at the Windows Azure Camp that was held yesterday at the Microsoft campus in Hyderabad -

* Windows Azure Service Management API is a REST API for managing your services and deployments programmatically to do many of the things that you can do through the Azure portal. Usage of the API is free

* Can the Service Management API be used to replicate a new portal that's like the Silverlight-based Azure portal?
- Not exactly, some info like Billing cannot be fetched through API

* csmanage.exe is a tool to manage your deployments and services, using the Windows Azure Service Management API

* What you can do with Windows Azure Service Management API -
- Integrate with Tools/Dashboards
- Integrate with Build & Deployment - Nightly builds
- Monitoring systems
- Specialized scenarios - Auto scaling

* Azure cannot (currently) auto scale dynamically. Options to implement auto scaling -
- use publically available command-line tools or cmdlets
- third party commercial tools like AzureWatch
- do it yourself using APIs - related link

* Why do Azure APIs use REST?
- REST APIs make Azure access language independent

* The Windows Azure SDK 1.3 adds the ability to use Remote Desktop Services to access Windows Azure roles and supports Full IIS, allowing your web roles to access the full range of web server features available in an on-premise IIS installation.

* Domino’s Pizza is a public site that uses Azure

Read More

HOW TO try Windows Azure for free (without any credit card)

Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform offers .NET developers a great opportunity to extend their skills to this new platform. You don't have to spend a bomb to get started. While there is a free trial offer that doesn't have any upfront costs, you may have to submit your credit card.

The free Windows Azure Platform 30 Day Pass doesn't need a credit card to register. I've seen promo codes that are needed to get a Pass in various MSDN blog posts & Codeplex. The promo codes don't last forever so you may have to grab them when you see it or keeping looking at those places for new promo codes if you want it gratis.

Here are some free Azure learning resources I've found (work in progress):

• Moving Applications to the Cloud on the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform
• Developing Applications for the Cloud on the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform
• Channel 9 Azure videos
• Microsoft E-Learning Clinic: Introduction to Microsoft SQL Azure
• Windows Azure Video Tutorials

Pluralsight currently has 5 Beginner & Intermediate level online training courses of totally 15 hours duration. Having received an annual subscription as a Pluralsight offer for MVPs, I've watched some of them & found them to be very helpful (will post a review shortly). Their monthly subscription price of $14.50 or roughly Rs. 700  in India for their entire course collection looks like a great deal to me.

Read More

Windows Azure CDN locations

I asked on the WebApps StackExchange forum a few months ago out of curiosity, if it is possible to know where a Content Delivery Network's servers are located?

The unanimous answer was that it is not possible to know unless the CDN vendor gives it out. Both the respondents to the question also mentioned that big CDNs don't reveal exact details.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I recently came across a Windows Azure Team blog post that lists all of Windows Azure CDN's (currently) 24 physical nodes.

Read More

Search for keywords in videos with Microsoft Research Audio Video Indexing System (MAVIS)

If you were searching for videos that reference the Razor (view engine) from among Microsoft videos from events like PDC, MIX 2010, Channel 9, MAVIS can get you results with direct links to the precise moment that word was uttered in a video.

This feature has also been implemented on  the U.S. Department of Energy's videos at ScienceCinema.

MAVIS uses the Windows Azure cloud which affords massive scale & on demand computing capability to crunch through the videos.

The Microsoft Research Audio Video Indexing System (MAVIS) is a set of software components that use speech recognition technology to enable searching of digitized spoken content, whether they are from meetings, conference calls, voice mails, presentations, online lectures, or even Internet video.

Did you know, speech-recognition technology is already integrated in a number of Microsoft products, such as Windows 7, TellMe.com, Exchange 2010, and Office OneNote?

Using integrated speech-recognition technology in the Windows 7 operating system, users can dictate into applications like Microsoft Word, or use speech to interact with their Windows system. The TellMe.com service allows mobile users to get directory services using speech while on the go. Exchange 2010 now provides a rough transcript of incoming voicemails and in Office OneNote, users can search their speech recordings using keywords.

Also see:
Sound Search Results

Read More