Comment Feed for gbrayut

Re: Visual Studio Toolbox: Reporting Performance Issues with PerfWatson

gbrayut — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:36:34 GMT

You can't improve what you don't measure! Keep up the great work!

posted by gbrayut

Re: AppFabric.tv - Threading with Jeff Richter

gbrayut — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 23:17:33 GMT

Great video! It helps show why some newer frameworks like node.js focus on event driven or asynchronous programming to limit the amount of time a thread spends being blocked. It really is amazing how many requests you can server if you avoid blocking in your threads.

I am curious as to if/when you think something like lightweight threads (aka fibers, wikipedia) with co-operative multitasking should be used in a server architecture. SQL Server is the only Microsoft server product that I am aware of that can be configured to use fibers instead of full threads, and even they don't recommend it except for in very special situations. In what situation should a highly specialized tool like fibers be used?

posted by gbrayut

Re: Ping 100: HaloFest, Kinect you in Carbonite, Talking to the wall, Ping celebrates 100!

gbrayut — Mon, 09 May 2011 22:56:47 GMT

Congrats on your centurion episode! Love the show, and the outtakes were awesome! Keep up the great work!

posted by gbrayut

Re: Windows Phone 7 Announcements & Demo's from MIX 11 with Joe Belfiore

gbrayut — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 01:13:30 GMT

I was stoked to see the icon for PhraseMeme Scanner come up in the keynote when he searched for apps related to Amazon. We've had the option to scan barcodes and price check on Amazon since the first version, but have been waiting for access to the video stream to do realtime scanning. Glad to see that will be coming in the next release, and the multiple live tiles idea is awesome!

Keep up the great work! I can't wait to start working with the new SDK.

posted by gbrayut

Re: Cloud Cover Episode 43 - Scalable Counters with Windows Azure

gbrayut — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 23:04:41 GMT

Marginally decent show

Actually I was recently trying to figure out a way to do atomic increments using queues or table storage, so this gives me some good ideas. I really wanted a way that did not require proxying the requests through a web role to reduce scale-out costs, but after watching the show and seeing steve's response it looks like your approach would be best.

Thanks... can't wait to watch what is new next week at MIX!

posted by gbrayut

Re: Cloud Cover Episode 41 - Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7

gbrayut — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:37:24 GMT

@WadeWegner: Probably Notification Services first, then queues, then SQL Azure. The last two could always be accessed via custom proxy, and I see queues used much more from the client then SQL Azure. SQL Azure would probably be accessed via WCF service with Entity Framework, not directly from client.

posted by gbrayut

Re: Cloud Cover Episode 41 - Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7

gbrayut — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 19:21:12 GMT

There is no primary use case yet, but it seems like queues are the best method for scheduling work. Example: upload picture to blob storage and then add an entry to a queue to process it. From the Phone they would usually just be adding entries to a queue, not consuming them, but there may be situations where a queue would work well for rate-limiting clients or matching players in a multiplayer online game.

posted by gbrayut

Re: Cloud Cover Episode 41 - Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7

gbrayut — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:37:54 GMT

Looks Awesome! I was thinking of using Table Storage and Blobs in a WP7 app, but wasn't sure how to keep the keys private. Looks like the proxy service is the way to go, althought I may end up initially hosting it on an existing VPS (with commercial SSL cert) instead of in Azure to keep costs low.

Sounds like the Shared Access Signature means that using blob storage would go directly to Azure, but using Tables would be piped through the proxy. Any plans to add support for Queues?

posted by gbrayut

Re: Checking In: Mike Sampson - Channel 9 Cloud

gbrayut — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 23:48:44 GMT

Great video! Can't wait for the next in the series.

Keep up the good work!

posted by gbrayut

Re: Hot Apps: I love Katamari, Bubble Birds, FishEYE Camera FREE, Cowbell!, Hamsta Rocket

gbrayut — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:02:32 GMT

If you like Katamari you should check out http://kathack.com/ which is an HTML5 version. It doesn't work very well in IE9, but it works in Chrome and Firefox. Check out Hot Apps Katamari

posted by gbrayut

Re: Hot Apps: Tiki Towers, Flickr, Bubblegum, Royalty, Word Tangle FREE

gbrayut — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:08:03 GMT

Nice! Flickr has a new Windows 7 app too, but it requires a touch monitor:

http://www.flickr.com/windows7

posted by gbrayut

Re: Ping 93: Kinect plays with Windows Phone, Gamertags revived, Live Mesh, HTML5 Contest

gbrayut — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 05:26:29 GMT

Breaking news! @PaulMest Loves pokedot bikini and Windows Phone http://j.mp/fDLrdl

posted by gbrayut

Re: Hot Apps: Butterfly, Deluxe Moon, Pipes, Khan Academy, MyComic

gbrayut — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:16:39 GMT

I saw the Khan Academy app a few days ago, and am quite impressed with it. If you want to check your math homework while watching the videos you can use WinFone Alpha, a free Wolfram|Alpha client for windows phone.

posted by gbrayut

Re: Hot Apps: De Blob Revolution, Quadra, Yelp, Designspiration, EndoMondo Sports Tracker

gbrayut — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 01:22:44 GMT

I'm going to have to check out de Blob... that looks pretty cool.

And I'd recommend using a different website for the links in the future. Marketplacebrowser.com has an awfull layout/theme and uses a bunch of flash ads. http://www.wpappshub.com/games/de-blob looks much better and has less advertising. They also cache the images on Amazon S3 instead of hot-linking to the Zune Catalog and have cool features like "Text Me This App" and my personal favorite: QR Codes

Keep up the great work!

posted by gbrayut

Re: TWC9: Coding4Fun, DevLabs projects, XAMLQuery, VS Achievements

gbrayut — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:23:30 GMT

Nothing better than getting up on a Monday morning and finding that my Silverlight ZXing port is featured on TWC9!

ACHIEVMENT UNLOCKED: Created noteworthy CodeProject

You guys just made my week

posted by gbrayut

Re: Programming Streams of Coincidence with Join and GroupJoin for Rx

gbrayut — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 10:47:29 GMT

Great video! Sounds like Windowing is a powerful tool being added to the Rx toolkit. My question is how do you filter a stream of streams? I tried using BufferWithTimeOrCount in a Windows Phone 7 project using both the old version that returns a list and the new version that returns an IObservable. In the old version I could do simple Where x.Count == 1 to see if only one item was produced, but in the new version I can't figure out how to implement a where clause on an IObservable>. There is a xs.Count() method, but it retuns an IObservable not an int.

I think some concrete examples would help. Also I think I need to sleep on it and try again in the morning

posted by gbrayut

Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today

gbrayut — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:43:15 GMT

Stop the press... the player saves the volume setting now!!! Freaking sweet! I swear it wasn't doing that 12 days ago, so whoever fixed that is my hero Thank!

posted by gbrayut

Re: New Home Page, Smooth Streaming added to Channel 9 today

gbrayut — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:40:44 GMT

Silverlight Smooth, slowmo and replay are awesome! Now if only the player would save the audio volume setting for the slider :-/

Keep up the great work!

posted by gbrayut

Re: Ping 87: Paramount on Windows Phone, H264 & Firefox, P Diddy, neosaurs, Microsoft is cool!

gbrayut — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:29:43 GMT

I wish that Microsoft Tag had an SDK or webservice for reading tags so that it could be integrated into other applications. I looked at adding it to the PhraseMeme Scanner application that I built for Windows Phone 7, but there are only APIs for creating new tags or managing categories, not reading existing tags. An SDK for reading tags is currently the top feature request at http://getsatisfaction.com/microsofttag/topics/sdk_for_building_tag_reading_apps but it doesn't look like it is going to be added anytime soon

posted by gbrayut

Re: Hot Apps: Avatar Gadgets, Guitar Hero 5, Geico, Local Concerts, Idiot Test

gbrayut — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 06:14:41 GMT

Love the show! Keep the hot apps coming

I got one hot out of the oven for you... Just published to the marketplace last night and I uploaded the demo to youtube a few hours ago! Check out http://www.phrasememe.com/scanner/ for all your barcode scanning needs.

posted by gbrayut

Re: Bart De Smet: LINQ to Z3

gbrayut — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:40:34 GMT

Wicked cool. Keep up the great work!

posted by gbrayut

Re: Cloud Cover Episode 29 - Working with CSPack

gbrayut — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 20:26:06 GMT

Notepad++ Zoom in and Zoom out: Ctrl-(Keypad-/Keypad+) or Ctrl + mouse wheel

Note it requires a keypad or a mouse, so not sure how you do it on a laptop. Maybe just use Windows 7 Zoom with Winkey and +?

posted by gbrayut

Re: Cloud Cover Episode 27 - Combining Roles and Using Scratch Disk

gbrayut — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:46:16 GMT

Great show. It does bring up an issue about Azure not being priced very well right now for small applications. Running a blog using 3 instances would cost you $0.12 x 3 x 24 x 30 = $259.20 a month at the standard retail rate (plus storage and transaction costs). Even dropping down to 2 or 1 instances (with periodic downtime for maintenance) puts Azure outside the price of most hobby or enthusiast sites when compared to other VM or shared-hosting offerings.

I wish Azure had an option for a smaller VM size like the $0.03/hr Micro-instances from Amazon EC2 that are perfect for lightweight websites. Then add the ability to do live upgrades between VM sizes so that users can auto-scale as needed. Better yet offer reduced pricing for bulk purchases (ala Reserved Instances) so that there is an incentive to use Azure for 24x7x365 applications. As it stands right now Azure's entry price points are a bit too high compared to other PaaS offerings, which is a shame since it is a beautiful platform.

posted by gbrayut

Re: Ping 72: Open Source love, Exchange Active Sync, Yahoo! by Bing, Silverlight

gbrayut — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:49:51 GMT

Ha! Channel 9 Ping beats Apple Ping any day in my book. And why do they have it built into the iTunes application instead of a browser? Most people I know love iPods but hate the iTunes app. Besides, Zune has had something like this for a few years. I guess Apple wants to try to control your social network too

posted by gbrayut

Re: Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 4: The IE9 Rocks HTML5 Audio Support

gbrayut — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:43:50 GMT

You do have a valid point about the UI: I really hope IE9 has something like the Omni-box in Google Chrome and that they fix the issue with "run-away toolbars". However after seeing the excellent work and energy that has been put into the demos I would say that Microsoft is really trying to push the limits of what HTML5 can do (in a good way!). It may not be something that gets used in a mission critical system or a business website, but these are all based on open standards and will help other browsers focus on more than just raw Javascript speed. I expect that over the next 5 years we will start to see many companies and enthusiasts working on complex HTML5 sites that hopefully will even put these spectacular demos to shame! And if they can't catch up to the rendering and animation speed of IE9, then there may be a whole new reason to install the IE-Tab plugin in Firefox/Chrome

Keep up the GREAT work!!!

posted by gbrayut