21 Windows Azure News Links from August

It's Friday again, I hope you're all enjoying the last few weeks of summer before we head into the cooler fall weather (at least here in the northern hemisphere.) It's still relatively hot here in North Carolina, though the nights are getting cooler. Here's a collection of links Brian and I discovered this week for your weekend reading:

• Using Node.js with Windows Azure SQL Database: This step-by-step tutorial will get you up to speed with using Node.js and Windows Azure SQL Database.
• Windows Azure Cloud Services and Virtual Networks: "Virtual Networks improves the composition of cloud services by allowing one or more of them to be added to a Virtual Network." This tutorial provides context and shows you how to set up a Virtual Network.
• Windows Azure SDK for PHP with Anton Babadjanov (VIDEO): Anton Babadjanov shows you how to use the Windows Azure SDK for PHP to create a simple task list application.
• Cassandra on Azure CentOS VM: Nice overview of how to get Cassandra running on an Azure CentOS virtual machine.
• Windows Azure SDK for PHP – ‘PartitionKey’ property value must satisfy is_string: Cory Fowler points out what could be a "gotcha" when using the Windows Azure Table Service via PHP.
• Windows Server 2012 Available for Windows Azure!: Windows Server 2012 has some great features/improvements...and it's now available in Windows Azure. (Great way to try it out.)
• Introducing Windows Azure Mobile Services: An interesting look at the development of newly-released Windows Azure Mobile Services by a Program Manager on the team that built it.
• Guest Post: Getting Started with New Relic on Windows Azure: A post on the Windows Azure blog by Nick Floyd, Senior Engineer at New Relic, detailing how to get started with New Relic and Windows Azure.
• Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java - August 2012 Preview: The Microsoft Open Technologies Inc. team has been busy updating the Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java.

• Stream Handbook: A book on how to work with streams in Node.js.

• JS 101: Equality: If you're confused about == vs === and != vs !== in JavaScript, this link is for you.

• How to simulate slow connection (developer proxy in Node.js): Not everyone has a great internet connection, so it's a good thing to test your application to see how it works for slow connections.

• TodoMVC: Wondering which JavaScript MV* framework to use? TodoMVC provides examples of many of the popular frameworks so you can look them over and figure out which one you want.

• Introducing the Saltarelle open source C# to JavaScript compiler: The title says it all.

• Building Atari with CreateJS: Atari recently released web based versions of thier classic games at the Atari Arcade. This article goes into detail on how they used CreateJS, along with the Atari Arcade SDK, to create these web games.

• WebMatrix 2 is Releashed + New Windows Azure Features: WebMatrix 2 came out this week. For Windows developers, it provides a lightweight IDE for ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js and HTML coding.

• Windows Azure Mobile Services and iOS: Windows Azure Mobile Services is a new thing that gives you mobile services (like data storage and notifications) as a service. This article talks about using it with iOS clients.

• Windows Azure Mobile Services and Android: Similar to the previous link, this shows how to use Windows Azure Mobile Services with Android clients.

• Pinning Useful and Obscure Stuff to the Windows 8 Start Menu: While not really a cloud or OSS thing, there's one bit of information in this post that you may want if you develop web sites - how to specify a larger image for your web site icon when a Windows 8 user pins it to thier start menu.

• Azure Node.js developer center redesign: You may have noticed that we recently redesigned the Node.js developer center on WindowsAzure.com. This post goes over some of the details of the new design.

• A Better Way to Store Data: Erasure coding explained. The math geek in me [Brian] loves this!

Have a great weekend!

- Brian & Larry