If you are a PluralSight subscriber check it out. If you are not leave me a comment and I can get you a free trail. PluralSight has some amazing content and has amazing value.

Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) Strengths

These are the features of Windows Phone 7.5 that I feel are better than iOS 5:

• Back Button: Every WP7 has a back button on the bottom left corner of the phone. The back button will either take you back to the previous screen you are on, or if the current application has a hook into the back button, will do something appropriate in the application. For example if you are in the web browser it will take you to the previous page (just like on your desktop web browser). This comes in handy all the time. You are in twitter, click a link that opens a web browser, then hit the back button to get back to your twitter application. You open a text message that comes in, then hit the back button to get back to the application that you were previously in. When using my iPhone I would find myself constantly hitting that location on the phone to try and go backwards.
• New Mail Notification: On iOS the mail icon displays the number of unread e-mails in your combined inboxes. Personally that is the most useless number it could possibly show me. I purposely leave e-mails unread as a reminder that I need to work on them. On WP7 the lock screen and the live tile show the number of e-mails that have arrived since the last time you opened the mail app. At a glance you can tell if you have new mail and how many. To me this is a vastly superior methodology.
• People Hub: The concept of the people hub is what really separates the WP7 OS from iOS (or Android). The people hub is a single “application” that allows you to perform all the interactions you may have with a person. Whether it’s a phone call, text, e-mail, or interactions on social networks. I found myself often jumping in to the people hub to catch up on Facebook and Twitter. The downside, which I will talk about in more detail later, is that while the People Hub is a great place to quickly interact with Twitter and FB, if you want to use more advanced features of those social networks you will need to open their dedicated apps.
• Battery Saver: WP7 has a feature called battery saver. You can either turn it on until the next time you charge your phone, or the phone will automatically go into battery saver mode when the battery reaches 20%. Battery saver mode turns off background tasks and disables push delivery of e-mail. I usually turn off push notifications when I know I will be away from a power charger for a long period of time. Having a single place to enable all of those battery saving techniques is incredibly handy. It is also nice that the next time you charge the device it automatically goes back to a normal configuration. This feature came in really handy when I realized I would be away from my house for most of the day and didn’t have a way to charge my phone until I got home.

iPhone (iOS 5) Strengths

These are the features of the iPhone/iOS5 that I feel are better than WP7.

• Applications: The number one issue I had with WP7 is the lack of 3rd party applications. Before I used WP7 I would hear Apple brag about how they had 14 billion applications (or something along those lines, I might be exaggerating just a little) in their app store and I would think, “Who cares!” It turns out that it does matter. In the WP7 app store I found availability of applications lacking, and when the applications were available they were often lacking in quality. I commute to San Francisco on a rail system called CalTrain. On the iPhone there are half a dozen applications that show you the train schedule. At the time I was using Windows Phone there was only one. On the iPhone I was able to try out a few different apps and choose the one that was best for me. On the Windows Phone I didn’t have that option, and for me the one available isn’t very intuitive or helpful.
• Hardware: This is starting to change with Nokia shipping Windows Phones, but especially in October when I was making the decision the hardware available on WP7 just wasn’t as good as the iPhone. For me it was even worse because I was moving to Verizon, which to this day has fairly miserable WP7 hardware.
• Orientation Lock: Starting with iOS4 you can lock the phone so that it does not shift into landscape mode. This is handy when for example you are lying in bed reading email on your phone in the morning and you don’t want it to shift to landscape. The WP7 does not have this feature.
• Screenshots: On the iPhone you can take a screen shot by pressing power and home simultaneously. On WP7 you have to be a developer and go through a complicated setup process. When using the WP7 I was surprised how often I wanted to take a screen shot but couldn’t. Usually for me it’s taking a screenshot of the weather, or a funny FB post, and texting it to someone. Not a critical feature, but one I find extremely useful.
• Podcast Variable Speed Playback: I listen to a lot of podcasts. On the iPhone you can listen to podcasts at double speed. WP7 does not have the same ability. Double speed playback is a big time saver for me, it allows me to listen to . . . well twice as many podcasts in the same time period.

Verdict

For being a long time iTunes/iPhone/etc. user/fan and after my Windows Phone test drive, I was surprisingly torn about which phone to get. Once I’d become accustomed to WP7 (which took about 3-5 days) I started to really REALLY like it.

I ended up buying an iPhone 4S on Verizon in October. I’ve been really happy with the device, but honestly when I see others with WP7 devices I am slightly jealous.

The two things that really kept me from getting a WP7 were the applications and the hardware. The application story is getting better every day. Microsoft has a chicken and egg problem here (app developers don’t focus on WP7 because of lack of market share, market share suffers because of lack of apps) but I know they have really smart people working on the problem and are making really good progress on it.

On the hardware side the theory is that Verizon is not interested in furthering their WP7 commitment until 4G devices are available. It looks like the first WP7 4G device is coming from Nokia, and hopefully that means that Verizon will start improving the WP7 hardware available this year.

I am eligible for a new subsidized phone from Verizon in the summer of 2013. At the current pace of innovation WP7 will have left iOS in the dust by then. Unless Apple makes a revolutionary change in iOS6 I don’t see myself buying an iPhone in 2013.

What do you think? Leave a comment or contact me on twitter.

Here we have Test1 running in Production and Test2 running in Staging.  Clients that go to your production URL are routed to your production code.  Clients that go to your staging URL are routed to your staging code.  This allows you to have your customers use your production code, while you can test your new code running in staging.

Now that I’ve tested my staging code I am ready to move it to production.  I click the swap button located in-between my two versions and Test2 becomes production and Test1 is moved to staging.  What happens behind the scenes is the load balancer (managed by the Azure platform) starts directing incoming requests to your production URL to servers running the Test2 code base and requests coming into your staging URL are routed to servers running the Test1 code base.  This process literally takes a few seconds since the Test2 code base is already running on servers.  This also gives you the advantage of being able to immediately switch back to your old code base if something goes wrong.

Now we have updated our code again and have pushed up Test3 to our staging area.  We now have Test2 still running in production, and can do testing on Test3 in staging.

Now that we have tested our Test3 code and are ready to move it to production we hit the swap button again and Test3 becomes production and Test2 is moved to staging ready to be moved back into production on a moments notice.

One thing to take note of is that the Web Site URL’s for Production and Staging never changed.  Unfortunately neither of them are URL’s you want your customers to see or you would want work with.  What you want to do is create two DNS CNAME records.  In the example case I’m using here you would create two DNS records:

serktools-stagetest.clodapp.net    CNAME    yourwebapp.com

e7e3f38589d04635a6d0d0aee22bd842.cloudapp.net     CNAME     stage.yourwebapp.com

If your looking for more information on the topic you might want to check out my Cloud Computing presentation slide deck or the articles I have written on Amazon Web Services.

If your not already subscribed to the feed you can find this episode at http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=565.

Thanks to Peter Kellner we have some pictures of the event.

What you get is an ISO that will install Windows Server 2008 R2 Core edition running Hyper-V.  The license for that is 100% free.  If you install a guest running Windows you will need a license for the guest, but if all you did was install Linux guests you could have a 100% licensing cost free environment.

Realistically if you are a windows shop you are going to be buying datacenter licenses for the physical CPU’s to cover an unlimited number of guests.  And if you are not a windows shop you are not going to be using Hyper-V for no other reason than it does not have great Linux support yet.  But if you just want to look at Hyper-V or use it in a lab environment this edition of Hyper-V can come in quite handy.

And yes this blog post is mostly here so I can find the download page in the future.  If you can find it on your own within five minutes then I am impressed.

I recently attended the NYC Code Camp which was an excellent experience for me and was a very well run code camp.

Stephen Bohlen wrote an excellent article about the review system they used and the benefits it had over other review systems I have been subjected a part of at various events.

As a speaker getting good honest feedback is very hard.  One of the things I really liked about their system is I was able to see my reviews in comparison to the other reviews that attendee gave.  So it helped me put in perspective the feedback I received.  For example if the feedback I get from a particular attendee is much better (or much worse) than the general feedback given to the other speakers then I know it is significant.  If an attendee says all the sessions are great than I know that he is just being nice.

I also received much more tangible and actionable feedback than I normally do.  On a “normal” review I will get one actionable comment (eg The way you demonstrated x was good/bad or if you would have done y I think I would have followed along with z better) for every 50 reviews.  I would say that 1 out of 10 from this system gave me actionable feedback.  Of course maybe that is the difference between New York and California cultures also

If your involved in organizing technical events or speak at technical events I highly recommend you read the article NYC CodeCamp Winter 2010: Session Evaluation Process, Results, and Conclusions.

I recently wrote an article Does Cloud Computing Mean You Are Out of Work? While at the MVP Summit I briefly had the chance to discuss this issue with the interviewer in the video, Joey Snow.  Windows Azure, along with cloud computing in general, is causing significant concern among the IT Pro community regarding their future career paths.  If you are an IT Pro do yourself a favor and watch this video to get up to speed on Windows Azure and your role in it.

Play Video

Original Link: http://edge.technet.com/Media/Real-World-Azure-The-IT-Professionals-Role-and-Windows-Azure/

This article is also very helpful if you want to script the promotion of your domain controllers.

DCPROMO.exe

Just like on a full server install dcpromo.exe is still used to promote a machine to a domain controller.  One of the nice features of dcpromo.exe is that if the Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) role is not installed dcpromo.exe will add that role to your server for you.

However if you would like to install the ADDS and DNS roles before you begin the promotion process the command lines would be:

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx2-ServerCore

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3-ServerCore

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:DirectoryServices-DomainController-ServerFoundation

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:DNS-Server-Core-Role

The full command argument options of dcpromo.exe can be found at the Microsoft TechNet documentation site.

The common arguments used in either a new domain or existing domain scenario are:

Creating a new Forest

The bare minimum command to create a new forest is:

dcpromo.exe /unattend /replicaOrNewDomain:domain /newDomain:forest

/newDomainDnsName:serk.local /domainNetbiosName:SERK

/safeModeAdminPassword:<Password for Directory Services Restore Mode>

Remember that when you create a new Forest you are really creating a new Root level Domain so a lot of the commands will be referencing domain creation.

The common parameters used when creating a new forest are:

Creating a new Domain in an existing Forest

The bare minimum command to create a new domain in an existing forest is:

dcpromo.exe /unattend /replicaOrNewDomain:domain /newDomain:child

/newDomainDnsName:child.serk.local /parentDomainDNSName:serk.local

/domainNetbiosName:CHILD-SERK /childName:child

/userDomain:serk.local /username:administrator /password:*

/safeModeAdminPassword:<Password for Directory Services Restore Mode>

The bare minimum command to create a new tree in an existing forest is:

dcpromo.exe /unattend /replicaOrNewDomain:domain /newDomain:tree

/newDomainDnsName:tree.local /parentDomainDNSName:serk.local

/domainNetbiosName:TREE

/userDomain:serk.local /username:administrator /password:*

/safeModeAdminPassword:<Password for Directory Services Restore Mode>

The common parameters used when creating a new domain in an existing forest are:

Adding a Domain Controller to an Existing Domain

The bare minimum command to add a domain controller to an existing domain is:

dcpromo.exe /unattend /replicaOrNewDomain:replica /replicaDomainDNSName:serk.local

/userDomain=serk.local /username=administrator /password:*

/safeModeAdminPassword:<Password for Directory Services Restore Mode>

The common parameters used adding a domain controller to a domain are:

There will be tracks covering Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Office 2010, and Exchange 2010.  Each track will have five one hour breakout sessions plus there will be two keynotes.

At the Orange County event I will be speaking on:

• High Availability in Windows Server 2008 R2
• Back-ups, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity in Server Virtualization
• IIS 7.5 in Windows Server 2008 R2

My schedule for the San Francisco event has not been set yet.

This is a great event that spans the gap between free community events (eg User Groups) and the large conferences such as TechEd.  If you are looking to spend a day getting caught up on the latest Microsoft technologies this is the perfect event for you.

If you register before February 26th the cost of the event is only $299.  Plus if you leave a comment on this post I can send you a discount code for $50 off bringing the event down to $249.