QCon London 2010 report: fix your code, adopt simplicity, cool .NET things

By tim, on March 12th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m just back from QCon London, a software development conference with an agile flavour that I enjoy because it is not vendor-specific. Conferences like this are energising; they make you re-examine what you are doing and may kick you into a better place. Here’s what I noticed this year.

Robert C Martin from

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March 12th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: .net, agile, azure, cloud computing, software development, ubuntu | Leave a comment

Microsoft maybe gets the cloud – maybe too late

By tim, on March 5th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a talk on the company’s cloud strategy at the University of Washington yesterday. Although a small event, the webcast was widely publicised and coincides with a leaked internal memo on “how cloud computing will change the way people and businesses use technology”, a new Cloud website, and a Cloud

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March 5th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: .net, amazon, azure, cloud computing, google, internet, microsoft, software development, web authoring, windows | Leave a comment

Google storage 10 times cheaper than Azure – but not as cheap as Skydrive

By tim, on February 5th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

According to Jerry Huang of Gladinet, whose Cloud Desktop exposes a variety of cloud storage services as mapped drives in Windows Explorer, Google storage is “about 10 times cheaper” than Windows Azure. Since Amazon S3 has similar prices to Azure, I imagine Google undercuts that by some margin as well.

Gladinet compares Google and

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February 5th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: amazon, azure, cloud computing, google, microsoft, windows | Leave a comment

Windows Azure is too expensive for small apps

By tim, on January 22nd, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m researching Windows Azure development; and as soon as you check out early feedback one problem jumps out immediately. Azure is prohibitively expensive for small applications.

Here’s a thread that makes the point:

Currently I’m hosting 3 relatively small ASP.net web applications on a VPS. This is costing about $100 per month. I’m considering

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January 22nd, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: .net, azure, cloud computing, microsoft, software development, web authoring | 8 comments

New HP and Microsoft agreement commits $50 million less than similar 2006 deal

By tim, on January 15th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve held back comment on the much-hyped HP and Microsoft three-year deal announced on Wednesday mainly because I’ve been uncertain of its significance, if any. It didn’t help that the press release was particularly opaque, full of words with many syllables but little meaning. I received the release minutes before the conference call, during

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January 15th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: azure, cloud computing, hp, internet, microsoft, virtualization, windows | One comment

PDC day one: Windows in the cloud

By tim, on November 18th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Today was cloud day at PDC. Microsoft announced that Windows Azure will become a production platform on January 1st, with billing starting from February 1st. It also announced the beta of Windows Server AppFabric role, for on-premise apps that can either stay on-premise or be deployed to Azure later; and some new developments like

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November 18th, 2009 | Category: azure, cloud computing, microsoft, software development, sql, visual studio, windows | Leave a comment

MySQL comes to Amazon’s cloud. Anyone for Quadruple Extra Large?

By tim, on October 27th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Amazon has announced the Amazon Relational Database Service:

Amazon RDS gives you access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database. This means the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing MySQL databases work seamlessly with Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS automatically patches the database software and backs up your

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October 27th, 2009 | Category: amazon, azure, database, sql | Leave a comment