Loading data in Azure Machine Learning 24 July 2014 Nico-Jacobs Azure, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, AzureML In July 2014 Microsoft made their cloud-based data mining environment (known as Azure Machine Learning, or AzureML) available to the public. With this platform users can analyze large amounts of data without the need to install and configure special software: A browser and a credit card is all you n... [More]
Why I'm more bullish on Swift than one month ago 15 July 2014 Francis One month ago I was fairly bearish on Swift. Now, with some hands-on development experience & after some recent news I'm updating my rating to "buy into it soon". Here's why:Gradual AdoptionApple has made it very easy to adopt Swift for small parts of existing projects. No need to do a full rewr... [More]
First Steps in Azure Machine Learning 15 July 2014 Nico-Jacobs Azure, Data Mining, SQL Server BI Today Microsoft announces the availability of machine learning (data mining) in Azure. As you can assume, you need an Azure account to get started with this, but there are free trial accounts… you can try before you buy. To get started with the machine learning preview go to http://manage.windowsaz... [More]
Playing sounds in a Universal Windows MVVM app 10 July 2014 Diederik-Krols Universal Windows Apps This article describes how to play foreground and background sounds in a XAML-based Universal Windows app. I know that this sounds easy (pun intended). But I will do this while sticking to the MVVM pattern, which makes it a bit more challenging. I’m not targeting a specific framework here. The descr... [More]
WWDC14 for non-developers (Part 4: Apple's commitment to security & privacy) 10 July 2014 Francis This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for far too long & Luis Abreu beat me to it. His post about IOS8 Privacy Updates is the most extensive guide so far on the implications of Apple's renewed commitment to respecting their user's privacy.Privacy is one of the themes that kept popp... [More]
WWDC14 for non-developers (Part 3: New IOS8 APIs) 09 July 2014 Francis mailto:francis@u2uconsult.com This post provides a high-level overview of the new API's developers use to build apps for IOS8. There's a lot more to explore than can be covered here, so if you have questions about IOS8 development go talk to your favourite developer. Below is a list of the major ne... [More]
WWDC14 for non-developers (Part 2: The Apple Design Process) 28 June 2014 Francis In this post I will highlight the most interesting WWDC14 sessions videos for non-developers. There were a surprisingly high number of session about design & UX that were totally accessible even if you're not a developer. You should obviously start with the Keynote, watch it before continuing wi... [More]
Universal App with Lex.DB 26 June 2014 Diederik-Krols Universal Windows Apps, Windows Phone, WinRT This article shows how to create a Universal Windows App that stores its local data in Lex.DB. This is a lightweight, developer-friendly in-process database engine, completely written in C#. For an introduction to building Store Apps on top of Lex.DB, please check this article of mine. For a more ad... [More]
Building custom reports for SQL Server management 26 June 2014 Nico-Jacobs Business Intelligence, SQL Server, Reporting Services, Talks Recently I presented a session at the ITPROceed conference on ‘Administration intelligence’: using Business Intelligence solutions for analyzing log files, generate documentation, do disk quota estimations and other typical administration tasks. You can find the full presentation at SlideShare. In ... [More]
Identities in the Cloud @ ITPROceed 24 June 2014 Els-Putzeys A few days ago, I presented a session on Identities in the Cloud at ITPROceed. I talked about the options in Windows Azure Active Directory to create and manage users: Microsoft Online IDs, Directory Synchronization and Federation.For those of you that are interested in the presentation, you can dow... [More]