Windows Azure Having Big Problems

A lot of Windows Azure services are inaccessible. I host a Windows Azure web role in the North American datacenter and it’s been completely inaccessible all day. What’s worse is the management site is down too, so I can’t even spin up an instance in another data center to try and get my site back online. See the Azure health monitor at http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/service-dashboard/

Steve Jobs – Rare 1980 Video

Sketchnoting

Sketchnoting IxDA 2012

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Understanding the Tablet Opportunity for Alternative Media

Cooper has a new blog post up about the opportunity for alternative media on tablets. The main points I took away from the presentation is that tablets are mainly consumption devices, people that have a tablet spend about 1.5 hours on a tablet a day and the experience is personalized. The cloud provides constant new data and news to the device. Through aggregators and other apps, the tablet is highly personalized to the individual. Tablet apps respect preferences.

The Revolution Will Be Portable from Cooper on Vimeo.

Why Infographic Thinking is the Future

Francesco Franchi has an article about him in Fast Company this past week. The article describes Franchi’s thoughts about infographics and why it’s not just information plus graphics. He sees infographics as a design language that invites the viewer to participate in the interpretation. Infographics are non-linear and offer multiple paths of discovery.

I think this is insightful and adds value to complex systems. Complexity theory and systems thinking are two emerging fields that are also about non-linear thinking, putting the pieces together, and discovering. Work in the 21st century, using the tools of complexity theory, systems thinking and infographics will give us a new way to absorb information that otherwise might add to information overload. I see infographics as a way of absorbing information in a meaningful and contextual way in a way that is not overloading.

Making Collages and Infographics for free online

The modern professional collage has taken the form of infographics. Infographics use imagery to explain or generalize a complex environment. You can make collages online for free using Tap Collage. There’s also a handy guide that shows you how to make a collage in 3 steps.

Windows Phone Developer Infographic

Make InfoGraphics with Tap Collage

If you are into infographics then you might want to edit an existing infographic to “re-cut” it. For example, this might mean take 3 different infographic parts from different infographics and displaying them as one. Tap Collage is a new free online collage maker that does this great. It makes it really simple. You start by choosing a template (like a 3D series of images or overlapping images) and then you choose the 3 or 4 images you want to be in your collage. You don’t have to do the detailed pixel-perfect work of rotating, cropping and resizing. You just simply choose a template and pick an image for each slot and it will create one collage image for you. The resulting image can be saved to your local computer, emailed or posted to Facebook. See the infographic below that I re-cut from its original.

Source: Pixable - Re-cut using Tap Collage

All the New Stuff

In the past couple of days I’ve really gotten to know OAuth 2, Azure AppFabric and OpenGraph better. I used AppFabric’s cache to store session state for an Azure app. It’s a little pricy for the current scale of the site, but I learned something new and have a fast cache. OAuth 2 can be a challenge at first because because of its workflow which is not as easy as just dropping a widget on your HTML page. But once you learn it then it’s something you can easily replicate across multiple sites. OpenGraph just keeps getting better and better. It reminds me a lot of node concept my brother has had for several years. OpenGraph is mainly implemented for a social platform, but I could see the technology it’s based being used for other ontologies. They are going in that direction of moving beyond just social with this new object/verb way of defining interactions with the OpenGraph.

Creating a New Azure Website

I’m in the process of coding a new Azure website. Since Guthrie has transitioned into a role on the Azure team the development experience has gotten a pot easier. I recently got a new computer and when I downloaded the new Visual Web Developer Express from Microsoft for free I was thankful that now it’s just one download and install. Download Azure tools. In early 2011 when you installed this product it would be one install for Visual Web Developer, another install for the Azure Tools and another install for the Azure SDK. There’s another gem in the new Visual Web Developer, you can connect to blob storage from inside Visual Studio. It use to be that this basic function required a separate third party application, like Cloud Studio.