Getting Started with Windows Azure

Here's a post on getting started building Azure applications.

Visual Studio 2010 Stuff

A couple of interesting things showed up in my feed reader today.  The are for VS 2010 and seem worth checking out.

First up is Reactive Extenstions for .NET or (Rx).  From a post on Rx:

Using Rx, programmers can write succinct declarative code to orchestrate and coordinate asynchronous and event-based programs based on familiar .NET idioms and patterns. Rx has a strong theoretical basis by using the duality between the classic Iterator and Observer design patterns to simplify controlling asynchrony. By combining the expressiveness of LINQ with the elegance of category theory, Rx allows programmers to write asynchronous code without performing cruel and unnatural acts.

As the name implies, reactive programs react to changes in their environment. Traditionally, programmers use locks and event handlers to coordinate these changes. Rx models asynchronous computations and events as push-based, or observable, collections, thus expanding the scope of the standard LINQ sequence operators and extension methods beyond the familiar pull-based, or enumerable, collections into the realm of reactive programming.

Second is TFS 2010 Power Tools.  Here's the post on that.

Burning CDs/DVDs on Windows Server 2008

I needed to burn some CDs using Windows Server 2008.  That OS, of course, does not have native support for burning optical media as Vista does.  My older copy of Nero (6.6) is reported to have some compatibility issues with Server 2008, so that didn't help.  Some quick Google searching turned up ImgBurn, a lightweight freeware burning utility that supports multiple file formats and all versions of Windows.  I installed it on my Windows Server 2008 box and it worked like a charm.  Recommended.