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Microsoft has made available a series of ebooks on the MVA web site. From technical overviews to drilldowns on special topics, these free ebooks are available in PDF, EPUB, and/or Mobi for Kindle formats, ready for you to download.

You can check them all out here:

http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ebooks

Happy reading!

Through Microsoft’s Security newsletter, I learned about a great resource which is the Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for Malware Response.

It helps with planning the best and most cost-effective response to malicious software for your organization. This free guide provides methodologies for the assessment of malware incidents, walks through the considerations and decisions that are pertinent to timely response and recovery, and describes approaches to investigating outbreaks and cleaning infected systems.
The Malware Response Guide includes the following content:

• Step 1: Confirm the Infection. This step involves taking actions to immediately contain an infection. Information is gathered from the user and about the system to help assess the breadth of the problem.
• Step 2: Determine the Course of Action. This step involves determining the risk to data, performing backups before proceeding with the chosen course of action, if required, and deciding whether to examine the malware’s effects on the system. Also, decide whether to clean the malware, restore system state, or rebuild the system
• Step 3: Attempt to Clean the System. This step involves putting the system cleaning plan into effect. Attempting to remove the malware using automated tools such as antimalware products are performed.
• Step 4: Attempt to Restore the System State. This step involves attempting to restore the system state, and evaluating the restored system for the effectiveness of malware removal.
• Step 5: Rebuild the System. This step involves either rebuilding the system from image or by reinstalling the operating system. Also, restoring the user settings and data are performed, and evaluating the activities performed for effectiveness.
• Step 6: Conduct Post Attack Review. This step focuses on post-attack items to consider for lessons learned.

You can get the download of the IPD guide for Malware Response here.

BrowserSwarm is a partnership by Microsoft, Sauce Labs and the open source team of appendTo that helps developers automate how they test frameworks & libraries across browsers. It’s powered through the cloud, allowing developers to save time setting-up multiple browser or device testing environments and precious server resources.

BrowserSwarm connects directly to your GitHub code repo. When your team makes updates, BrowserSwarm automatically runs your project's Unit Test Suite and supports Frameworks, like QUnit, in the cloud using SauceLabs browser automation.

BrowserSwarm is meant to help the framework authors that build stuff for developers by reducing the time spent testing.
 
Check the original post by Microsoft here.
 
Site: BrowserSwarm

Microsoft Press has released Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model, by Marc Farley, as a free download. You can download the PDF version of this book here.

The book includes seven chapters:

1. Rethinking enterprise storage
2. Leapfrogging backup with cloud snapshots
3. Accelerating and broadening disaster recovery protection
4. Taming the capacity monster
5. Archiving data with the hybrid cloud
6. Putting all the pieces together
7. Imagining the possibilities with hybrid cloud storage

If you prefer the kindle edition of the book, you can find it here: Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model

Working on the application development scene, it’s hard to keep up with everything new. Every bit of help counts. Great resources are the eBooks you can find, for free, online on the Web. The books you can find in PDF format are great because you can take them with you anywhere. The ones that are available to view online are also great because you get any updates made on the subject. On this post I leave everyone a small set of links where you can find eBook compilations.
The first one comes from Speck boy Design Magazine and it’s mostly about User Interface design. For instance, the Mobile Web Design Best Practices by Mobify “is a handy mobile web design guide with over 50 tips that will help you build amazing mobile websites”. You can visit the Specky boy eBook compilation here: http://speckyboy.com/2013/06/10/free-ebooks-for-designers-and-developers/
The next eBook compilation is from Revolunet. It’s all about the Python programming language. You have the classic “Dive into Python” and a whole bunch of other interesting books. You can find them all at this Web page: http://pythonbooks.revolunet.com/
Finally, this list wouldn’t be complete without the emerging trend on multi-platform application development: javaScript. Here you have subjects for all tastes: Node.js, MongoDB, Windows 8, and so on. Get them all on this page: http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/
Happy readings!
Photo Credit: Mark J P via Compfight cc

Graph Databases, published by O’Reilly Media, discusses the problems that are well aligned with graph databases, with examples drawn from practical, real-world use cases. This book also looks at the ecosystem of complementary technologies, highlighting what differentiates graph databases from other database technologies, both relational and NOSQL.
Fill in a short form to get your download link by e-mail.

Site: http://www.graphdatabases.com/

While searching for documentation about how to install, configure and administer the latest Microsoft Sharepoint released, I found two very relevant documents that combined give a really good work basis for deploying a fresh install of a server farm or maybe just a standalone development server.
First came the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview. It’s the preview version but it has useful information on, for example, how to use a network share to install the software prerequisites. It looks a bit like a work in progress documentation, but it has some bits and pieces that are gone from the definitive guide.
Second, came the definitive Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013. It’s an official free eBook to learn how to install and configure SharePoint Server and SharePoint Foundation. It comes in several formats and it’s a downloadable source of the content available at the TechNet Sharepoint Library.
The first guide is really nice if you’re an experienced administrator that comes from the 2010 version, but lacks some specific guidance. The second one is a complete guide and covers the operation and maintenance aspects very well.
Download the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview here.
Download the Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 here.

The Web is evolving in a way that it’s more accessible than ever before, through a growing number in kind of personal devices. One might navigate the Web from a PC or a touch enabled device. The challenge for web developers is to adapt the User Interface to each client device capabilities and support the features on an effective manner.
This is where to Bootstrap framework comes in. It was made to not only look and behave great in the latest desktop browsers, but in tablet and smartphone browsers as well.

Built at Twitter by @mdo and @fat, Bootstrap utilizes LESS CSS, is compiled via Node, and is managed through GitHub.
Along the same line, but with site creation using the new Windows 8 style, you might want to check out Metro UI CSS.
Metro UI CSS allows to create a Web site in the style of Windows 8 quickly and without distractions on routine tasks.
The great value added by this frameworks is that you get a great looking, responsive and adaptive UI that you can put on your own Web applications.
Twitter Bootstrap: site
Metro UI CSS: site

Some weeks ago I published about the free preview of  Introducing Windows 8: An Overview for IT Professionals. Well, the final version of this free ebook has been released. You can download it from here.
If you prefer a hard copy of the final book, you can order it here for $8.46 from Amazon (pre-order price).

Is this book for you?

Get a headstart evaluating Window 8—guided by a Windows expert who’s worked extensively with the software since the preview releases. Based on final, release-to-manufacturing (RTM) software, this book introduces new features and capabilities, with scenario-based insights demonstrating how to plan for, implement, and maintain Windows 8 in an enterprise environment. Get the high-level information you need to begin preparing your deployment now.

Topics include:

• Performance, reliability, and security features
• Deployment options
• Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit
• Windows PowerShell™ 3.0 and Group Policy
• Managing and sideloading apps
• Internet Explorer® 10
• Virtualization, Client Hyper-V, and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack
• Recovery features

Source: Microsoft Press

A few months ago I posted about the feee e-book Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
The companion content for has been updated. So download the companion content again if you’ve already got it:
http://go.microsoft.com/FWLink/?Linkid=270057 (59.9 MB)
Here are the details of the update from the author:
This update fixes one bug in the HereMyAm examples for Chapters 8, 9, 13, and 17 in the file pages/home/home.js. The one line within the updateImage function:
    app.sessionState.fileToken = list.addOrReplace(app.sessionState.fileToken, newFile);
is replaced with
    list.addOrReplace(app.sessionState.fileToken, newFile);
This corrects a bug where transient session state was preserved across the suspend-terminate-restart boundary only every other time because the app.sessionState.fileToken was erroneously overwritten with “undefined”.

Source: Microsoft Press

The Windows 8 operating system is the newest member of the Microsoft Windows family. It differs from earlier Windows releases as much for what it does not change as for what it does change. That is, the features that IT pros loved about Windows 7 are still there in Windows 8—just better. The same keyboard shortcuts, management tools, security features, and deployment options are available in Windows 8. But in many cases, Windows 8 improves them in intuitive and significant ways. Some examples are the ribbon in File Explorer and faster disk encryption when using BitLocker Drive Encryption. This book describes these enhancements plus many of the new features in Windows 8.
Enjoy this preview edition that contains Chapters 1-11. 
Download the PDF version of the book here: Introducing Windows 8: An Overview for IT Professionals - PDF ebook

Source: Microsoft Press

Subscribing to newsletters can be hazardous to your inbox. Even if you mark the ones you don’t want to receive as spam, you might still get bugged by daily and weekly digests from your favorite sites.

Nevertheless, newsletters are important to keep in touch with your favorite subjects and up to date with trends or special offers.

Some of the best note taking applications are free. I’ll state three of them here, as an example:

• Springpad
• Evernote
• Simplenote

These note taking apps support saving notes by posting an e-mail message to a given address, which is will be a generated address by the note taking service and not your personal account.

So, if you do not already own an account on one of these services, take the time to subscribe free. Next just follow two simple steps:

1. Configure the e-mail adress where you can post notes to.


2. Update your newsletter subscriptions to deliver contents to your newly acquired e-mail address.

If you’d like to check out how to use this feature on Springpad, watch the video below:

OpenShot Video Editor is a free, open-source video editor for Linux licensed under the GPL version 3.0.
OpenShot can take your videos, photos, and music files and help you create the film you have always dreamed of. Easily add sub-titles, transitions, and effects, and then export your film to DVD, YouTube, Vimeo, Xbox 360, and many other common formats. What really sets OpenShot apart from other video editors is the easy-to-use user interface.

The author states that this release has more bug fixes, enhancements, and new features than any other release of OpenShot to date.

OpenShot 1.4.3 Released! from Jonathan Thomas on Vimeo.

My personal opinion is that if you’re used to Windows Movie Maker, this software has the same approach but with a lot more features and enhancements. You can really get professional quality work done with this editor. But you have to be running a linux OS.

You can check out all the main features here and download the editor here.

Google is a major user and sponsor of open source projects. However on their Google Drive product they surprisingly lack a linux client to synchronize to and from the cloud.

Last year, two of the most popular and widely adopted distros of linux (according to Distrowatch) are Ubuntu/Debian based. From these users, all that have Google accounts and are active users of the former Google Docs suite, found themselves left behind in favor of commercial OS users: Windows and Mac. Google’s product manager Teresa W. stated that “Hi everyone - Google Drive for Linux is still in the works. Thanks for following up with us!”. Personally, and having passed 5 months since the lauch, I really begin to doubt this. Well, having gone over this brief rant, let’s get down to business.

You have a really cool Linux client for Google Drive called InSync. It’s installation is pretty straightforward and it’ easy enough to use. Bu it bring two catches with it:

• It’s still in beta stage;
• It’s only free while in beta stage:

Personally I don’t intend to use free software, maybe paying for extra storage space on Google Drive and then some day go spend money on a third-party client software.

The solution I found was SMEStorage. I don’t know how this guys have been staying so low profile because they have a really cool service. On the free account mode, you get 5GB free space and access to another 3 cloud storage providers, mapped to the same account. The only catch is that you get a 2GB upload/download monthly limit, which is fine if you’re like me and use your Google Drive for documents, leaving the “heavy stuff” for Dropbox.

The first step is to register for SMEStorage. You can go to the register page here.

Afterwards, on your dashboard, you add a new cloud provider:

From the list, choose the Google Drive Cloud Provider:

Authorize SMEStorage to access your Google Drive information and files:

When your done, you can choose to synchronize the Google Drive information with SMEStorage:

What this does is not to import the files but to read and catalog the metadata from the files, so you can view them on the file explorer. By doing  so, it prevents this synchronization process and file browsing to be charged on your monthly free limit.

Passing on to the Ubuntu specific installation, you can get the Linux free Cloud Tools from here. Download the file and save it to your home folder:

Open the package with the Ubuntu software center tool and choose “Install”.

When it successfully completes, you should have three new tools on your machine. Open the dash and type “smes”:

For the remaining steps, I chose to go through the Sync Center setup, which is the one I’ll use, since it performs a local copy of the synced files.When opening the program for the first time it open the properties window, to configure the connection:

After putting in the credentials and choosing your desired sync schedule, you map between your cloud providers and your chosen local folders:

After mapping the folders and pressing “OK”, you can choose to perform a sync down operation which will download all your files from the cloud to the chosen folder, recursively creating subfolders.All goes well, you’ll be presented with a dialog like this:

Hope this helps some of the Google Drive and Ubuntu users who are still looking for a solution.

Full Circle is a free, independent, monthly magazine dedicated to the Ubuntu family of Linux operating systems. Each month, it contains helpful how-to articles and reader submitted stories.

On this month’s issue, there a great compilation of free e-book resources for Ubuntu beginners and enthusiasts.

Starting off, there’s the Muktware Ubuntu Manual. According to the magazine, it’s intended for users new to Ubuntu coming from other operating systems, and also users who are upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

It is a manual produced by the community for the community. Therefore, it is available free of charge, and is distributed under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. The author also notes that one should be be aware that this is the very first edition and hence is a work in progress. You can download from here.

Next, there’s the Absolute Beginner’s Guide from MakeuseOf. This guide covers what Ubuntu is, what makes it free and how Ubuntu and Linux are related.

It also shows you how to install Ubuntu for absolute beginners, where to find free support for Ubuntu questions, how to use the Unity interface how to find software in Ubuntu and which software to use.

You can find out about the author and get the dowload link from here.

In third place on this list comes the Ubuntu Manual Project: Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.04. It’s  a comprehensive beginners guide for the Ubuntu operating system. It is written under an open source license, and is free for you to download, read, modify and share.

The manual will help you become familiar with everyday tasks such as surfing the web, listening to music and scanning documents. With an emphasis on easy-to-follow instructions, it is suitable for all levels of experience.

Microsoft has released a training kit covering some development specifics for developers who will be targeting Internet Explorer 10 in their development experience. This kit contains documentation and details on things pertinent to developing applications that target features of the Internet Explorer 10 browser. The included labs cover the following features:

• Compatibility, Developer Tools and Performance
• DOM Features and ECMAScript5
• New CSS3 Features
• New HTML5 Features
• Using IndexedDB
• Vector Graphics (Canvas & SVG)

Before downloading, be warned that the kit will work only on genuine flavors of Windows. In fact, it will run a validation tool prior to offering access to the downloadable content.

The training kit can be downloaded from Microsoft here.

I am deeply dependent on having a decent remote desktop connection tool, that allows to organize and save machine into groups, as well as store corresponding usernames. Learning today that mRemote is being discontinued, I was concerned and researched the Web for an alternative. The first one was of course the open source spin-off project from mRemote called mRemoteNG (next generation). But it’s not appealing because of the simple chance of that project also ending and having to go through the motions of migrating all catalogued machines to yet another manager.

There was the possibility of using the RoyalTS manager, but on it’s shareware version it only supports up to 10 connections. It’s not nearly enough for my needs. So I got back to basics and found a pearl from back in 2010: Microsoft Remote Desktop Manager.

It’s a full fledged remote desktop connection manager with a tree organization interface, desktop thumbnail previews and some other very interesting features. For a full review on this tool, you might want to check out this post.

In software engineering, continuous integration (CI) implements continuous processes of applying quality control — small pieces of effort, applied frequently. Continuous integration aims to improve the quality of software, and to reduce the time taken to deliver it, by replacing the traditional practice of applying quality control after completing all development. (cited from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
If you work with Microsoft technologies and products, your sure bet will be the Team Foundation Server and ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) processes supported by that platform.
If you’re working with Java then Jenkins is for you, It’s an open source CI server written in Java. It is licensed under the MIT license terms, and it is widely adopted throughout the world for different languages and environments. It also has an enormous community that contributes plugins. Initially, Jenkins was called Hudson, and was developed inside Sun Microsystems' offices. When Oracle purchased Sun (and inherited the code base), they tried to change the way the project was managed. In early 2011, tensions between Oracle and the community lead to a project fork, and Jenkins was born. The main difference is that Hudson is still managed by Oracle, and Jenkins by most of the original Hudson developers (including the founder Kohsuke Kawaguchi), focused on the community's needs.
To get started with Jenkins, you can follow the online tutorials. But for a more complete self-training I would recommend the book from O’Reilly, “Jenkins: The Definitive Guide”: It’s presented as being ideal for developers, software architects, and project managers, Jenkins: The Definitive Guide is both a CI tutorial and a comprehensive Jenkins reference. Through its wealth of best practices and real-world tips, you'll discover how easy it is to set up a CI service with Jenkins. Aspects covered are:

• Learn how to install, configure, and secure your Jenkins server
• Organize and monitor general-purpose build jobs
• Integrate automated tests to verify builds, and set up code quality reporting
• Establish effective team notification strategies and techniques
• Configure build pipelines, parameterized jobs, matrix builds, and other advanced jobs
• Manage a farm of Jenkins servers to run distributed builds
• Implement automated deployment and continuous delivery

To great news are that if you don’t care for the paperback, you can download this book free on this site.
After getting to know Jenkins, another great resource is the free cheat sheet available from the guys at DZone.

Today I attended a Windows 8 Development Camp. The Windows 8 camps are free training events for developers ramping up on Windows Store app development. It’s of great value added for developers trying to get traction on the new development technolgies and tools associated with the Windows modern UI. Nonetheless, I personally felt that the workshop could be handled on my own. So, for all the people out there that don’t have the good fortune to able to attend one of these events, or are simply too eager to wait, I recommend downloading Windows 8 Camp in a Box.It includes the hands-on-labs, presentations, samples and resources from the Windows 8 camps.
Download: Windows 8 Camp in a Box

Together with the launch of Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft has released a product guide to learn how to take advantage of their latest IDE release, as well as the technologies supported.
This Visual Studio 2012 Product Guide provides a comprehensive overview of scenarios and features regarding:

• The new integrated development environment (IDE)
• Windows® 8 development
• Web development
• Cloud development
• SharePoint development
• Application Life Cycle Management tools

You can download the guide from Microsoft Download Center.