Weekly East Region Roundup: Vol. 3

Here are some resources and blog posts from my fellow Technical Evangelists here in East Region:

Developer

• Brian Hitney and I both wrote about moving a blog to Windows Azure Websites last week. This week, Steve Maier adds a unique perspective...helping a non-techie relative with a small business get their website set up on the free tier of Windows Azure Websites to save money and simplify their lives.
• James Quick shares a recap of the Miami-Dade GameMaker workshop. Note – if you're interested in running a game development workshop in Mid-Atlantic, let me know...I'd love to help.
• Jesse Freeman shares his experience in publishing HTML5 games to the Kindle Fire. The fact that Jesse works with HTML5 on both Microsoft and non-Microsoft platforms gives him a solid perspective on what works and what doesn't currently. A good read, whether you're interested in publishing to Kindle Fire or not.
• Need to send email from an Azure Websites-based blog or site? Dave Isbitski shows you how, using the free tier of SendGrid's service, which can be easily provisioned from the Windows Azure store. Dave's walkthrough shows how to use this with WordPress, but it also works great for Orchard CMS, too (I moved my blog from my personal SMTP account to SendGrid, to reduce my reliance on my personal email domain).
• Interested in getting an overview of the game development landscape for Windows 8? Michael Cummings shares an upcoming Virtual Academy session taught by two of our fellow TEs from West Region, coming up this Wednesday.
• Need to work with XML or JSON data in Visual Studio 2012, and don't want to build out classes by hand? Steve Maier notes a neat feature of VS2012 that allows you to Paste Special, and with XML or JSON in the clipboard buffer, it will automatically generate data classes based on the clipboard contents.
• Want to write games AND help people get healthy? Diego Lizarazo Rivera shares the upcoming CDC Health Game Jam 2013, coming to Southern Polytechnic State University in Atlanta, GA, September 20th-22nd.
• Another great installment of the popular DevRadio video podcast series, this time on Michael Cummings' StackExchange API Starter Kit for the Windows Store.

IT Pro

• Need to convert a Windows Server 2012 R2 Core installation to Full installation? Blain Barton links to an article that discusses how to mount an image to do just that.
• Another from Blain, this time he provides a great overview of the Windows Azure benefits available to BizSpark members. If you're a startup, and you're not using BizSpark, you're really missing out. Contact me if you need more info on the program.
• Need to compare Hyper-V and ESX? Tommy Patterson has you covered with a link to an overview article.
• Last spot goes to Blain, who notes that in addition to the general availability of Windows 8.1 on October 18th, that's also when the R2 wave of server products will be available.