Brian Swiger

In Summary: App Insights originally shipped with a set of SDKs for mobile platforms that pushed telemetry data into the App Insights pipeline. It is these SDKs that are being deprecated in favor of the HockeyApp SDK, not all of App Insights.

Ever needed to have sample data to try things out on? Want to explore what Visual Studio Team Services can do? This extension from Microsoft DevLabs lets you create and remove sample work item data in your project.

I'll be speaking at this year's upcoming Orlando Code Camp on Saturday, April 2nd. Make sure to stop out and catch all the great sessions and speakers as we geek out on technology topics. Lots of great people and learning opportunities. It will be a great time to catch up with everyone and learn about all the slick stuff folks are accomplishing. We'll be out at Seminole State College (Sanford) from 8am to 5pm.

Visual Studio now speaks another language: R!

I'm excited to announce that I'll be going to work for Microsoft, full-time, starting on the 30th of November. I will be a Senior Application Development Manager in the Microsoft Premier team. I will stay local to Tampa, Florida and am excited to be furthering my career with Microsoft. I've worked for Microsoft Learning in the past on many, many developer exams over the years and am thrilled to join, full-time, in this new role. For some details on what I do, read more: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftservices/premier_support_developers.aspx

I will be speaking this Thursday, November 13th at the Omaha .NET User Group on SignalR. Please come out and join me...as I venture back to Omaha where it's recently snowed...from my warm and cozy home in Tampa, Florida.

Hey Everyone, The Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2014 concluded last Thursday, and there were a ton of great sessions. In years past, Microsoft has made the sessions and materials available to attendees through their MySPC site – basically blocking non-attendees from accessing materials. In an unusual (but welcome!) move, everything is freely available this year. Just today, Microsoft put all of the recorded sessions up on Channel 9 for our viewing pleasure: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014 If you have any interest in SharePoint, Yammer, Office 365, or where these technologies/platforms are heading, I encourage you to check out the videos. There were certainly technical sessions, but there were also plenty of strategy sessions, case studies, and more – something for everyone.

Hands down, my FAVORITE comparison tool is Beyond Compare, by Scooter Software.