Configuring and using FTP with IIS 8 on Windows Server 2012 is very easy and straight forward. If you ever used FTP 7 that was released with Windows 2008 then the GUI will be familiar to you. An FTP virtual directory is quite handy when you need to provide an FTP user access to files which are not in their FTP root folder. If you’ve ever created one, then you know the FTP user is usually not able to physically “see” the virtual directory when they login. To get to the new folder they have to manually...(read more)

Some time ago I was running a few tests in my lab environment against a current version of MySQL. A few months later I needed to access it again but I forgot my root password so I wanted to start from scratch. Easy enough, right? Just go to Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel and uninstall MySQL. Not so quick. That didn’t work as expected. While it uninstalled MySQL, it wouldn’t let me reinstall MySQL because the root password was not correct. After doing some research I found that...(read more)

Here is great news for open source developers: Brian Harry announced today at the Microsoft’s ALM Summit that Git is now fully integrated into Visual Studio as well as the Team Foundation Service , Microsoft’s cloud-powered Application Lifecycle Management tool. Here at Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., we are excited to hear such news as this offers more choice and flexibility to development teams. We happen to work on a daily basis with developers on Git in the context of projects...(read more)

Application Request Routing (ARR) is a great solution for load balancing and other proxying needs. I’m a big fan and have written often about it. I had someone ask me this week about WebDAV support for ARR. With his ARR setup, he noted that WebDAV creation Read More......(read more)

OK, so maybe it was a shorter break from blogging than I expected. As it turns out the world does not stop when I change jobs. ;) The media world today is abuzz with news of H.265/HEVC approval by the ITU . In case you’ve been hiding from NAB/IBC/SM events for the past two years – or if you’re a WebM hermit – I will have you know that H.265 is the successor standard to H.264, aka MPEG-4 AVC. As was the case with its predecessor it is the product of years of collaboration between...(read more)

I've been involved with open source software for just shy of 15 years now. During that time I've seen open source software become a fundamental part of technology innovation. It is that technology innovation that has fed me and my family for many years. I like to think I've given back and played a small part in the growth of open source software through my code contributions and my open source strategic consultancy services. But, today I am presented with an opportunity to give back even more. From...(read more)