A few years ago, I put together a fun little app that used node.js, service bus, cloud services, and the Instagram realtime API to build a realtime visualization of images posted to Instagram. In 2 years time, a lot has changed on the Azure platform. I decided to go back into that code, and retool it to take advantage of some new technology and platform features. And for fun.
Wazstagram is a fun experiment with node.js on Windows Azure and the Instagram Realtime API. The project uses various services in Windows Azure to create a scalable window into Instagram traffic across multiple cities.
I spend a lot of time at the command line. As someone who likes to code on OSX and Windows, I've always been annoyed by the Windows command line experience. Do I use cmd, or PowerShell? Where are my tabs? What about package management? What about little frivolous things like being able to resize the window. I've finally got my Windows command line experience running smoothly, and wanted to share my setup. Here are my 5 steps to a Windows command line that doesn't suck.
A few months ago, we introduced the new node.js features we've added to WebMatrix 2. One of the missing pieces from that experience was a way to manage NPM (Node Package Manager) from within the IDE.
This week we shipped the final release of WebMatrix 2, and one of the fun things that comes with it is a new extension for managing NPM. For a more complete overview of the WebMatrix 2, check out Vishal Joshi's blog post.
After months of hard work by the WebMatrix team, it's exciting to introduce the release candidate of WebMatrix 2. WebMatrix 2 includes tons of new features, but today I want to give an overview of the work we've done to enable building applications with Node.js.
If you want to skip all of this and just get a download link (it's free!), here you go.