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Azure Kubernetes Service for $1/day

kubernetes Featured

Azure Kubernetes Service for $1/day

If you need a development cluster to learn Kubernetes or manage a small, non-production workload, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is an appealing option. Microsoft manages the platform and includes the control plane for free, and it has all of the enterprise features. Unfortunately, it's expensive. However with some elbow grease

Stream SmartThings data to Azure

Stream SmartThings data to Azure

My home has over 70 smart devices, including switches, lights, contact sensors, motion sensors, thermostats and various controllers. They come from various vendors using myriad technologies, including a cool kit from Konnected [https://konnected.io/] that helped me give my old alarm system a smarthome upgrade. The platform that brings

The challenge of (machine) learning

The challenge of (machine) learning

I'm often asked to define machine learning, and to explain how it works. Here's a simple way to think about it. The goal of machine learning is to make predictions based on the lessons of past experience. There are 3 components - model, training and evaluation. A model is the

Shut up and build!

Shut up and build!

Do you have a Mr. or Ms. No in your company? You know, the one who has an opinion and lots of ideas, but is constantly stuck in the concept stage? Thriving on policies and process, they live for the reasons why things can't happen. They produce lots of paper

Using Scrapy from a script or celery task

Using Scrapy from a script or celery task

Scrapy [http://scrapy.org] is a web scraping framework for Python. If you followed the tutorial [http://doc.scrapy.org/en/latest/intro/tutorial.html], the steps include creating a project, defining an item, writing a spider, and initiating a crawl from the command line. This method is fine for

Coding is the new Excel

Coding is the new Excel

Data is everywhere. We're surrounded by machines that track, measure, sample, record and save everything. Translating that data into useful insight - well that's the hard part, and most business leaders today are not equipped to do it themselves. Before spreadsheets, large financial computations were the domain of accounting experts,

Is Customer Support helping you build better products??

Is Customer Support helping you build better products??

Every department needs to think about value creation, and how to make the company stronger. In Customer Support, value is created when a customer has a great service experience, and a problem is resolved. That effort results in a positive customer experience today, but how can it be leveraged to

7 principles of stuff-raising

7 principles of stuff-raising

They call it an Impact Tour. You board a yellow school bus, which takes you to one of the many places funded in part by the United Way [http://www.unitedway.ca/]. Today, our destination was the Stevenson Children's Camp [http://www.stevensonchildrenscamp.ca/], just outside of London, Ontario. A

5 ways IT can think like the business

5 ways IT can think like the business

"What will it take to get you into this new ERP software"? As an IT industry, we sell what we know. From the perspective of the business, we sound like used car salesman. For years the industry has aspired to the status of 'business partner'. We want the CIO at

Improve your products with a story

Improve your products with a story

Sometimes, product quality problems just look like numbers. As a Customer Support professional, you probably don't feel this way, since all of that time immersed with customers in real world scenarios creates a unique and powerful perspective that gives meaning to the data. The engineers, however, might not "feel it"

12 steps to converting a customer crisis into loyalty

12 steps to converting a customer crisis into loyalty

Your customer is furious. They have a critical business dependency on your product, and some glitch has degraded it or taken it completely out of service. They turn to you, and the technical support team, to make things right. Fix it now. If you're in technical support, you've seen this