Topics:  Free MS ebooks, Xamarin podcast, cloud server in 55 sec., squash your PNGs, Heartbleed fallout, RDP from Android.

• Former co-worker @_Shakeel passed along some free e-books being offered by Microsoft Virtual Academy.
• @munificentbob announced his free online book, Game Programming Patterns.
• I keep finding more and more Xamarin community resources. This week it was their podcast on SoundCloud.
• Also, useful for cross-platform development: Notes on Using Various PCL Profiles with Xamarin (via @WindowsAppDev)
• Cloud hosting service DigitalOcean advertises you can spin up a new “droplet” (i.e. VM) in 55 seconds, and has what looks to be a pretty reasonable pricing structure.
• Do you know what your TRAQ score is? Online comic Devil’s Panties (“not satanic porn!”) has a good write up about their ad revenue tanking after improperly getting flagged as an adult site.
• If you’re working on web pages be sure to check out these handy CSS tips.
• In the wake of Heartbleed the OpenBSD community is refactoring OpenSSL “one arcane VMS hack at a time.” (via Dan)
• Meanwhile, a security firm reports many Android apps (mostly games) are vulnerable to Heartbleed and most scanning apps are doing it wrong, but don’t tell us which ones are doing it right. (via Re/Code)

Tools, etc.

• Color Scheme Designer is a great online tool for generating/exploring color palettes.
• And while we’re talking design, Scott Hanselman reminds us to squish our image files – Trimage is a handy app to do that on Linux, Windows and Mac.
• Did you know Google has a Remote Desktop tool for Chrome? Well, now it’s available for Android too.

Projects, etc.

• Less than 30 days left in the FoodStats app fundraiser. We’re at $250 now. Pledge as little as a $1 or as much as you feel like – every little bit helps. Or just help spread the word: Use the share buttons on the campaign site or give this easier-to-remember URL to friends, family and those who might be interested: http://tiny.cc/foodstats
• Released an initial alpha version of Commit Message Editor – a simple, cross-platform GUI editor for commit messages in Git. The goal is to provide a light-weight editor with key features useful for writing commit messages. (This was a request from my friend and former co-worker Jonathan.)

Topics: Incentivizing software issues, free images for your blog, testing Javascript, automating browser tests.

• I think Donay has a really compelling idea, but I ran into a lot of problems with their site just trying to get an account set up. Maybe if more people express an interest in being able to ask for and provide incentives for project features/issues… I hope they can get some momentum going and turn it into something workable. Spread the word!
• Bountysource is another service that lets people set bounties on existing Github issues they’d like completed. Visit my profile.
• GettyImages strikes a good balance between copyright, intellectual property and fair use: Embed images for free in a non-commercial context.
• I’m always looking for ways to increase productivity by automating processes. This week’s NuGet Package of the Week from Scott Hanselman shows how to use FluentAutomation (I love “fluent” syntax!) with Selenium and scriptcs to automate browser testing.

Tools

• There’ve been a lot of windowing enhancement add-ons over the years; the new Preme for Windows looks pretty feature rich, with some useful hotkeys.

Coding, projects, etc.

• Been studying up on the current state of unit testing with Javascript, including Jasmine and QUnit.
  A few good tutorials:
  • Testing your Javascript with Jasmine on Tuts+.
  • Unit test Javascript applications with Jasmine on Adobe’s Developer Connection.

If you’d like to support this blog and the work I do in general, I now have an Amazon Wishlist with hardware, software, etc. that I need. More options and information are coming soon.