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: Unit testing PHP, test images for color-blindness, hands-on learning, RSS on Github, myths of software development.

• The Open Data Protocol (OData) 4.0 has been approved, along with the OData JSON Format 4.0. If you’re not familiar with OData, it’s a standard for reading and writing to data sources with RESTful web services.
• Need to explain computing concepts to somebody? Computer Science Unplugged has some pretty nifty activities that do just that.
• I remember hearing about Flattr years ago – one of the early services for giving back to open source developers – but I had no idea they were still around. And doing reasonably well.
• Migrations in Entity Framework are a topic I could be stronger on. The ADO.NET Blog has some screencasts that just might do the trick.
• Friend Dan passed along another comic I need to add to my list of regulars: CommitStrip.
• Dan also shared some thoughts on a thought-provoking article from Model View Culture about the myth of the software developer. I hope to share my own thoughts on it later this week.
• OSS Perks is a listing of tools and services (including commercial ones) that are available for free to qualifying open source projects.

Tools, etc.

• Colblinder has a handy Color Blindness Simulator for your images. Upload an image then select different types of vision to see what it looks like. (via @DanielSolis)
• Portable.Text.Encoding is a portable (i.e. cross-platform) implementation of .NET’s Text.Encoding namespace. (via @migueldeicaza)
• Did you know Github repositories can have releases? You can find them using the following URL path:
  • https://github.com/<account>/<repository>/releases
  • To get an RSS feed, just add .atom to the end of the above URL.

Projects, coding, etc.

• Been studying up on WordPress plugins. There’s lots of documentation and tutorials out there, but I found that HardcoreWP has a very nice overview.
• Published a new KB article on Configuring PHPUnit for PhpStorm after introducing unit testing to a WordPress plugin project at work.

Steve Gibson, the host of Security Now, has published a new freeware tool; DNS Benchmark.  Like all of Steve’s freeware, it’s a stand-alone executable (great for USB drives) and is very compact – at less than 200k.

I haven’t tried out this final release, but did experiment with an early version.  It’s a great tool for power users and/or anyone maintaining a network.  The primary purpose of DNS Benchmark is to provide speed tests and other information about publicly available Domain Name Servers, since the ones you’re using now may not provide the fastest or most secure service.