Awkward Industries

I recently participated in a small hackathon with some Microsoft ninjas where we were presented with the problem, How do you host a bot in Service Fabric? It seemed like an easy problem that had probably already been solved, but it wasn't as straightforward as we thought it might be. At its core from a technology perspective, a bot is really just a Web API. We didn't want to actually host IIS on Service Fabric, so we knew we would want to self-host. If you use the built-in Stateless Service ASP.NET Core template, you'll get a great Web API implementation that's wired up with a KestrelCommunictionListener for Service Fabric. But what if you want to use Katana -- Microsoft's .NET Framework OWIN implementation? Katana is a flexible set of components for building and hosting OWIN-based web applications on .NET Framework. Microsoft's Katana Project on GitHub Although ASP.NET Core has incorporated most of the Katana project's functionality, the project...

I love fitness trackers. I was excited to get the new Fitbit Alta HR, but some of my eagerness waned when I remembered why I hadn't used a Fitbit since my old Fitbit One -- I hated how it didn't integrate with any of my other applications I used to track my information. Fitbit does support some integration with partner apps , but just not with any apps that I happen to prefer and use. I'm an Android user. I've started to look at Google Fit as a hub for all of my fitness data, but I'm not completely sold on that yet. I've been using Nike+ Run Club since I jumped on the Nike bandwagon years ago and purchased the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit (back when I carried an iPod). I was so excited to have a sensor nestled in my shoe and a coach speaking to me as I was running! Fast-forward to now, and although my phone is the main sensor for everything, I still prefer to use the Nike+ applications to track my runs and training. Nike+ synchronizes data to Google Fit, but not to...