The LA startup scene is fascinating, having lived and worked in it for a year now - it's a scene teeming with brillaint people with big ideas, and it's starting to attract some major capital from the Bay Area. It has one major issue: a big shortage of technical...
MongoDB vs. SQL Server 2008: A .NET Developer’s Perspective
One of the first projects I put together this year was Captain Obvious, a nifty little application that runs off of AppHarbor and ASP.NET MVC3. What made Captain Obvious special for me was that it was my first time using something other than a relational database[footnote:...
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How to Securely Verify and Validate Image Uploads in ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC
One of the more interesting things I had to do as part of building XAPFest was handle bulk image uploads for screenshots for applications and user / app icons. Most of the challenges here are UI-centric ones (which I resolved using jQuery File-Upload) but the one security challenge...
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How I Built CaptainObvio.us
I made a tiny splash on Hacker News a month ago when I asked for feedback on my newest side project, Read More
Announcing XAPFest – A Massive Windows Phone 7 Hackathon in Santa Monica, CA on June 4th 2011
I am pleased to announce something very exciting that Microsoft is doing in my neighborhood of Santa Monica, California: we’re putting together...
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Having Network Connectivity Issues with the Windows Phone 7 Emulator?
I spent about three hours banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why my browser could connect to the Internet but the Windows Phone 7 emulator couldn’t, and if you find yourself in the same boat as me I thought I would spare you the trouble.
Are...
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How to Create a Twitter @Anywhere ActionFilter in ASP.NET MVC
My newest project, Captain Obvious, got a fair amount of attention this week when it landed on the front page of Hacker News – one of the key features that makes the first version of Captain Obvious tick is Twitter @Anywhere integration.
Twitter @Anywhere is brand new and...
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8 Lessons Learned from Startup Weekend
I wanted to post this the morning after Startup Weekend Los Angeles concluded in late February, but due to the fact...
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ASP.NET MVC3 / Razor: How to Get Just the Uri for an Action Method
I normally wouldn’t post something this small to my blog, but this issue bothered me so much when I was working on some Twitter @Anywhere + jQuery integration in ASP.NET MVC3 that I couldn’t help but share it.
Issue: You’re using ASP.NET MVC3 and want to be able to place...