PickFlicks for Windows Phone–One Year Later

  My Windows Phone application has been in the marketplace for one year now and an update has just been published (v2.5).  The new version was necessary as Netflix updated some API URL’s that required code changes, plus I added a new feature allowing users to sort new titles by date, title, or rating.  As

PickFlicks is Available

I’m excited to announce the PickFlicks application is now available on the Windows Marketplace!  The approval process took about 3 days and it passed certification the first time.  You can click the link below or use the QR code to see more details on the marketplace page.  It’s free (ad supported) and I’ll update how

My First Windows Phone Application – PickFlicks

I’ve spent the last few weeks watching Windows Phone training videos (via learndevnow.com) and reading all the great Microsoft articles on WP7 development and finally writing my own application. I started with the idea that there was no convenient place to get a date sorted list of new titles available on Netflix Instant Streaming and

WCF Services, Shared Hosting and Windows Phone 7

Creating a Microsoft web service can be a straightforward thing, but add in the requirements of deploying a WCF service to a shared hosting provider (such as GoDaddy) and have it available to web applications and to a Windows Phone 7 device can add a few wrinkles.  Most examples I read only explained these concepts

Applications Page Updated

Maintenance mode: After upgrading the site to ASP.NET 4.0 some of my applications no longer worked.  In addition, the geolocation service I use IPInfoDB changed to require an API key and the JSON interface slightly changed.  I’ve updated the applications so they work now, thanks for your patience! You can find the applications page here

Digitize with Windows Phone 7, Gmail, and Handyscan

  I’ve been using an HTC HD7 running Windows Phone 7 for 6 weeks now, and I love it, rarely missing my iPhone.  I discovered a very useful technique to digitize all my important papers and receipts using the phone, an application called Handyscan, and Google Gmail.  This method allows you to scan papers with

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ 3rd Party Controls

A recent client application used some 3rd party controls which gave nothing but trouble.  They had a different programming model to learn, were expensive, and seemed buggy with various design time errors grinding my PC to a standstill.  They were primarily used to pop-up a modal gridview search results panel with a “waiting” spinner while

Flickr Geolocated Pictures

  Here’s a new fun application which shows recent random public Flickr photos initially from your location, but allows you to select from a few other U.S. and international cities.  This is a demonstration how to integrate with a 3rd party API such as Flickr in ASP.NET in a very simple fashion. Flickr Picture Application.  The

BrowserSpy – A Browser Capability Utility

  The applications page has been updated with a new utility, BrowserSpy, which demonstrates how much information can be retrieved from just the browser Request object.  Over 100 items can be read from your browser settings and location data, even if you turn cookies off.  No javascript is used in this example, it’s all ASP.NET

Trying instant Bing & Twitter Search with ASP.NET

  I’ve been learning and writing a lot of ASP.NET code the past couple months and thought it was time to try a fun project.  This Bing and Twitter search sample application uses basic web API’s to retrieve search results on a character by character basis.  Unfortunately ASP.NET isn’t nearly as fast as client side