Category: Uncategorized

SpryPhoto – An excellent and affordable image server

As a web developer, it is very common to have the need for an image server. Usually the requirement is pretty straight forward: We need to dynamically re size an image. This is very common when you display thumbnails and regular size pictures in a site.

Personally, I also like to have a single source image; that way, I don’t have to create all the sizes I need before hand. But most importantly, if I need a new size in the future I don’t have to create that new size for all the images I already have.

When working on enterprise environment, people tend consider only solutions by big companies which tend to be pretty expensive. People that can’t afford these solutions try to create the component them selves, which can be very time consuming (if done correctly).

I’ve been u sing Spry Photo for a while (http://www.spryphoto.com/). You can see it in action in http://www.clickclassified.ca and http://www.storybank.com.

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.Net (c#) Oodle API wrapper

I recently had the need to interact with Oodle as a way to feed a classified site.

I was suprise to see that while they had php and java libraries/samples already available, but they did not have a .Net one. I searched on their forums and on the web and did not find a library I could use.

Since I had to interact with the api, I decided to make a library, and publish it as an open source component so other developers can use it.

 You can find the library at: http://www.codeplex.com/oodlenet; all the references, source code & samples are included in the workspace.

 I hope this helps!

Tools from MS Real Development 07 – Toronto

On October 29-07, I attended the real development event in Toronto presented by Jean-Luc David. I found this event interesting because it was really targeted at developers; it was mainly all demos, and the best part is that they showcased some interesting tools to help us develop better sites.

Not all of the tools shown where new to me, but they were used in a way made those tools that I was already using even more useful. Important to notice that the majority of the tools are free.

 I plan to present here a summary of all the tools they used, with a bit of description. I believe this will be helpful to the development community that couldn’t attend to the event.
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