technology - Xander Dumaine

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A collection of 38 posts

Hacking Alexa to send Arbitrary Texts

Hacking Alexa to send Arbitrary Texts

I finally jumped on the Alexa bandwagon this week, and picked up an Amazon Dot. I got the Dot, because it's a lot cheaper than the Echo, and I already have an old speaker hanging around that I can use with it. Just to clarify - the Dot

WebRTC Phone User Experience

WebRTC Phone User Experience

Last year, &Yet wrote a great series [https://blog.andyet.com/2016/01/21/att-webrtc-ux-series/] of blog posts with AT&T about WebRTC UX. We love to see this kind of focus in the WebRTC [https://webrtc.org/] community, because it shows an intersection of classic technology and

Surviving Mandatory HTTPS in Chrome

webrtc Featured

Surviving Mandatory HTTPS in Chrome

Chrome 47 brought a new change, and one that's caused a lot of confusion and irritation for some WebRTC developers. Despite the warnings and PSAs from the WebRTC team at Google, and the console deprecation warning, some didn't get the message that getUserMedia now requires that

technology Featured

Tesla Still Can't Harvest Lightning

Today, in a shocking moment at a Tesla press conference Elon Musk, CEO of the electric car manufacturer, admits "No, we don't know how to harvest lightning yet." In the wake of being named Consumer Reports top overall car for a second year in a row,

Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard Review

I'm typing this post on my new Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard [http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/sculpt-ergonomic-desktop]. This is the latest in a line of highly reviewed ergonomic keyboards from Microsoft. Since I spend a lot of time on the computer - a lot of time

iPad Mini with Retina Display Review

For a while at work I was using an iPad Mini (first generation) for development, and I was able to take it home for general use, too. I finally got my own iPad (mostly because another developer needed the mini for a long project and this left me without a

Self Improvement 2.0 and the Role of Software

It used to be that the term "Self Improvement" meant reading a book about eating better, exercising more, or controlling anger (maybe that's self help?) In any case, it was usually confined to you reading, watching, or listening to someone else tell you what you should

The Best Shortcut You can Create on Your iPhone

The best shortcuts are easy to remember, easy to use, and very beneficial. The ratio of effort to benefit approaches zero. The best example? ctrl + c to copy. It's intuitive, one handed, and saves a 2-3 mouse movements and clicks. The best shortcut you can add on your

Putting the "Smart" Back in "Smart Phone"

According to Go-Gulf [http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/smartphone/] (see the info graphic below), there are 1.08 billion smart phones in the world. This means there's a smart phone for about every 7 people on Earth. People are starting to take these smart phones for granted. In

An Attempt to Explain the Joy of ASP.NET MVC Development

> This post is a follow-up to An Attempt to Explain the Pain of SharePoint Development [http://xdumaine.com/an-attempt-to-explain-the-pain-of-sharepoint-development] to show that I'm not all pessimistic, and that there are parts of my job that I really enjoy. The Development Environment If you're developing an

Renaming a SharePoint Server

Preface: I've only done this in a development environment, but I've done it twice and it worked pretty well. Rename the Server I did this the default Windows method, through PC info, as if it was any other machine rename. Rename the SharePoint Server Googling for

Staying Relevant In My Field

Staying relevant in your field is ridiculously hard. It's even harder when your field is broad, and even harder when you're not quite sure where in the broad spectrum of your field you want to land. I read an example of a financial success story recently.

Reusing SharePoint ListView and ListForm Web Parts

When creating custom pages in SharePoint, you may, at some point, simply want to display a ListView web part (XsltListViewWebPart) to display a whole view of a list on your custom page, or you might want to display only a list form. A list form might be the default Display,

Setting up Wordpress URL Structures for Ghost

This is a pretty hacky solution, but since dynamic routing and custom URL structures are on the roadmap for Ghost, I just wanted a quick and dirty solution to getting my old WordPress links to work in my new Ghost blog. The permalink options for WordPress allow you to choose

Do Yourself a Favor and Unsubscribe from Everything

The other day my wife's phone died early in the day and was off for almost 8 hours. When she charged it back up and turned it on, she had 30 some emails waiting for her. She was instantly stressed, not because they were work emails - she

GitHub Gist

As a blogger about software, I often want to actually post code in my blog posts. There are multiple ways to do this, and each one has it's merits. The things I wanted were: * Basic syntax highlighting * Easy to type and read the code in the editor * Easy

Creating Application Pages in SharePoint

I'm currently working on a SharePoint project which requires deploying multiple custom pre-configured pages. These are pages that have web parts, but aren't the standard "configure this page however you want" pages in SharePoint. I've found that the best way to achieve

Fitbit Flex: Review

The Device When I opened up the Fitbit Flex, the tracker was already inside a wristband (it comes with two wristbands – a large and a small). I was mildly disappointed to find I’d need to charge it before being able to use it, but was glad I’d be

Hesitating Before Buying Apps

Lots of people comment about how ridiculous it is that we hesitate before or even completely refuse to spend a few bucks on an app, especially when compared to spending the same amount daily for coffee, or hundreds of times more for the smartphone, tablet, or PC that the app

Tablets: A Disambiguation (Part 2)

Arguably the most important factor for people buying a first tablet is price. A common theme among them is to go for a “budget” tablet. I put budget in quotes because I prefer the term cheap. Using cheap more accurately conveys both the price and the quality of the device,

Tablets: A Disambiguation (Part 1)

In the first quarter of this year, 2013, Apple shipped 19.5 million iPads1 [http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24093213]. Samsung shipped 8.8 million, Asus 2.7 million, and Microsoft 0.9 million. With others, this means in just 3 months, almost 50 million tablets were shipped

Asynchronous Data Calls in Windows Store Apps

Below is the way that I’ve written my (MVVM, C#, XAML) Windows store app to make asynchronous data calls. This is necessary so that the UI doesn’t lock up while some network action or request is being performed. Make a function that gets your data synchronously. This makes

Uploading a Photo as Multipart Form Data in C#

I recently posted about adding a feature to a Windows 8 app I’m working on wherein the user can select a photo from their pictures library. After they select the photo, I need to upload it to the API I’m using in order to post the picture. The

Choosing a photo from the Photos library in Windows 8

I’m working on a Windows 8/RT app, and one of the pieces of functionality I needed was the ability for users to select a photo from their library and upload it (more on the uploading [http://xdumaine.com/2013/03/24/uploading-a-photo-as-multipart-form-data-in-c/] ). I wanted to use the built