Year: 2012

Mongo

Map Reducing the Royals with Mongo

MongoDb is a real lifesaver when it comes to improving developer productivity in web applications, however, that’s only a small part of the power in MongoDb. To do a lot of the deep down data mining, we need to learn to use Map/Reduce to massage our data. Please note, some

Java, Play

5 ways to Play! poorly

As readers may be aware, I’m really into the Play! framework. It combines the convention-over-configuration mindset of ROR with the Java/Scala libraries and skills that I’ve worked on for years. That said, Play! isn’t idiot-proof. Here is a list of 5 mistakes to avoid in your Play! projects. 1) Using

Java

Java YAML Shootout – SnakeYaml vs YamlBeans

After spending a couple months developing LiveOn using the Play! Framework, I’ve grown increasingly intolerant of other Java frameworks. While I’d used YAML before in Rails & Python, Java frameworks usually ignore YAML in favor of XML for configuration. The creators of Play! realized that XML sucked, and implemented their

Programming

Digg oAuth using Scribe

I really like the library for doing oAuth in Java. It uses a fluent API, a very slim dependency structure, and is ready to use in android apps. So, when I needed to connect to Digg’s API for a Java app, I looked at Scribe first. Unfortunately, Scribe doesn’t support

REST

A Tale of 2 Authentications

I’ve recently had the opportunity to work with the REST APIs for two great services, Dropbox & SugarSync. For the uninitiated, SugarSync and Dropbox are two competing cloud storage providers. While Dropbox seems to have better name recognition, SugarSync provides a better pricing model, and great support across different Operating