Jim Bennett

Senior Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft, Xamarin Certified Developer, author of Xamarin In Action, blogger, speaker, father and lover of beer, whisky and Thai food. Opinions are my own.
Cloud Developer Advocate

  Reading, UK

See me soon at:
NDC London

My book:
Xamarin In Action

My podcast:
The Jim And Tonic Show
The Jim And Tonic Show on iTunes

Contact me:
  Xamarin In Action
  Twitter
  The Jim And Tonic Show
  GitHub
  LinkedIn
  YouTube
  Email
  CV

Running AI models on iOS, Android and Windows using Xamarin

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin.forms, AI, windows, iOS, Android, onnx, nuget, technology, xamarin

I created a NuGet package a while ago to allow you to run models exported from the Azure Custom Vision service on iOS and Android in Xamarin apps from your cross-platform code. You can read about this here. Since then, the Custom Vision service has added ONNX export, meaning you can now run these models on-device on Windows as well. This meant it…

Read More

Xamarin Essentials

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, technology, iOS, Android, nuget, Xamarin.Essentials

TL;DR - check out Xamarin Essentials in the official documentation. Like a lot of developers, I love how Xamarin allows me to share business logic between iOS and Android apps, and share UI using Forms, but still have access to the native APIs. But one thing has been missing - a consistent, out of the box way of accessing native APIs from cross-pla…

Read More

Face identification with Azure Cognitive Services Face API

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, AI, azure, cognitive services, xamarin.forms, nuget, technology, api, faceapi

Recently I've been playing with a lot AI and seeing how it can be used in mobile apps to enhance the experience offered to the user. Currently I am playing with facial recognition using the Azure Cognitive Services Face API. This is a stupidly powerful API that can do a LOT of different things: Detect faces in images Analyze those faces to detect c…

Read More

Identifying my daughters toys using AI - Part 5, Plugin for on-device models

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, xamarin.ios, xamarin.android, xamarin.forms, Tensorflow, AI, CoreML, nuget, custom vision, cognitive services, azure, technology

In the first part of this series I used the Azure Custom Vision service to create an image classifier to allow me to easily identify my daughters cuddly toys. Once created I tested it by uploading an image and seeing what tags the classifier found for the image. In the second part I accessed this model from a Xamarin app, so that I could use the ca…

Read More

Nugetizer 3000

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, Technology, nuget, Visual Studio, Mac

One cool new feature in Visual Studio for Mac is the ability to create NuGet packages from your projects automatically whenever you compile. This new feature is thanks to a cool project started by Xamarin called the Nugetizer 3000 (I do love Miguel's naming conventions). It's really easy to turn this on. From your project open the project pro…

Read More

MVVMLight navigation and AppCompatActivity

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, xamarin.android, mvvmlight, AppCompat, nuget, Technology

As much as I'm loving MVVMLight it does have some limitations. The one I've hit recently is how well it doesn't work when you are using AppCompat (though to be honest I think it's more down to how hacky AppCompat seems to be). I'm using AppCompatActivity as my base activity class to get an action bar supported on older API versions. The problem i…

Read More

Continuous deployment with JimLib

Featured Jim Bennett Technology, github, nuget, jimlib, technology, continuous deployment, appveyor, git

Today I've finally moved to the world of continuous deployment - albeit for one of my projects only so far, but it's a start. For my JimLib open source API I've automated the whole deployment process so after checkin it builds and deploys to NuGet automatically. Steps in the process I do all my development in Visual Studio, which now can connect t…

Read More

My first NuGet package

Featured Jim Bennett Technology, open source, api, nuget, jimlib

For pretty much every project I've worked on I've used the same set of extensions and helper classes to make my life easier. For example: Fluent API on strings myString.IsNullOrEmpty() instead of string.IsNullOrEmpty(myString). An ObservableCollectionEx<T> class that allows adding multiple items but only raising on CollectionChanged event. F…

Read More

Creating a NuGet PCL that works with Xamarin.ios

Featured Jim Bennett Technology, iOS, xamarin, nuget, xamarin.ios, pcl, nuspec, httpclient, portable class library

I've been playing with Xamarin.Forms recently to develop an iOS app. The aim is to use my portable open source Plex API in the app (more details of the app will come later once it's ready to release). The basic concept of Xamarin.Forms is to have a core portable class library containing all the application code, and very thin platform specific lib…

Read More

Complexion - an open source API for Plex

Featured Jim Bennett Technology, open source, moomoo.io, api, plex, github, nuget, c#, alpha, .net, pcl, portable class library

I've just released the first alpha version of Complexion, available on my GitHub page. This is my first true open source API, which I hope to put up on NuGet in the near future. This is a portable .Net API that connects to Plex - either to a local Plex Media Server specified by it's IP or hostname, or via MyPlex to discover your media servers. Th…

Read More
 

Running AI models on iOS, Android and Windows using Xamarin

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin.forms, AI, windows, iOS, Android, onnx, nuget, technology, xamarin

I created a NuGet package a while ago to allow you to run models exported from the Azure Custom Vision service on iOS and Android in Xamarin apps from your cross-platform code. You can read about this here. Since then, the Custom Vision service has added ONNX export, meaning you can now run these models on-device on Windows as well. This meant it…

Read More

Xamarin Essentials

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, technology, iOS, Android, nuget, Xamarin.Essentials

TL;DR - check out Xamarin Essentials in the official documentation. Like a lot of developers, I love how Xamarin allows me to share business logic between iOS and Android apps, and share UI using Forms, but still have access to the native APIs. But one thing has been missing - a consistent, out of the box way of accessing native APIs from cross-pla…

Read More

Face identification with Azure Cognitive Services Face API

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, AI, azure, cognitive services, xamarin.forms, nuget, technology, api, faceapi

Recently I've been playing with a lot AI and seeing how it can be used in mobile apps to enhance the experience offered to the user. Currently I am playing with facial recognition using the Azure Cognitive Services Face API. This is a stupidly powerful API that can do a LOT of different things: Detect faces in images Analyze those faces to detect c…

Read More

Identifying my daughters toys using AI - Part 5, Plugin for on-device models

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, xamarin.ios, xamarin.android, xamarin.forms, Tensorflow, AI, CoreML, nuget, custom vision, cognitive services, azure, technology

In the first part of this series I used the Azure Custom Vision service to create an image classifier to allow me to easily identify my daughters cuddly toys. Once created I tested it by uploading an image and seeing what tags the classifier found for the image. In the second part I accessed this model from a Xamarin app, so that I could use the ca…

Read More

Nugetizer 3000

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, Technology, nuget, Visual Studio, Mac

One cool new feature in Visual Studio for Mac is the ability to create NuGet packages from your projects automatically whenever you compile. This new feature is thanks to a cool project started by Xamarin called the Nugetizer 3000 (I do love Miguel's naming conventions). It's really easy to turn this on. From your project open the project pro…

Read More

MVVMLight navigation and AppCompatActivity

Featured Jim Bennett xamarin, xamarin.android, mvvmlight, AppCompat, nuget, Technology

As much as I'm loving MVVMLight it does have some limitations. The one I've hit recently is how well it doesn't work when you are using AppCompat (though to be honest I think it's more down to how hacky AppCompat seems to be). I'm using AppCompatActivity as my base activity class to get an action bar supported on older API versions. The problem i…

Read More

Continuous deployment with JimLib

Featured Jim Bennett Technology, github, nuget, jimlib, technology, continuous deployment, appveyor, git

Today I've finally moved to the world of continuous deployment - albeit for one of my projects only so far, but it's a start. For my JimLib open source API I've automated the whole deployment process so after checkin it builds and deploys to NuGet automatically. Steps in the process I do all my development in Visual Studio, which now can connect t…

Read More

My first NuGet package

Featured Jim Bennett Technology, open source, api, nuget, jimlib

For pretty much every project I've worked on I've used the same set of extensions and helper classes to make my life easier. For example: Fluent API on strings myString.IsNullOrEmpty() instead of string.IsNullOrEmpty(myString). An ObservableCollectionEx<T> class that allows adding multiple items but only raising on CollectionChanged event. F…

Read More

Creating a NuGet PCL that works with Xamarin.ios

Featured Jim Bennett Technology, iOS, xamarin, nuget, xamarin.ios, pcl, nuspec, httpclient, portable class library

I've been playing with Xamarin.Forms recently to develop an iOS app. The aim is to use my portable open source Plex API in the app (more details of the app will come later once it's ready to release). The basic concept of Xamarin.Forms is to have a core portable class library containing all the application code, and very thin platform specific lib…

Read More

Complexion - an open source API for Plex

Featured Jim Bennett Technology, open source, moomoo.io, api, plex, github, nuget, c#, alpha, .net, pcl, portable class library

I've just released the first alpha version of Complexion, available on my GitHub page. This is my first true open source API, which I hope to put up on NuGet in the near future. This is a portable .Net API that connects to Plex - either to a local Plex Media Server specified by it's IP or hostname, or via MyPlex to discover your media servers. Th…

Read More