More Wally - Wallace B. McClure

Upcoming Microsoft Phone 7

2010-03-17T23:00:00Z

I'm a mobile device guy. I've done various mobile development projects over the past 10 years. Really excited about them.

As you might remember, or not, I've been very critical of Microsoft and Google's attempts to compete in the market for smart phones. I've seen and read about the Google Android phone called Nexus One. I'm not impressed by it. it doesn't seem that Google has been very involved with the hardware. They've left too much leeway for the manufacturer to implement the features. Now, Microsoft has announced Windows Phone 7. one thing that interested me in the announcement s has been the Microsoft has put in requirements for the manufacturers. I think this is a big deal. Then, there are another set of features that have been added, included extensive integration with games and the Zune. Overall, I am very impressed with the Windows Phone 7 featureset. I'm not convinced that they will be able to generate the mindshare of the iPhone, but that doesn't mean that they will not have a good product. Another thing that I am impressed with is that they are actively courting developers to create products at least 6 months before the product ships.

At the end of the day, only time will tell. Will the dogs eat the dog food?

Top 10 List

2010-03-17T11:16:00Z

No, this isn't a David Letterman post.I got a message yesterday that my MonoTouch ebook is #5 in the Amazon.com sales list for ebooks. I'm not sure what that quite means or how its calculated, but I assume that this is good. It looks like the results are recalculated, so I could be #1 or #1,000 at any time. Either way, I think that this is cool.

On a separate, but related note, my friend Michael Neel's XNA ebook is right around the same spot. Congratulations to Michael.

Computer Works Support in Knoxville with Andrew

2010-03-17T10:58:00Z

On Monday, March 15, I walked into my office. I pulled my macbook out and started it up. Nothing happened. WTF? A couple of people gave me suggestions. All suggestions were good. Unfortunately, nothng ended up working. I ended up buying a new hard drive. Wow, did you know that the macbook has nearly nano-sized sized screws. Getting the drive in and out was problematice. Finally, I was successful in getting the drive jammed in my macbook. Oh man, this is painful. I went up the street to Computer Works. Andrew in their support area was very helpful. Thanks to a few minutes of help from Andrew, we got everything taken care of and my macbook is up with the new drive. Thankfully, i was able to retrieve my data from my drive.

Professional iPhone Programming with MonoTouch and .NET/C# - Pre Order now

2010-03-10T22:15:00Z

After months of work and not talking much about it, our Professional iPhone Programming with MonoTouch is available for pre order on Amazon.com. This is an expansion of the iPhone Programming with MonoTouch ebook that was available last December. My coauthors are Chris Hardy, Martin Bowling, Craig Dunn, and Rory Blyth. We haven't been talking about it much for a number of reasons, but now the cat is officially out of the bag. Craig and Chris have done a great job putting together the Mix10 app in Monotouch for the iPhone.

Here's the general outline of our book.

· Introduction to the iPhone, Mobile Devices, and the Marketplace.

o The mobile marketplace.

o General rules of Mobile Development.

o The iPhone.

o The Apple SDK.

o Apple Tools.

o The iPhone Simulator.

· Introduction and Overview of Mono and MonoTouch.

o What is Mono?

o What is MonoTouch?

o Why do I need MonoTouch?

o What is CocoaTouch?

o General layout of MonoDevelop.

o Building Hello World with MonoDevelop.

o Interface Builder.

o Outlets.

o Connections.

o Protcols/interfaces.

o Apple Certificates.

o Debugging.

o Testing.

o Deploying.

· Screen Controls.

o UI Development.

o Model View Controller (MVC).

o iPhone development-isms.

o Building a GUI that meets the iPhone UI guidelines.

o Input controls.

o Keyboard.

· Data Controls.

o Data views.

o Windows, Views, & Bars.

o Controllers.

· Working with Data.

o SqlLite.

o Accessing remote data.

o REST.

o SOAP.

o Asynchronous.

o Data Formats.

o XML.

o JSON.

· Tables.

o Simple data display.

o Controllers.

o Layouts .

o Customizing the layout.

o Click events.

o Multilevel/parent child layouts.

o Editing within a table.

· Maps.

o Geolocation.

o MonoTouch.MapKit.

o Geocoding.

o Location awareness.

· Application Settings and the File System.

· Device support.

o Networking.

o Battery.

o Acceleration.

o Device Orientation.

o Compass.

o Proximity sensor.

· Multimedia – Images, Audio, and video.

o Taking a picture.

o Editing.

o Record.

o Playback.

o Animation/CoreAnimation.

· Talking to other applications.

· Calling NSURL.

· Accepting calls from NSURL and publishing your own scheme.

o MonoTouch.AddressBook.

o MonoTouch.AddressBookUI.

o Displaying websites within your application.

o Interfacing to Objective-C.

o MonoTouch.ObjCRuntime.

o MonoTouch.Foundation.

o Third Party Objective C libraries.

o Btouch Libraries.

· Internationalization/Localization (Writing an application that can quickly/easily be ported to other languages).

· iPad Development.

· Appstore.

o Getting in the appstore.

o Promoting your apps.

o Making money with your apps.

o Inapp purchase.

Chattanooga, TN (Chadnug) on Tuesday with MonoTouch

2010-03-08T22:31:00Z

I'll be speaking at the Chadnug user group on Tuesday. The subject will be iPhone Development for C#/.NET developers with MonoTouch. The user group starts at 5:45. Its in downtown Chattanooga, TN.

UITableView Example Code

2010-03-08T15:46:00Z

UI TableView Example Code. There appears to be some confusion between myself and wiley/wrox about my source code. Our email server crashed last fall, so I have no idea what happened. I just know that I have gotten a few Tweets on Twitter.com about the source code for the ebook not being correct. Whatever happened, here's the source code. Apologies for any mistakes and problems that this has caused.

Download code from the MonoTouch ebook

2010-02-27T14:38:00Z

I seem to be getting a few messages on Twitter about the source code for the MonoTouch ebook. The url for download in the code is at http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/Building-iPhone-and-iPod-touch-Applications-for-the-NET-C-Developer-with-MonoTouch.productCd-0470590734,descCd-DOWNLOAD.html. Hopefully, this helps in getting the source code.

CodeStock 2010 - Rachel Appel

2010-02-22T13:55:00Z

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

It is with great honor I announce the keynote speaker at CodeStock 2010 will be Rachel Appel. Rachel is a well known and respected speaker, a rising star of the .Net community. I have no doubt she will giving the keynote address at larger conferences in the coming years, and I will have a bit of self pride when I say she’s been the keynote speaker at CodeStock!

I’ve known Rachel for several years now, as a fellow speaker, ASPInsider, and ASP.NET MVP. She has been involved with CodeStock 2008 and 2009, and holds the Microsoft Certified Trainer, MCAD & MCSD certifications (she knows her stuff!).

Her work in the community goes beyond speaking at community and professional events across the nation. Rachel is the Vice President of the .Net Valley user group, as well as a leader and regular speaker in the Philly.NET and Central Penn.NET user groups of Pennsylvania. In January of 2010, Rachel joined Microsoft’s Developer & Platform Evangelism team as a Developer Evangelist for the New York City metro area.

Want to join Rachel? CodeStock is still accepting speakers!

We are still looking for speakers for CodeStock 2010 (deadline is February 28, 2010). We need not only developer focused topics, but also IT Pro and entrepreneur topics as well. If you have a podcast or an idea for a panel discussion, we are taking submissions for those as well.

My topic is NDA though, can I submit a session?

I just returned from two weeks of GameFest and Microsoft’s MVP Summit, so I know some awesome stuff that is top secret today, but will be public knowledge by CodeStock. We will accept NDA topics (so long as they will be public before CodeStock 2010) – just submit a session as “NDA” in the area you think it best fits. Be sure to submit some non NDA sessions in that area as well, incase a last minute changes is needed. NDA sessions will be selected by the CodeStock committee, and not available for attendee vote, or listed before the NDA is lifted (that may be obvious, but wanted to state that to be clear).

Should I focus on intro content, or “go deep”?

Both. We welcome developers and IT pros at all levels, and just because a person is an expert in one area doesn’t mean they aren’t a novice in another.

Isn’t CodeStock a Microsoft only event?

NO! CodeStock is open to any technology and platform, however submissions in non Microsoft have always been light. We cannot select a session topic that isn’t submitted, so if you want to see a greater representation of your favorite platform, speak up (literally!).

To submit a topic to CodeStock 2010 and read more on the selection process, please visit us at http://CodeStock.org

State of the Mono

2010-02-18T23:30:00Z

Back in 2006, I used Mono on a project. I could take it or leave it. Nothing to really get excited about. I watched the Mac, and Apple, come back from the brink and started to think, how can I get on that platform. Well, obviously Mono was the platform to get there easily, so I bought a Mac in 2007. Now, where's the MonoDevelop for the Mac,,,,,hmmm, it doesn't exist. Now, we're there. We have MonoDevelop on the Mac. We've got MonoTouch. We've got all kinds of cool stuff coming. Check out Miguel's State of the Mono blog post.

I'm really excited about the MonoDroid project. Lots of other cool stuff coming down the road.

XNA 3D Primer

2010-02-18T23:00:00Z

http://www.vinull.com/Post/2010/01/26/xna-3d-primer-published-ndash-get-a-free-copy.aspx

http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/XNA-3D-Primer.productCd-0470596937.html

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, so I will now. My buddy Mike Neel has authored a book on XNA 3D. If you are into XNA, you should check this out.

.NET Characters of the Bible

2010-02-18T14:35:00Z

We refer to Alan Stevens as .NET Jesus due to his long wavy hair. Mike Neel is referred to as .NET Moses due to his long hair. Now, because of my iPhone programming book with MonoTouch, Mike is calling me .NET Judas. I'm going to take this and run with it.

CodeStock 2010 - Call For Speakers

2010-02-17T22:45:00Z

Mark your calendar, CodeStock 2010 will be June 25-26, 2010. This year we are moving to a bigger and better location, the University of Tennessee Convention Center in downtown Knoxville, TN. There will also be some events held at the historic Bijou Theater, also located in downtown Knoxville.

What is there in store for this year’s CodeStock? We will continue to hold several developer focused sessions for developers of all skill levels across many languages and platforms. The CodeStock tradition of excellent Open Spaces along side tradition session format will return, and benefit greatly from our new venue’s layout.

We are expanding the scope of the conference to include two new tracks – IT Pro and Entrepreneur. The IT Pro track will be filled with sessions server, database, and network administrators. The Entrepreneur track will be made up of sessions around founding a technology startup or running a technology company. We held a few Entrepreneur sessions at CodeStock 2009 and based on feedback it’s clear you want more!

CodeStock is a community event, and in addition to the volunteers who organize the details there are the real heroes of CodeStock: The Speakers. Without speakers CodeStock would be… well, a 600 person lunch. Speakers are the ones who bring great content to CodeStock, and we are looking for speakers now for CodeStock 2010.

The CodeStock “Call for Speakers” information can be found at http://codestock.org. Call for speakers is currently open, and will close after February 28, 2010 (you must complete all submissions before March 1, 2010). If you are not a season veteran of technology don’t worry – as long as you are passionate about a topic you want to share your qualified to be a speaker. Attendees will again vote this year on sessions, so if you have some topic you are not sure about you can submit them to see what others think.

CodeStock 2010 registrations will open in early March, 2010. You can stay up to date on all things CodeStock by following us on twitter (http://twitter.com/codestock), and subscribing to our RSS News feed at http://codestock.org.

The difference between IBM and Microsoft is still true after all these years

2010-02-14T17:30:00Z

When I worked at The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, I remember a discussion regarding the difference between IBM and MIcrosoft.

IBM can get you from point A to point B and take care of you all through the trip. You can be in first class on a plane, a private plane, limo, a beautiful yacht, or some other easy way to travel. The problem is ultimately that point B is a deserted island that no one wants to go to. Its covered with ice and has no life what so ever on it. Microsoft has point B on a beautiful island. It has no airport, runway, boat dock, bridge, and is surrounded by sharks and jellyfish.

Dear Microsoft, you are making the journey to Visual Studio 2010 way too hard. When we open a solution in VS2010 it won't load again in VS2008. The ASPInsiders have presented several options that can be done right now to fix the problem. Unfortunately, you have decided that you will not look at how to have Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 work together inspite of the multiple options that have been presented. A number of your customers are going to be disappointed. Its going to be hard for developers with multiple people on a team as well as single developer teams.

In a relationship, if one side continually says no, you really don't have a relationship. I've called out a number of features that don't work as I expect them to or changes in the VS.NET product that are unwelcome. Given the lack of response I've gotten on a number of things, I've come to the conclusion that the feedback from some members of the ASPInsiders is not being taken seriously any more. Microsoft has gotten the feedback that this is an issue for a year. I don't know what happened when the first person brought this up, but I know the response I got was that there was to be no "fix." Given the intensity of the feedback within the ASPInsiders, I would have thought that MS would have reacted to that feedback differently. They have decided not to. I'm very disappointed in their response to this issue. I had a discussion just this past week where I defended MS about they're listening to customers. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

I have never understood why they don't want to listen on this issue. The options that are presented are doable now. They are not great, but they will solve the problem. Why the dig the heels in and "no, no, no" response, I don't understand. Given that Visual Studio 2010 really isn't compatible with .NET 2, 3, and 3.5, I won't use it for existing applications. I'll use it for new applications only.

BTW, I don't consider this an NDA violation. VS2010 RC with a go-live license is now available. The feature set is public. This is discussion, and speculation, about a feature Microsoft has stated won't be in the product. This lack of a feature is why I did not do a "My life with Visual Studio 2010" series on my blog.

PS. I don't hate Visual Studio. I'm not planning on quitting it. I'm just not overly excitted about VS2010 as a place for running my apps that are VS2008. I like .NET. I'm no longer the Visual Studio fanboy. I'm going to be looking at alternatives like MonoDevelop and Sharp Developer.

Found my first submit worthy bug in MonoTouch

2010-02-12T00:20:00Z

I was working away writing today and I was playing with Sqlite in MonoTouch. I have my database working. I have the tables setup. I have indexes, triggers, and all kinds of stuff running over ADO.NET Sqlite Commands and Connections. Obviously, getting the data out (select) is the easy part. I put together a simple query and bang, it didn't work. Given the lack of tools, I thought my query was the problem. I finally ended up with "select * from table" and it still didn't work. Finally, I asked on the IRC MonoTouch channel and found out it was a bug in MonoTouch. Geoff Norton confirmed all of this and asked me to submit a bug on the issue. Not sure when/if this will be fixed, but its nice to see I'm now bug worthy.

Sqlite on the iPhone - Retrieving the last inserted row id with MonoTouch

2010-02-12T00:12:00Z

I'm a database type of guy. I like data. I work with data all the time. One thing that is common across all database is the need to retrieve the row identifier of a record that was just inserted. Oracle has a sequences. Sql Server has scope_identity(). I've been learning the Sqlite database on the iPhone and have been accessing it through MonoTouch using ADO.NET. With SqlLite, you call "last_insert_rowid()" on the current connection. This allows a program to retrieve the primary key that was just inserted. The method runs on the current connection. Its actually related more to @@identity in Sql Server as it returns the last rowid of the last record that was inserted on the current connection.