Hello World coded by Dayton

iPad vs Laptop vs Desktop, an interesting approach

Dayton — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:46:19 +0000

Here is an interesting article comparing the cost of usage with respect to electricity between an iPad 3, MacBook Pro 15″, Dell Latitude ruggedized laptop and a Dell OptiPlex desktop. The article is pretty detailed in the analysis on the cost, and gives some savings comparisons.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tablets/moving-to-ipads-will-reduce-the-cost-of-your-electric-bill/1256

iPad as a Sysadmin Tool

Dayton — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 02:52:33 +0000

A nice article to review if you are considering using an iPad in your enterprise and how you can use it in a Sysadmin role.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2012/04/the-ipad-as-a-sysadmins-tool.ars

Linode plus iPad plus Wireless Keyboard

Dayton — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:58:13 +0000

So, I am primarily a Mac user, my main phone is an iPhone 4S, I use an iPodtouch for my music & podcasts and I watch Hulu and Netflix on my iPad. So, to write a short blog post about Linux may seem odd to me.

I actually have an Ubuntu VM I use on occasion on my MacBook Pro, and it does do some things very well. I have had the chance to meet the gang from Linode at POSSCON in 2011 and 2012. They offer a great Linux distro hosting service, and I recommend checking it out if you are in the market or are interested in a web hosted Linux distro. I also came across this nice article on Linux Journal about a guy that switched to Linode hosted Linux VM and connects to it with his iPad.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad-linode

If you live in the eastern part of the US, I highly recommend attending POSSCON in 2013.

http://www.posscon.org/

iOS Text Editor Review

Dayton — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:43:01 +0000

I found a link to this article over on Gizmodo. If you are looking for a good text editor for your iPad, this is a great place to look for a comparison.

http://brettterpstra.com/ios-text-editors/

So, how is it developing your first iOS app or game?

Dayton — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:33:38 +0000

I have several people ask me what it is like to develop for the iOS platform. Likely because I am a .Net developer in my daytime job and I also go to a good number of MSDN related user groups, code camps and other MSDN events. I usually do not have enough time to tell it all, but I found an article that does a great job of it. I follow the TUAW Apple tech blog and one of the writers for the site posted this very well written and must read article for anyone that is curious. The article may seem long, but it is a great read, I highly recommend it.

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/04/02/developing-my-first-iphone-game-the-inside-story/

Great blog posts on Protocols and Delegation

Dayton — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:21:04 +0000

It appears that my original, albeit not so good blog post on Delegation in iOS get mosts of my page views. So, I thought I would add some links to some really nice articles with samples.

Protocols, part 1 : Why?
http://weblog.bignerdranch.com/?p=467

Protocols, part 2 : Delegation?
http://weblog.bignerdranch.com/?p=469

Protocols, part 3 : Adopting Protocols in Class Extensions?
http://weblog.bignerdranch.com/?p=465

Some excellent Web and iOS Training Material

Dayton — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:57:46 +0000

I listen to the podcast Foundation with Kevin Rose where he interviews various tech startups. The podcast is very good and offers some helpful insight for anyone interested in entrepreneurship or creating a new startup.

During episode 14 of his Foundation podcast, Kevin interviewed Ryan Carson from Carsonified. Ryan is also the founder of the FOWA and FOWD conferences. One of Ryan’s startups was Think Vitamin, which is now called Treehouse. The Treehouse material is a series of videos you watch, and then you can test your knowledge with a quiz at the end of each section. When you pass a quiz, you unlock a badge. They also offer a public profile page where you can share which sections you have unlocked, and it shows a badge and a link to that section.

Team Treehouse – http://teamtreehouse.com/
Carsonified – http://carsonified.com/
Foundation podcast – http://revision3.com/foundation

Mac OS X Lion Auto Save and Versions

Dayton — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 02:00:00 +0000

This will be a small article, but I thought I would share my findings about Auto Save and Versions in Mac OS X Lion.

I recently updated my 2011 model MacBook Pro to Lion. I have not had any problems, but I did discover one thing that caught me way off guard. The Mac apps that have been updated to support Auto Save and Versions no longer have a Save As option in the File menu when working with existing files.

I opened a photo in preview the other day to re-size it and save a smaller copy to email it. I am sure there are a ton of ways to do this, but I use a method I am familiar with. I noticed after I re-sized the photo that there was no Save As option in the file menu. And, after I closed the photo, I then realized my original had been re-sized. So, I then had to teach myself how to use the Revert to Save feature to undo the re-size. After a little experimentation, I discovered the Export option, which appears to be what they are calling Save As now.

I have to say, once I get used to this new feature, I am sure I will like it. I have never used Time Machine on a Mac before, but this Versions feature is pretty cool. But, there will be a learning curve to get used to it.

For more information on these features, check out Apple page on it.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/auto-save.html

Kendo UI

Dayton — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:19:26 +0000

I just learned about some new Web Controls from Telerik tonight, that are HTML5, CSS3 and JavaSript supported. They have a new suite of web controls in Beta that are not specifically .Net controls. Which is nice, as Telerik is known for having a really good, if not the best suite of .Net controls you can get. These new web controls scale from desktop to mobile, and support the 4 main mobile platforms; iOS, Android, Blackberry and WebOS. They also support the top 5 browsers; Mozilla, Safari, Chrome, IE and Opera.

You can check out these new controls at Kendo UI – http://www.kendoui.com/

Web Apps vs Native Apps

Dayton — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:11:01 +0000

So, I thought I would write a little post on my views of a few apps I use a good bit. For starters, I feel I should say I use an iPhone 4 and DO NOT plan to switch to an Android device, even though I use several Google services. If I ever get an Android device, it will be a Nexus device and also a 2nd phone.

Google Reader – This is my main web surfing and article aggregating tool. I follow more than 50 blogs and this app is great for that. After trying several native apps, I have found that the easiest way to keep your read flags in sync with your Google Reader account, is to use the Google Reader webpage in a browser. I find the mobile version of the webpage very easy to use on a mobile device browser, and the site is even easy to use on a desktop browser. My main issue with the native apps is the polling they would have to do each time you synced the app. It would have to upload your read flags and started articles and then download any new articles. After several uses throughout the day, I would have my read flags reset, which was a huge pain.

Google+ – I have only been using the Google+ service for 2 weeks or so, and the few times I have used the new iPhone native app was frustrating. It takes longer to refresh than the Google+ webpage. Enough so, it is very noticeable. I think the update from the last few days, but the webpage does from what I can tell everything the native app does.

GMail – Well, the iPhone mail client is really good. I have recently figured out how to do GMail labels in it, as the app just treats GMail labels like IMAP folders. Once I get this down, I will likely be a lot happier. But, I have to say, managing your inbox, archiving and labeling are much easier to handle in the GMail mobile webpage than on the iPhone mail client.

Those are a few takes on a few apps I use on my mobile device.