Yahoo’s YQL Web Sevices

January 31, 2010

At ConvergeSC 2009 Jonathan LeBlanc from Yahoo’s Developer Network came and gave a presentation on YQL. This language allows developers to access a web service to gather data and then use syntax similar to SQL and query the XML data they get back from the YQL service. From what I remember of the demo presentation last year, they have a web console that allow you to build a YQL query URL, and then you can use this URL in your applications. Using this YQL service console, many if not all the URLs you can build are of a REST nature. To find more info, check the YQL site below.

Yahoo’s YQL – http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/
ConvergeSC – http://convergesc.org/

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Posted by Dayton

Columbia Code Camp 2010

January 31, 2010

Even with the bad weather, and the freezing temperatures, we had our first code camp in Columbia SC.  It was held at the Swearingen Engineering Building at USC.  We had over 200 people register, and over 140 showed up.  All in all, it was a big success, and we plan to have another one next year.  We are also thinking of organizing a SQL Saturday event later this year.

Some other code camp like events coming up in Columbia SC of this year are ConvergeSC and POSSCON.

Columbia Code Camp – http://www.columbiacodecamp.com/
Converge SC – http://convergesc.org/
POSSCON – http://posscon.org/

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Posted by Dayton

Code Camp directory in HTML5 for mobile devices

January 24, 2010

We are organizing a code camp in Columbia SC for Saturday January 30th, 2010. If you live in Columbia SC or the surrounding area, check out our code camp site to register.
http://www.columbiacodecamp.com/

One of the things we are planning is to use the software described in the post below for our code camp directory.
http://navel-labs.com/blog/2010/1/13/codemash-iphone-schedule-app.html

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Posted by Dayton

Reachability in iPhone OS 3.0 with 1 line of code

January 24, 2010

In iPhone OS 2.0 I used this:
if ((([NSString stringWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.com/"]]!=NULL)?YES:NO) == NO) {}

In iPhone OS 3.0, they deprecated stringWithContentsOfURL, so I rewrote this as:
if ((([[NSString alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.com/"]]!=NULL)?YES:NO) == NO) {}

Then inside the {} of this IF statement, I display a UIAlertView.

The benefit to this code is you do not need to know if the device is in Airplane Mode or if the WiFi antennae is turned ON or OFF. Also, I would recommend deallocating or using autorelease to free up memory for the NSString.

Leave a Comment » | Apple Development | Permalink
Posted by Dayton