kyleRoche

Hi! I just bought your book but I am having trouble with following your Chapter 3-Location Services. I followed exactly as you put in your book and even copy your code in the sample code I downloaded, but it does not work with iOS 5 or version 4.3.1 of Xcode. I revised the outlets and i cannot find the reason why it is not working the first exercise. (Standard Location Service). Could you please help? Thanks

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:09:28 -0600

are you able to post your project to github or somewhere I can check it out?

are you the Denver GTUG coordinator?

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:44:21 -0700

Hi, yes although we haven’t had much success with meeting attendance. Would you be interested in helping us plan the next one?

Hello, I am using Beginning Java Google App Engine for my course on Human-Computer Interaction. Do you have code available online? Thanks, Ling

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:10:45 -0700

hi, i think the code for that book is no longer available as it’s discontinued. let me know if i can help with anything though. happy to assist.

Snippets of Smidgens: Twilio Pusher with Websockets & ZeroMQ

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:28:48 -0700

Snippets of Smidgens: Twilio Pusher with Websockets & ZeroMQ:

franklovecchio:

Recently, while building out a web application for RingDNA, I ran into a couple issues regarding websockets:

1) Amazon EC2 load-balancers do not support websockets (yet). I knew this, but had never implemented a solution.

2) Twilio applications point to webservice URLs, so developing locally…

Checking for in Native iOS Force.com apps

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:32:00 -0700

Today, Salesforce moved the mobile framework to GA. We’ve been using this in RingDNA since it’s first beta release at Dreamforce.

A common issue w/ large native applications (connected to a remote datasource) is the amount of UI bindings you need to code.

Objective-c doesn’t like null values all that much… If you’re building a lot of simple read-only screens, it’ll take quite a bit of code to check for null values on every field. You can use obj-c blocks in your response callback to insert empty NSString objects in place of nulls to allow for auto-binding to UI elements.

So, using blocks we can do something like:

- (void)request:(SFRestRequest *)request didLoadResponse:(id)jsonResponse {
    NSDictionary *dict = (NSDictionary *)jsonResponse;
    NSLog(@"Response: %@", dict);
    
    if ([[dict valueForKey:@"totalSize"] intValue] > 0) {
        NSDictionary *firstResult = [[dict valueForKey:@"records"] objectAtIndex:0];

        [firstResult enumerateKeysAndObjectsUsingBlock:^(id key, id obj, BOOL *stop) {
            NSLog(@"KEY: %@", key);
            if ([key isEqualToString:@"Account"]) {
                [obj enumerateKeysAndObjectsUsingBlock:^(id accountKey, id accountObj, BOOL *accountStop) {
                    if ((NSNull *)accountObj == [NSNull null]) {
                        NSLog(@"NULL Found: %@", accountKey);
                    }
                }];
            }
        }];
        
        self.contactSFDC = firstResult;
        
        [self setContactInfo:firstResult];
    } else {
        // Load alternate view? No contact was found
    }
}

You can see that this is less code than looping over the allKeys NSArray (it has performance benefits as well). I’m showing the nested Account relation in this response so you can see how to traverse two levels from the SOQL query. Also, notice the casting of the obj to NSNull so we can properly check if the field is null.

staff: Yesterday we did a historic thing. We generated 87,834...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:12:57 -0700

staff:

Yesterday we did a historic thing. We generated 87,834 phone calls to U.S. Representatives in a concerted effort to protect the Internet. Extraordinary. There’s no doubt that we’ve been heard.

So just to keep you updated: The well-intentioned, but immensely flawed “Stop Online Piracy Act” is still in the House Judiciary Committee. The hearing was yesterday and now members will debate and bring amendments to the bill. The Committee will reconvene in a few weeks — the date has yet to be scheduled. Nothing has been brought to a final vote. Everything is still very much in play. We’ll keep you posted on what’s going on and what you can do to help. But for now, we want to thank you.

One encouraging thing we heard yesterday:

I don’t believe this bill has any chance on the House floor. I think it’s way too extreme, it infringes on too many areas that our leadership will know is simply too dangerous to do in its current form.

— Representative Darrell Issa

We also want to express our tremendous gratitude to our friends at Mobile Commons who, on 30 minutes notice, hooked us up with their amazing platform (and provided their expertise) to automatically connect callers with their Representatives.

F15 News (My kids' news channel)

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:45:40 -0600

F15 News (My kids' news channel):

Aodhan and Avery started their own news channel this week. They are calling it F15 news (F15 is the name of the park/pool we live on in Denver). Aodhan went to an Apple iMovie camp this summer. He’s handling most of the filming… Avery, no surprise, prefers to be in front of the camera. They write their own content in the morning and are filming as part of their home school project for November.

Inspiring The Internet Of Things: A Comic Book

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:13:44 -0600

Inspiring The Internet Of Things: A Comic Book:

cchiappone:

The Internet of Things is one of our favorite trends at RWW. When it finally becomes ubiquitous, we’ll be that hipster blog that liked IoT before it was cool. To help usher in the future, the Danish Alexandra Institute has just released a comic book called “Inspiring the Internet of Things,” which explains the benefits of networking everyday objects - as well as the ethical issues - through 15 illustrated scenarios. The PDF version is available for free download.

“We need a new medium to communicate the idea of the Internet of Things, its challenges, its problems and its benefits; encouraging people to think about this new disruptive technology,” writes Mirko Presser of the Alexandra Institute. “This ‘comic book’ is aimed at everybody.”

Final Chapter - Attack of the Alien Jack-o-lanterns

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:40:21 -0600

I’m finishing the final chapter of my book this afternoon.

Yeah, not sure if this was just Halloween spirit or what… the last chapter is a cocos2D / Augmented Reality game called Attack of the Alien Jack-o-lanterns. I’m also not sure why they are alien… but, they came from somewhere to take over our human bodies.

In this chapter, we create a basic cocos2D game where pumpkins are taking over our faces. Random people in the camera view have a pumpkin (some people aren’t affected) taking over their head… like you see here:

Doesn’t that kind of make you want to shoot the pumpkin?…well, good thing. When you tap the pumpkins they explode. Not sure if there’s any business value here… but, gaming was one of the topics we had to cover in the text.

I’ll see if I can clean this up enough to get it on iTunes around Halloween.

Facial Recognition Approaches

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:30:02 -0600

I’m working on the final edits for my upcoming Professional iOS 5 Augmented Reality book. I posted a few screenshots from the facial recognition tutorial chapter already. I got the kids help with that chapter. I covered two other approaches to facial recognition in the book as well, with some help from Elvis.

Chapter 12 covers three approaches to facial recognition from iOS applications with sample code. I discuss OpenCV, the more traditional approach as well as a more web friendly REST API from face.com. Lastly, we discuss the new CIDetector classes that shipped with iOS 5.

With some help from the moriarty library, we measured the performance of the different approaches. CIDetector came out on top for native analytics. Outperforming OpenCV and face.com. Of course, face.com also includes a full round trip to a REST API. The fact that it even comes close to the performance of a full native API is impressive on its own.

Automatic Reference Counting in iOS 5

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:59:16 -0600

Automatic Reference Counting in iOS 5

I got some help from the kids last night on the iOS Augmented...

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:24:40 -0600

I got some help from the kids last night on the iOS Augmented Reality book. Chapter 13 analyzes the screen buffer and performs some basic facial recognition to determine the target’s position on the screen and mood.

Aodhan could only do happy. He tried Angry, but couldn’t stop laughing. Avery was able to do all the different moods. Quite the actress.

Play! Framework support for web sockets

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 08:29:20 -0600

Play! Framework support for web sockets:

Nice work, Chris!

This pull request addresses lighthouse ticket #1071.

It adds support for Hybi10, Hixie76 and Hixie75 Websocket protocol. It also adds a default FlashPolicyHandler to seamlessly fall back to flash sockets when using https://github.com/gimite/web-socket-js

Kuddos from updated websocket code https://github.com/joewalnes/webbit
And FlashSocket policy: https://github.com/cgbystrom/netty-tools

Twilio Conference

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:23:00 -0600

It was great to be at the first ever Twilio Conference last week. And, to be invited as a speaker (part of the keynote, no less) was even more of an honor. I’ve been working on the ringDNA product for quite some time now. We demoed the iOS (iPad) app that won the Dreamforce 2011 hackathon a few weeks prior. We had the whole audience dial into the ringDNA Smart Number and they queued up on the screen in real time.

My parents weren’t all that excited to see the bearded picture of me on the front page when it came up on my Facebook feed. But, it’s my github picture and used on this blog. It’s from last Thanksgiving in Idaho… had a huge bonfire going in the background. Plus, I’m not Ron Conway… :) So, doubt anyone else even noticed.

There was a great picture of me speaking on stage and Jeff Lawson and myself laughing at something. I don’t remember that particular moment, but we look like we’re having fun. Thanks to Twilio for the invite and can’t wait until next year’s show. I’m sure it’ll double in size!

Beta users already signed up for ringDNA should be receiving beta invites for iOS testing in the next two weeks. If you want on the short list, let us know how you plan to use ringDNA over Twitter. @ringdna / @kylemroche

Parts of the app that didn’t make it to the release will be shared on the ringdna blog and this blog in hopes they help other developers.

Another blog post about the DF2011 hackathon

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:09:29 -0600

Another blog post about the DF2011 hackathon

Pro iOS 5 Augmented Reality - preorders

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:01:06 -0600

So, my book (shipping in November) is available to order now on Amazon. There are some great examples of how to build Augmented Reality applications on iOS.

For example, I walk you through:

Facebook Places Augmented Reality application
Setting up Augmented Reality for cocos2D and causing touch explosions on the screen
First person shooter (shoot some aliens) Augmented Reality application
Marker based Augmented Reality (projecting a 3D object based on a recognized object)
A Real-time facial recognition AR app that analyzes the moods of people in sight

The code is available on github (although it’s not all public yet) and Apress.com. If you’re interested in learning how to build AR apps on iOS, please consider this reference. I’ll start posting the suplemental materials and tutorials that aren’t included in the press edition to the blog soon.

Few pictures from the Dreamforce 2011 Hackathon.

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 22:55:20 -0600

Few pictures from the Dreamforce 2011 Hackathon.

Force.com Hackathon

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:09:29 -0600

Force.com Hackathon:

The summary of the Dreamforce 2011 hackathon was posted yesterday. Look for the app, when I’m finished with it, at www.ringdna.com.

Snippets of Smidgens: Building an OpenVBX Twilio AMI on EC2

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:07:51 -0600

Snippets of Smidgens: Building an OpenVBX Twilio AMI on EC2:

franklovecchio:

A while back, I built an OpenVBX AMI for Isidorey: http://blog.isidorey.com/2011/06/twilio-openvbx-ami-update.html. I’m just now getting to posting the script that sets up up OpenVBX and its dependencies (though I think something changed with my MySQL silent install…it still works, just not…

Force.com toolkit for Twilio

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 07:25:12 -0600

Twilio is releasing the latest version of it’s Salesforce.com toolkit for Twilio today on Github. This is a toolkit that myself and Aslam Bari wrote a few years back and was in great need of a major refactoring :)

Cloudspokes will launch a series of DF related contests this week around the toolkit and I’m hoping to see it in full force at the hackathon this week. Come by and say hi to the Twilio folks in the dev zone this week, if you’re at Dreamforce.