Thanks to everyone who came out to Jax Code Camp this last Saturday. Attendees from my presentation on jQuery and .NET asked if I would post my slides and code on this website. The slides can be downloaded from this link. I have also posted a copy of the example code I used during my presentation. I also used Phil Haack's example of using jqGrid and MVC together.

I will be giving a presentation on jQuery 1.4 this Saturday at the Jax Code Camp. This is the sixth annual code camp here in Jacksonville. This years camp will be held at the UNF campus. There are seven tracks this year. I hope to see my blog readers there.

If you are a ColdFusion developer living in or around Palm Coast, Fl, and you are looking for work, please let me know. A couple of positions have opened up, and I know someone looking to hire right away.

Microsoft has released a preview of the next version of ASP.NET MVC, version 3.0. This new release includes the following new feature;

• View improvements
• New View Engines (Spark, Razor, NHaml)
• Global Filters for cross-cutting
• New action types like HttpNotFound
• Javascript and Ajax improvements
• Model validation improvements
• Dependency Injection improvements

Check out Scott Guthrie's blog entry on this release.

Full disclosure here, I own an iPhone 4. I also develop software for the iPhone, so I have a vested interest in the iPhone succeeding as a platform. I have seen where you can drop the radio reception of the phone when you press on the lower left hand corner. Any phone you where you hold your hand on the antenna will reduce the reception. Between my previous iPhone 3Gs and my new iPhone 4 I have not been able to see a difference in call quality or data performance. If anything, the iPhone 4 seems like it may be a little better.

The office where I work is in downtown Jacksonville, FL. The AT&T coverage is horrible here, but my iPhone seems to have a better time making phone calls than my 3Gs.

Steve Jobs had a press conference today to discuss the iPhone 4 reception issues. A lot of blame has been placed on Apple for their antenna design, but the iPhone in the United States has always had reception issues and dropped calls. In the past much of the blame has been put on AT&T, but even then there are only certain areas that have bad reception. San Francisco and New York are always mentioned.

So whose fault are the reception issues. The Answer is the Government. In particular, local and state governments. One of the key take aways from that press conference was the amount of time it takes to add a cell tower. Here is an excerpt from the press conference today;

When AT&T wants to add a cell tower in Texas, it takes about three weeks... when they want to add one in San Francisco, it takes three years. That's the single biggest problem they're having. They're spending a lot expanding their networks, and our data rates are way better on the iPhone 4, but AT&T has to expand its network, and that's a long process. I know because we're constantly asking about it. They're trying really hard, and sometimes I think they should enlist the support of the users in the community.

-Steve Jobs

The reason it takes three years to add a new cell tower in San Francisco is the amount of government required red tape you have to go through to add a new tower. Steve Jobs is hardly an anti-government Tea Party Republican. I don't believe he would have brought it up at the press conference unless the government red tape was really creating problems resolving network issues.

AT&T should enlist their customers to call and right their local representatives to remove the red tape for adding new cell towers.

We are pleased to announce version 1.0.1 of iLottoNumber. This program randomly picks a number from the starting value to the end value. It is written as way for groups to quickly pick a number for giveaways at meetings. This is the Ad supported version of this application. You can download this app by going to the following link.

We are happy to announce the newest version of iDogYears. This is a simple program that converts dog years into human years. It uses the canines actual weight plus the actual age to determine the age. You can install this app by going to this link at the iTunes App store.

I am a big fan of the show Breaking Bad on AMC. This is my favorate scene from the season 3 finale. Don't mess with Mike.

The JRC Weather app has just been updated to version 1.0.2. We have added iAd advertisments, as well as a new load screen and a map to our rowing site.

Click this link to download the application. If you have already downloaded the application to your iPhone, you should get a notice to upgrade your application automatically.

Apple Insider has a nice preview of the next version of Apple's Xcode IDE. Xcode 4 was previewed at WWDC, Apple's developer conference earlier this month. I have been developing applications in Xcode for a little over year, and it looks like it fixes a lot of the complaints that I and other developers have had about xcode 3 who have used Visual Studio.

One of the biggest changes is that Interface Builder is no longer a separate application, it is built into Xcode. Another one of that changes is that there is a single window for the whole IDE. You can open up your header file and implementation file at the same time.

I know this will make the Ruby developers happy, Xcode 4 supports git. Apple is also adding a timeline viewer so you can use a time machine like slider to look at you code changes as well as side by side comparisons of the different versions of the file.

I am very excited about this release of Xcode.