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.

Ben Forta, Raymond Camden and Charlie Arehart have released the first volume of the WACK for ColdFusion 9. According to Ben Forta's blog, they waited to release the book until ColdFusion Builder was released.

I do not do much ColdFusion programming anymore, but these books are the defacto standard books for ColdFusion programming. Sometimes referred to as the "Forta" books, they are a must have if you use ColdFusion.

The Florida Times-Union has a nice article on a Game and Mobile development program at the University of North Florida. The article talks about a game that a friend of mine is developing called "Ascension War: Triumvirate".

I am glad to see that UNF and other colleges are focusing on mobile applications. If you look at the number of people around the world who have mobile phones vs. a personal computers, many more have mobile phones. The future of client app development will be on mobile phones.

Steve Jobs does not have a blog, but he does have a website called Apple.com. He has posted his thoughts on Flash at the following URL:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

There has been some controversy on Apple not having a way of playing back Flash content on their mobile devices. I think the main reason is that the mobile devices have slower processors, and Flash would slow the device down. Other than JavaScript, Apple does not allow interpreted environments to run on top of their hardware. Flash like Java has a VM that it runs on top of, and Apple does not allow emulation.

I have written Flex/Flash based applications, and one of the things I like about Flash is that you can write applications that look and act the same on any platform. This does not necessary translate well to mobile devices. I think you are better off writting software for the platform for mobile devices. I have written iPhone applications using Objective-C. I know a lot of Actionscript developers are probably weary of learning a new language, but Objective-C is not that big of a transition.

Jobs mentioned that he thought that HTML5 makes Flash obsolete, but HTML5 even though it is an open standard, the MP4 video format is a proprietary. HTML5 is still an unfinished spec. I think it shows great promise, but the browser vendors will interpret the spec different ways. The nice thing about Flas is that it always looks and acts the same on different platforms.