Great news today. Apple has updated their developer SDK License effective today. 
Previously, MonoTouch was sitting in a grey area. They appeared to follow the letter of the law, but their was a question if it followed the spirit of the law. With MonoTouch, I can build a native iPhone app with C# and the .NET framework. The key is you can build native apps with it. It's a great tool. I love. Anyway, now, with Appl's changes that were announced, we now have conclusive proof that Apple is allowing Monotouch based apps. This is great stuff!. Along with this announcement, Novell has announced a discount of 15% that is effective for the next two weeks The discount code is "MONO-331" After you go buy a copy of MonoTouch, take the 15% that you saved and buy a copy of our MonoTouch book. Then, with the money you saved, go buy a beer, sit down and read our book. Its on me!
Are you a .NET Developer wanting to get into developing on the Apple iPhone and iPad? 
Learn iPhone Programming for Free with Wrox, Novell, and McClure. Wrox/Wiley has released Wallace McClure’s Wrox Blox on Novell’s MonoTouch for free. The MonoTouch Wrox Blox is available at: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-406371.html.
For .NET Developers, Novell has produced the Trial Version of MonoTouch. The Trial Version is a free download that allows a developer to write and build applications and test them in the iPhone simulator. The Trial Version is available at: http://monotouch.net/DownloadTrial.
Wallace B. (Wally) McClure, President of Scalable Development, Inc., is the author of the Wrox Blox on Novell’s MonoTouch and the author of the updated Professional iPhone Programming with MonoTouch recently released. In addition, McClure has produced a downloadable video podcast introducing MonoTouch. The video is available for download from http://aspnetpodcast.com or directly at:http://bit.ly/deMCoJ.
"Want to program the iPhone? Want to share business logic between mobile devices? There's a language for that: MonoTouch."
I'm heading out to VSLive next week. I'm flying out on Sunday morning. I'll be in mid afternoon. Meeting some folks for dinner on Sunday. Send me a message if you are interested in joining us!
I'm really excited about this. I'll be speaking on:
- ASP.NET 4 WebForms - What's New, Cool, and Hip!
- ASP.NET AJAX - UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control ToolKit.
I'm really excited about this. If you are there, come up and introduce yourself.
Our MonoTouch Book is out. It was great working with
Chris Hardy, Craig Dunn, Martin Bowling, and Rory Blyth on this book.
With this book, you'll be able to use your existing knowledge of .NET
to target the Apple iPhone.
What .NET C# developers need
to enter the hot field of iPhone apps
iPhone applications offer a hot opportunity for developers. Until the
open source MonoTouch project, this field was limited to those familiar
with Apple’s programming languages. Now .NET and C# developers can join
the party. Professional iPhone Programming with MonoTouch and .NET/C#is
the first book to cover MonoTouch, preparing developers to take
advantage of this lucrative opportunity.
This book is for .NET developers that are interested in creating native
iPhone applications written in .NET/C#. These developers want to use
their existing knowledge. While .NET developers are always interested in
learning, they also recognize that learning Objective-C and the
specifics of the iPhone can be overwhelming. Those developers interested
in MonoTouch will recognize that the cost of MonoTouch is easily made
up by the ability to quickly target the iPhone using a language that
they are already familiar with.
This book is designed for .NET developers that want to target the
iPhone. It is designed to help you get up to speed with the iPhone, not
to really teach you about the .NET Framework or C# language, which we
assume you already know.
This book is designed with introductory material in Chapters 1 thru 4.
You should read Chapters 1 thru 4 sequentially. These chapters introduce
the MonoTouch product, the basics of developing with MonoTouch and
MonoDevelop, and finally, the basics of presenting data to a user with
screen and data controls and how to develop a user interface for the
iPhone. Once you are comfortable with these concepts, you can typically
move from one chapter to another and not necessarily have to read the
chapters sequentially.
- Chapter 1 "Introduction to iPhone Development with MonoTouch
for
C# Developers"This chapter looks at how the largest segment of
developers can target the smartphone with the highest mindshare, and
that the smartphone is growing faster in marketshare than any other
device.
- Chapter 2 "Introduction to MonoTouch"gives you a
firm
foundation in MonoTouch, MonoDevelop, Interface Builder, debugging, and
deploying.
- Chapter 3 "Planning Your App's UI: Exploring the
Screen Controls"teaches
you about creating your application's UI and specifically how the UI on
the iPhone can differ from UIs that you might have created before. You
also explore the Input & Value objects from the Interface Builder
Objects Library.
- Chapter 4 "Data Controls" shows the
Interface Builder Objects
Library Cocoa Touch classes for Controllers, Data Views, and Windows,
Views, & Bars.
- Chapter 5 "Working with Data on the
iPhone"looks at the
SQLite database engine as well as strategies to store data off the
device on a central server through SOAP and REST (using XML and JSON)
without tying up the user interface.
- Chapter 6 "Displaying
Data Using Tables"looks at displaying
information in a table, using tables for navigation, taking advantage of
UITableView's built-in editing features, and adding a search bar to a
table.
- Chapter 7 "Mapping"covers CoreLocation and MapKit,
using
Location Services, and adding maps and geocoding to your application.
- Chapter
8 "Application Settings"focuses on application
settings, and looks at two aspects of settings for your MonoTouch app:
the Info.plist and your settings bundle. It covers what settings you
might want to set in your Info.plist and why, and then looks at what
code it takes to read and use the settings that you save in the settings
bundle. And it also takes you through the building of the settings that
you might have in a social media-type application. Going through each
step, you will examine the Root.plist inside the Property List Editor
and see the settings dialog that will result from it.
- Chapter
9 "Programming with Device Hardware" covers
accelerometer device orientation, and proximity detection support,
networking, and developing with battery life in mind.
- Chapter
10 "Programming with Multimedia" discussing
integrating images and the image picker, watching and recording videos,
playing and recording audio, and using animation
- Chapter 11
"Talking to Other Applications"discusses the ways
you can use MonoTouch to talk to other applications on the iPhone, both
Apple-built applications and those downloaded from the App Store. It
also provides helpful ways of accessing the iPhone's Address Book and
the iPod music library.
- Chapter 12 "Localizing for an
International Audience" first
defines internationalization and localization, then shows displaying
translated text and images, formatting dates, times, and numbers, then
extracting text for translation.
- Chapter 13 "Programming the
iPad" the capabilities of the
iPad are, what new APIs and controls have been introduced that you can
use in iPad-specific applications, and how to build applications that
can work on both iPad and iPhone devices.
- Chapter 14 "Just
Enough Objective-C" provides you with a
reference and introduction to Objective-C that will help you acquire an
ability to comprehend Objective-C which is something that will come in
very handy.
- Chapter 15 "The App Store: Submitting and
Marketing Your App"discusses
all things App Store. First, it talks about the process that you need
to go through before you are ready to submit - this includes final
testing with Ad-Hoc builds and a presubmission checklist. Next it
addresses actually submitting to the App Store, and then finally what to
do with your app after it's in the App Store. This chapter also touches
on alternative monetization strategies such as ads or in app purchases.
A
Word About Apple SDK License #3.3.1
There has been a lot
of discussion about Apple's SDK licensing restrictions and how they
effect MonoTouch. As of the time of this writing, Apple has not
rejected any apps that are written in MonoTouch for inclusion in the
Apple App Store.
I'm excited to announce that I am speaking at VSLive Redmond in August. My two sessions are:
- What's New in ASP.NET 4 WebForms.
- AJAX with the UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control Toolkit.
If you plan to attend or do attend, please send me a message. I love to meet people and talk technology with them.
Here's some info on each of my sessions:
Session 1
Title: What’s new in ASP.NET 4 WebForms
Abstract: WebForms has been a feature of ASP.NET since the 1.0 release. Many successful applications have been built based on WebForms. Recently, it seems that all of the excitement in ASP.NET has been on MVC. With Version 4, the ASP.NET team has added a number of new features to WebForms. This session will explore the new features in ASP.NET 4 WebForms with an emphasis on:
- Routing. Routing allows an application to accept URLs that are readable to users, are optimized to improve search engine ranking, and do not necessarily map to physical files.
- ViewState. ViewState has been a part of ASP.NET since its initial 1.0 release. ViewState allows an ASP.NET WebForm to respond to events during a post back. Unfortunately, ViewState also can increase the size of page beyond what is actually required unless a developer is careful and pays attention to issues with ViewState. With ASP.NET 4 ViewState, we’ll explore improvements in the ability to control ViewState.
- Client IDs. Before .NET 4.0, the generated Client IDs in WebForms can be very confusing. With .NET 4.0, the ability to control the generated Client IDs in WebForms has been greatly enhanced. We’ll look at these new features for Client IDs in ASP.NET 4.0 WebForms.
- CSS and HTML Improvements. ASP.NET 4 WebForms renders HTML that is compliant with the last HTML standards. We’ll look at how these improvements effect controls and what developers should be aware of.
Benefit to the Attendee:
By attending this session, ASP.NET Developers currently using WebForms will learn about the new features in ASP.NET 4. Developers will be able to immediately apply these features to their existing WebForms applications that they are upgrading to ASP.NET 4 and to new ASP.NET 4 applications that they are building with WebForms.
Session 2
Title: AJAX with the UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control Toolkit
Abstract:
AJAX is a technology that provides a significant amount of user interaction within the web browser. With ASP.NET 2 AJAX, Microsoft shipped a set of client side and server side AJAX technologies. Recently, Microsoft announced that they are transitioning their client side AJAX technologies; however, they are keeping and will continue to build on the server side AJAX technology. This session will focus on the server side AJAX technologies in the UpdatePanel. With the UpdatePanel, the ASP.NET team has provided an easy way to integrate AJAX functionality into WebForms applications. This session will focus on:
UpdatePanel.
- Introduction. The UpdatePanel will be introduced along with some of the rules that must be followed to use it properly.
- History. Users have been trained that clicking on the back button will take the application to the previous state of the application. We’ll explore how to implement support for History, so that when a user clicks the back button they get the action that they expect.
- Client side events. The UpdatePanel exposes a set of client side events that are similar to server side events. We’ll look at what these are good for and how to implement them.
WebForms.
- We’ll look at some of the improvements in ASP.NET 4 WebForms that make working with AJAX simpler.
AJAX Control Toolkit.
- Introduction. We’ll do an introduction to the AJAX Control Toolkit. What is it and how it can help out WebForms developers.
- Creating your own control just like the ones in the AJAX Control Toolkit.
I've got some code running in the iPad Simulator. One thing I discovered is that an application has to be compiled against a specific version of the SDK. When I created a new iPad application, the updated iPad window for the Interface Builder became availble. Very nice indeed. Everything was the same as before, so that was good. I fired up the iPad Simulator, and I got this below:
The next step was getting my app on there, which was easy. Then I got my app running on the simulator, and I saw this:
Basically, everything is filled with goodness and seems to be running correctly. **fingers crossed**
The article at http://www.neowin.net/news/what-the-ipad-beta-sdk-revealed-so-far
The article talks about a universal application binary format. I take it that this means that it will be possible to include a native executable for the iPhone and iPad in on package. That's pretty cool if it happens.
Mark your calendar, CodeStock 2010 will be June 25-26, 2010. This year we are moving to a bigger and better location, the University of Tennessee Convention Center in downtown Knoxville, TN. There will also be some events held at the historic Bijou Theater, also located in downtown Knoxville.
What is there in store for this year’s CodeStock? We will continue to hold several developer focused sessions for developers of all skill levels across many languages and platforms. The CodeStock tradition of excellent Open Spaces along side tradition session format will return, and benefit greatly from our new venue’s layout.
We are expanding the scope of the conference to include two new tracks – IT Pro and Entrepreneur. The IT Pro track will be filled with sessions server, database, and network administrators. The Entrepreneur track will be made up of sessions around founding a technology startup or running a technology company. We held a few Entrepreneur sessions at CodeStock 2009 and based on feedback it’s clear you want more!
CodeStock is a community event, and in addition to the volunteers who organize the details there are the real heroes of CodeStock: The Speakers. Without speakers CodeStock would be… well, a 600 person lunch. Speakers are the ones who bring great content to CodeStock, and we are looking for speakers now for CodeStock 2010.
The CodeStock “Call for Speakers” information can be found at http://codestock.org. Call for speakers is currently open, and will close after February 28, 2010 (you must complete all submissions before March 1, 2010). If you are not a season veteran of technology don’t worry – as long as you are passionate about a topic you want to share your qualified to be a speaker. Attendees will again vote this year on sessions, so if you have some topic you are not sure about you can submit them to see what others think.
CodeStock 2010 registrations will open in early March, 2010. You can stay up to date on all things CodeStock by following us on twitter (http://twitter.com/codestock), and subscribing to our RSS News feed at http://codestock.org.
If you are in the technology field, or within the listening range of modern media, you've heard of the Apple iPad. The fact that it runs an updated version of the Apple iPhone OS is a big plus if you are looking to do development on the platform. I've already received a bunch of emails about this, so I wanted to share what you can do to do develop on the platform right now.
First, make sure you mac is running Mac OS 10.6.2. Next, go get the Apple iPhone SDK 3.2 from the apple developer site. This is beta, so expect updates to it. Now, go get MonoDevelop Version 2.2.1 for the Mac. Finally, go get a copy of MonoTouch 1.4.7 (or most recent version). Once everything is installed, go into MonoDevelop and go to Help -> Updates and check for updates on the experimental channel. You should find MonoTouch 1.9 alpha. Download and install it. Now, you should have everything you need. From here, you can create an iPhone application with .NET. This is the same as it is with the shipping versions. If you look at creating a new solution, you can create an iPad Solution. Starting and debugging an application brings up the iPad simulator. Very nice indeed.
http://www.red-gate.com/products/ants_performance_profiler/care_about_performance_ebook.htm
My buddy Paul Glavich has written a book on how to optimize performance in an .NET application. Well done Paul!!!!!!!!
In this complete guide to performance profiling, Paul Glavich and Chris
Farrell explain why performance testing is a good idea and walk you through
everything you need to know to set up a test environment. This comprehensive
guide to getting started is an essential handbook to any programmer looking to
set up a .NET testing environment and get the best results out of it. Download
your free copy now.
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