I’ve found that it can be very helpful to be able to load data locally rather than from a server, especially for testing and for situations where you don’t have control over the availability or stability of the server side. This code sample shows how, using RestKit, you can load json directly from a file. If you knew what the expected server response was, but didn’t have access to the server, this would allow you to put all the object mappings in place and load your object in without requiring a live server....

Nearly through my first time attending Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and I’m been thinking about some useful bits of knowledge I’ve picked up this week. Next year, if I do by some chance land a ticket, this list of tips should help me (or anyone) take the most advantage of WWDC week. Register early – fly in early or midday Sunday, head to Moscone and pick up your badge and jacket. I got in Sunday evening just as registration closed, and wasn’t able to get my badge until Monday morning. Well, that made things interesting after I had gotten up at 4AM to get...

The #EpicProvoAnnoucement hashtag on twitter has truly turned out to be epic. Provo is getting Google Fiber and it makes sense for so many reasons: Entrepreneurship – Provo is one of the best places for tech startups outside of Silicon Valley — on the same level as Austin. Infrastructure – There’s an existing infrastructure in place, put there by the city of Provo nearly 10 years ago. It failed (IMO) due to the greed of who decided to limit the speeds to near cable-levels and charge only marginally lower than other providers. Stiffling innovation in the pursuit of some extra...

This resonates extremely well for me: “There’s still a traditional view out there that agile methods, hacking, open-source and new technologies don’t have a place in serious business. Our view is that all of those wonderful things power people, businesses, and society forward. We’re obsessed with how things work, are inspired by change, and simply love to build stuff. So we hire people and take on projects that let us do just that.” from http://www.controlgroup.com/careers.html

As a java/OO developer first (web later), I got my start with databases by setting up a couple wordpress blogs, mostly simple UI stuff, but configuration and a few other cases got me into phpMyAdmin and MySQL. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case for hundreds, or thousands of others. I don’t — or didn’t — mind MySQL so much because honestly it got the job done for those simple blogs and it was easy to get going. However I will say that now that I am surrounded by “production-level” projects, i.e. projects at work that affect millions of users and...

This little code snippet will let you mark invalid textfields by giving them a red border, then removing the red border once valid.  It could be further adapted to go red or not after each character is typed by performing the check in UITextField’s textField:shouldChangeCharactersInRange delegate...