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.NET Logging Library

I was researching which logging libraries are available for .NET today for a new project I’m involved with and it looks like NLog is a nice option to choose:

http://nlog-project.org/

It has a nice tutorial and is very easy to integrate and customize.

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iOS4 is now available!

iPhone OS version 4 (iOS4) is now available.  More information is available here:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

You can download the update from within iTunes.

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Macs are Cool

OK, as I’m sure some of you are already well aware, but just to reiterate:  Macs are Cool.

As a Windows guy for the past twenty years or so, I’ve been using Macs more and more lately.  I purchased one of the new 17-inch MacBook Pros recently, and I’ve really been enjoying the capabilities.

I’m a fan of VMWare as well.  It’s a great product that allows you to run other operating systems in a virtual machine, which makes it great for me when I need to test software on some other OS.

I’ve been running Windows 7 on my MacBook under VMWare, and although it is certainly useable, the performance hasn’t really been blowing my hair back, so I decided to try using Apple’s Boot Camp to run Windows natively on a separate partition.

After setting up Boot Camp, I booted back into OS X and when I ran VMWare, I discovered it had the capability to virtualize my boot camp partition under OS X!  This means that when I want the raw speed, I can boot into native Windows, but otherwise I can still launch the same OS under VMWare on OS X.

That’s just cool.

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iPhone OS 4 Coolness

iPhone OS 4 was announced on Thursday, and its got a lot of great new features:

Multitasking

  • You can now multitask between apps. The UI is very well designed and is accessed by double tapping the home button.
  • Audio apps like Pandora can now continue to play in the background.
  • VOIP apps such as Skype can receive calls when you’re doing something else, and you can switch to another app without dropping a call.
  • Apps can now receive notifications when your location changed which are triggered when you change cell towers.
  • Apps can now display local notifications which are like push notifications but are generated locally by the app.

Folders

  • You can now create folders on the home screen which allow you to group apps however you like. This is a great feature which has been needed for a long time!
  • You can put folders in the dock.

Wallpaper

  • You can now change the wallpaper for the home page and the lock screen.

Mail

  • Unified inbox.  Messages from multiple accounts now appear in one inbox.
  • Organize messages by thread.
  • Open attachments.

iAd

  • Developers can easily add ads to their apps and earn 60% of the revenue.
  • Users access interactive ads within apps and can return to the app where they left off.

Other Stuff 

  • iBooks is now available on iPhone
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Checkout Forms and Google Autofill

This morning I’ve been working on a shopping cart checkout form and wanted to share a few things I learned.

I needed a list of countries for my checkout form, and I discovered that country codes are defined by ISO 3166.

Here is a site that has some example html code for states and countries:

http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/samples/html/country-list.html

http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/samples/html/state-list.html

To get the Google Toobar to autofill my checkout form, I used the ECOM field names for my input fields which are available in RFC 3106.

I had some trouble getting the CVC (card verification code) field to autofill, but adding the text “CVC” to the fields label got it working.