Table37

I’m pleased to announce that our biggest project to date is now available on the App Store and Google Play.

Table37 is a full-featured restaurant management system. When Table37 came to us with the idea of modernizing everything about how a restaurant manages its contact with customers, we thought it was a terrific use of technology. Read More

CocoaConf Columbus 2012

CocoaConf is returning to Columbus August 9-11, 2012. They have a great line-up of speakers again this year and Light Year Software is proud to be a sponsor of this year’s conference.

It is common for conferences to offer a full-day beginner’s tutorial the day before the full conference begins, but being a beginner’s tutorial, there isn’t anything to draw in the more experienced developers. CocoaConf is trying something new this year. Chris Adamson, the author of Learning Core Audio, is doing a full-day deep-dive on Core Audio.

I’m returning to do a pair of talks on networking, expanding on last year’s single session. The first will cover NSURLConnection and other basic networking APIs, plus a discussion of tips you can use to make the best use of the network and keep your app feeling fast and responsive. The second session will cover more advanced material, including how to use raw TCP and UDP sockets with Cocoa and discover services on the network with Bonjour and GameKit.

CocoaConf

CocoaConf is a new developer-focused conference for Mac OS X and iOS being held August 12-13 in Columbus, OH. I am presenting a session on networking with Cocoa. It will cover the various APIs available to Mac OS X and iOS developers from Apple and third-parties, as well as touch on issues unique to using the network on a mobile platform.

Early registration opened today and you can get a conference pass for 50% off.

Announcing mod_proxy_content 1.0

I’m pleased to announce the availability of mod_proxy_content, an Apache 2.x module that is essential for reverse proxying modern web content. It is a fork of mod_proxy_html 3.0.1, with bug fix patches through 3.1.2, enhanced to better handle CSS and Javascript content without the need to create messy regular expressions in the Apache configuration files. It does not depend on mod_xml2enc, and so has the same problems with non-ASCII/UTF-8 as mod_proxy_html without mod_xml2enc. Read More

Christmas Lights Finder 1.0 for iOS

Our latest iOS app, Christmas Lights Finder, is now available on the App Store.

This app has been tumbling around in my head for almost a year. Our kids really like looking at the lights people put on their houses and in their yards, but they don’t always have the longest attention span, especially at night when they are tired. While it’s fine to aimlessly drive around and look at lights, I thought it would be far better, and more fun for mom and dad, if we had an idea of where to go to see really great lights. What better than an app on your phone to point the way? Read More

SQL Logging: Gemified and Now for Rails 3

Of the handful of plug-ins I’ve written for Rails over the years, the one I install on new projects almost with thinking is sql_logging. I wrote that plug-in almost three years ago and it continues to work on Rails 2.3 apps today.

That isn’t true on Rails 3, though, so over the last few days I’ve taken the time to reevaluate the plug-in and figure out how to do the same work in Rails 3. The result is the new sql-logging gem. The source is hosted on GitHub and the gem itself is available, like any other, on rubygems.org.

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