Custom Domain for your heroku Rails app

I recently purchased a domain name from Name.com, and needed to have it point to my Rails Heroku app (url : myherokuapp.herokuapp.com )

1- I attached my custom domain to my app

 $ heroku domains:add www.mydomain.com

2- I went to Name.com, logged into my account and accessed the Edit DNS records section.

3- There I added a CNAME record to my DNS record as shown below. ( Do not forget the . (dot) at the end of the url to your heroku app. The CNAME change would not work until I added it )

4- Opened my web browser, typed in www.nameofmydomain.com and was redirected to my heroku app.

It is as simple as that :)

For more info about adding custom domains for your heroku app refer to : https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/custom-domains

Xamarin Android - Force Screen Orientation

To prevent the orientation of your app from changing ( regardless of the device settings )
add the ScreenOrientation flag and set it to the ScreenOrientation of your choice.
( the following example will force the screen orientation to Portrait )

[Activity (Label = "YourActivityname", MainLauncher = true, ScreenOrientation = ScreenOrientation.Portrait)]

Twitter OAuth PHP

I recently needed to integrate the 'Sign in with twitter' option for one of my apps built with PHP.

I downloaded this PHP library which takes all of the hassle out of the process

https://github.com/abraham/twitteroauth

I created the twitter app from https://dev.twitter.com, got my Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, added them to the twitter oauth library, ran the sample app, and everything was working great except for one thing : every time I signed into twitter, I was asked to authorize the app to access my twitter account.

So what did i miss ?

There is a setting in the twitter app configuration that needs to be checked and I forgot to check it

The setting is

After checking that setting, I launched the twitter oauth sample again and after signing into twitter, I was simply signed in without having to authorize the app again.

Hope this helps someone out there :)

iTunes Connect timeout / downtime issues

So .. iTunes Connect has been experiencing issues for the past 3 days now ... Developers are not being let into https://itunesconnect.apple.com/ or when they are in, they experience random timeouts which makes it impossible to submit any apps to the App Store ..

If iTunes Connect was an iOS app and Apple guys sent it to themselves...it will be rejected!
— Alessandro Mondaini (@iguana_02) September 6, 2013

I got lucky and managed to submit an update to an app 2 days ago, but its status took about 10 hours to change to 'Waiting for Review'.
I have not seen any official  statement from Apple regarding what could possibly be the reason behind these issues, which is very surprising. TechCrunch is also staying quiet on the matter ( the latter does not surprise me as much ).
It is baffles me that a company with such a Dev following decides to NOT communicate/address issues when they happen. #FAIL

Times have changed @Apple ... The Google Play store is at the moment doing just fine and I was able to publish the Android version of the same app yesterday without any issues :)

iOS Removing a Tab from a UITabController

If you are like me and have been trying to remove a tab from a UITabController, have scoured the web and have found posts suggesting copying the UIBarItems to an array, removing one than setting the bar items again, you will run into the following exception :

'Directly modifying a tab bar managed by a tab bar controller is not allowed.'

Instead, use the UITabBarController's viewControllers property and your tab will be properly removed without throwing an exception

      // Remove the first tab from a tab bar controlled by a UITabController  
      NSMutableArray * vc = [NSMutableArray   
                arrayWithArray:[self.tabBarController viewControllers]];  
      [vc removeObjectAtIndex:0];  
      [self.tabBarController setViewControllers:vc];  

Video Conferencing SDK for .NET

My company AVSPEED, Inc. has just released a Video conferencing SDK for .NET. (Code name : iConf .NET SDK)

If you are a software developer looking to create a video conferencing application using Visual Studio .NET or if you simply need to integrate video conferencing features into an existing .NET application, give it a try .. you will be amazed how easy it is to use.

The SDK offers H.263 and H.264 support whichever best suits your needs ..

The SDK can be downloaded from here : http://www.avspeed.com

There are downloadable C# demos also in the 'Downloads' section of the website..

Happy coding :)

Gaetan Siry

AVSPEED, Inc.

Founder & Software Project contributor

Twitter : @avspeed

Integrating Video Conferencing into your application

Are you looking for a way to integrate video conferencing into your application ?

My company (AVSPEED, Inc.) offers an affordable SDK which allows developers to easily add video conferencing features to their application with just a few lines of code.

We have C#, and Delphi demos available ..

Check us out if you are interested at http://www.avspeed.com