Las Vegas McCarron Airport Terminal 3 Concourse E

The new terminal 3, at McCarron Airport is scheduled to open in June 2012. The new terminal is much like any other airport terminal although there's some big improvements into how to move passengers in and out of the terminal efficiently compared to terminal 1. If you want to get into the details of which airlines and whatnot, check out this PDF provided by McCarron.

Wifi is completely free throughout the terminal, BTW.

Here's a few pictures of the new terminal.

Passenger drop off area

Ticketing area

Self-check luggage terminal

Interesting architecture in the ticketing area

Inside concourse

Gate 7E

Chairs run in an arc and there's plenty of plug-ins for electronics

Welcome to Las Vegas sign inside Concourse E

Moving walkway

Welcome to the United States sign

Looking for CSI Experience at MGM Grand?

Have you ever been at Caesars Palace and cannot find the parking garage? Or find the closest parking for the Apple Store inside the Forum Shops? Or find the best freeway exit to get to Harrah's?

I have lived in Las Vegas for nearly 20 years and every once in a while, I still need a map of the where the nearly 40 casinos are on the Strip. The other day, we were meeting friends for a show at Bally's and running late, so I needed to know which freeway exit to take, then which way to drive on Las Vegas Boulevard, then the quickest route through the casino to the box office. Everything I needed was in a tidy mobile app called Vegas Casino Maps with an overview map of the Las Vegas Strip, plus every casino map on the Strip. I created this app from a personal need and this app comes in handy all the time.

Have you ever wanted to know where the nearest ATM or restroom is? How about what restaurants are at a casino you haven't been to for a while? Do you know where the Voodoo Lounge is at The Palms?

This app will help you navigate the strip like a local. Find out more at http://www.VegasCasinoMaps.com

HootSuite Bulk Upload

If you have been frustrated trying to use the Bulk Upload in Hootsuite.com, here is a free utility that gets the CSV file right the first time. This is an Excel spreadsheet that will optionally randomize your tweets and create output files that can be imported directly into Hootsuite.com in the correct format. There’s no need to tediously manipulate the date format and the endless trial and error, tweeking the file. The file(s) upload correctly the first time, every time.  Here's how it work.

Step 1) Download the Excel File

Step 2) Open the Excel spreadsheet and enter tweets

Step 3) Click this button to check for errors

Step 4) Enter the dates and times in MM/DD/YY HH:SS format

Step 5) Optionally enter a URL that will be shortened

Step 6) Optionally randomize the tweets

Step 7) Create output files

Step 8) Open Hootsuite.com and click the Schedule in Bulk button

Step 9) Click the browse button

Step 10) Double click hootsuite.csv file

Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour from Las Vegas with Papillon

My wife and I took a wonderful helicopter ride from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon this weekend with Papillon Helicopter Tours.  We had an awesome time, and the operation was first-class all around, well worth the price and was quite romantic having a champagne picnic inside the canyon.

The actual trip takes a half hour of flight to the picnic area, a half hour picnic and a half hour flight back and when you add in the drive to Boulder City, weigh-in, safety video, pictures and all, it takes about 4 hours from start to finish.

I thought all of their helicopters were white with a multi-color emblem, but we rode in a red EC-130 helicopter, 3 seats in front, 4 seats in back.  Jim was our skilled, friendly pilot, tour guide, chef and photographer, which is more than a few hats to wear and he was excellent in every aspect, so we made sure to tip him at the end of the trip.

The temperature inside the canyon is pretty much the same as Las Vegas so dress appropriately.  If it's hot in Las Vegas, it's going to be hot inside the canyon and best to schedule an early flight.  The aircraft has air conditioning and individual headsets so you can talk directly to the pilot but we all just listened to the pilot/tour guide and took pictures on the way out, nobody talked.

On the flight to the canyon, there are excellent views of Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam whereas the return flight is more direct over the desert and not as scenic but breathtaking nonetheless.

The helicopter is very stable and the ride is very similar to what you experience when a commercial airplane is in the landing pattern, which is a little bumpy at times, but not bad and the flight is only a half hour.  At the picnic area, helicopters kept coming until there were maybe 6 or 7 groups that all gathered together inside the picnic area.  And 1/2 hour is not much time to eat, meet the other passengers and take pictures, so make sure you take the time to get the photos you want first.  In my opinion, a picture with the helicopter and river in the background really captures the moment.

DotNetNuke 6.0 Skin, change icon inside the search box

If you have ever wanted to know how to change the icon inside the search box inside DNN, this blog will show you how.  The default icon is the DotNetNuke symbol show below.  For reference, we are using DotNetNuke 6.x, with the DarkNight MegaMenu skin.

1) Open the skin .ascx file, and look for this line

                <dnn:SEARCH ID="dnnSearch" runat="server" UseDropDownList="true" EnableTheming="true" Submit="Search" />

2) Change the line to something similar to this

                <dnn:SEARCH ID="dnnSearch" runat="server" UseDropDownList="true" EnableTheming="true" Submit="Search" SiteIconURL="~/Portals/_default/skins/DarkKnight/images/mto.png" />

mto.png is a custom 16x16 pixel image that was manually placed into the images directory.

3) Save the skin file, then refresh the page

Using a Pico projector to demo iPhone app

Laser Projector
Microvision makes a SHOWWX+ projector virtually the same size as an iPhone http://www.microvision.com/showwxplus/.  There are other pico projectors on the market, but the Microvision SHOWWX+ model was chosen specifically because it uses lasers to display the image which also means the image is always in focus, which is a big plus for a portable projector.

While the SHOWWX+ seems to be made for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch devices, many apps do not support video output, which means the apps simply won't display output on the projector.  For example, Hulu Plus and the native app Photos don't support video output.  However, Netflix, YouTube and iPod Videos works great.  There are a handful of workarounds, one of which including jailbreaking the phone.  But for my purposes, I just want to demo my apps using a projector.

Implementing Video Out for my app
Luckily Rob Tyrell has already blazed a trail for iOS developers to follow to add video output capability to an existing iOS app with a library called TVOutManager.  It's as simple as adding the TVOutManager.h and TVOutManager.m into the classes and updating the app delegate AppDidFinishLaunching method, by adding
[[TVOutManager sharedInstance] startTVOut];
Then build and run the application, plug in the projector and see your app on both the iOS device and the projector.

I did have a problem with my app at first and while I could see my app on both the iPhone and the projector, panning and zooming would not render on the projector until the transition completed which made the app appear choppy, but only on the projector.  This was resolved by setting kUseBackgroundThread to YES in TVOutManager.m
#define kUseBackgroundThread YES

My app is hard coded for a portrait mode so I did make a minor adjustment to TVOutManager.m deviceOrientationDidChange, and commented out all of the code for orientation changes.

Vegas Casino Maps version 1.10 available for iPhone now includes floor map for Fry's Electronics http://www.SmartLittleKid.com/vcm.html