CocoaHeads LA

We had hoped to have a presentation by Skyhook Wireless on their Spot Rank and Local Faves APIs for iPhone. Alas, it is not to be. We hope to have them back at some point in the future when and if our mutuial drop flags align.

We are, however, very much looking forward to September’s meeting: a presentation by Niilo Tippler on The Home Gene Splicing Kit, a fantastic iPhone app, a year in the making. This one’s confirmed for September 9th. More details to follow. You won’t want to miss it!

Happy August, Everyone!

WWDC is over and iPhone 4 is now either the most awesomest must-have gadget of the century, or something you can’t buy anywhere and even if you did you wouldn’t get any signal if you actually try to touch it with your bare hands – depending on who you talk to…

Anyway, we don’t have a formal speaker lined up so we’re just going to have a group talk about the new features of iOS 4. Anyone who went to WWDC- it would be great to get an update from you!

Of course, as always, bring your Cocoa questions, ideas, and complaints, and we’ll see if we can sort them out. See you then!

As you probably know, WWDC is June 7-11, and our monthly meeting would have been held on the second Thursday of the month, or June 10. Since many of our members attend WWDC we typically skip the month in which WWDC falls. This year will be no different.

But that will just give us that much more to talk about next month.

See you in July…

Imagine a world without games. A world without fun. Now forget that world. That world doesn’t exist. We live in a world with fun and games. This led Jonathan Badeen to develop his first iPad game, Match Made, two weeks before the iPad was released. The process from start to finish took between 3-4 days of work including the drawing of graphical assets. Jonathan will be sharing his process from the game’s inception to the release of the app. Topics will include the class and code structure, issues of orientation, app naming complications, animation performance and issues with multitouch in a non-multitouch game. Much can be learned from Jonathan’s evolving methodology. A methodology which has earned him millions of fractions of pennies through the sale of Match Made on the App Store. Don’t miss it!

This month Britt Benston will talk with us about his trials and tribulations bringing iScreenWriter to the iPhone App Store.

Britt is a Los Angeles-based designer who, in his words, “daringly invested all of his resources” into developing iScreenWriter by hiring a development company with offshore developers. Eight months in and it’s still just “almost ready.”

Britt has generously offered to share his story with us. On the technical side, we’ll learn about the dangers of working in WebView and with text on the iPhone. On the business side we’ll hear about how the landscape of the apps market has changed over the last few months and what you can do about it.

Will it be a tale of caution or of ultimate victory?

Curtain time is 8 April at 7:30 PM.

Due to a scheduling conflict for several members, including your intrepid co-leaders, we will not be having a March meeting. We’ll be back in April with a fascinating talk about bringing a new iPhone app to market. Details forthcoming…

In the meantime, don’t forget that NSCoder meetings will always keep you in good company.

Note: Our February meeting has been pushed back one week from its usual time (the second Thursday of the month) to February 18th.

We will hold an informal discussion session on what it’s like to be an independent developer for the Mac platform. This will be a great opportunity for everyone who is both independent and employed by a company to compare notes, and discuss the pros and cons of each.

Bring your questions!

We’re kicking off 2010 in style!

Our very own CHLA members Jonathan Badeen and David Hodge have recently returned from participating in the very first iPhone Reality Show in Venice, Italy. They’ll be talking about their experiences designing, building, and shipping an iPhone app in 7 days locked in a big room with TV cameras and Aaron Hillegass while the beautiful canals, art, and architecture of Venice were just mere steps away. How did they do it? What did they learn? About themselves? About iPhone programming? About Reality TV?

Come bask in their celebrity glow. What could be more LA?

Catch up on the episodes you missed via iTunes.

See you at the meeting!

This coming Thursday we have quite a treat. Elliot Lee, of Green Gar Studios, will be discussing his iPhone app Whiteboard: Collaborative Drawing. You can check out the app in the App Store:

Whiteboard Lite: Collaborative Drawing (free)
Whiteboard Pro:  Collaborative Drawing (paid)

Greetings LA CocoaHeads.

This Thursday, David Hodge will be discussing his experiences with making public transit applications for the iPhone. Starting with iBART and iBART Live in the Bay Area, now “CDTA iRide” that he made on contract for New York state, and a few other related applications. He’ll also be describing some technical hurdles he faced with the iPhone SDK, and challenges with Apple.