Remeber NSCoder Night this Tuesday (29th of September 2009) 19:00 at Café Retro, Knabrostræde 26, Copenhagen. Bring your Mac and come code with friends, please leave a comment below if you are attending.
Remeber NSCoder Night this Tuesday (22nd of September 2009) 19:00 at Café Retro, Knabrostræde 26, Copenhagen. Bring your Mac and come code with friends, please leave a comment below if you are attending.
Remeber NSCoder Night this Tuesday (15th) 19:00 at Café Retro, Knabrostræde 26, Copenhagen. Bring your Mac and come code with friends, please leave a comment below if you are attending.
CCDC is approaching, and I am taking a moment, to provide all participants with some more detailed information.
CCDC will be held at KEA – Lygten, which is a school that, amongst many things, educates multimedia-engineers.
CCDC will pay nothing to Lygten for using their fabulous venue, that is why CCDC is so cheap. The 150 DKK is to cover expenses for cleaning the school afterwards, the schools cleaning company will do the job for 2500,- any money left will be given to a charity, please email me if you have any ideas.
There will be three meals during the whole weekend, saturday “Øredev 2009″ is sponsoring brunch and dinner. “Øredev” is a conference for software developers that takes place in november in Malmø.
Sunday “comprendo” will be paying for brunch, comprendo is an advertising agency, and a pioneer of iPhone application development in Denmark, through a network of peers known as “iPP”.
The food will be delivered by the catering company that normally works at the school, MealsOnWeels, and I heard from the schools principle that they make delicious meals.
It is a good idea to bring fruit and refreshments for the rest of the event, the school is located on Nørrebro, that means there is several of pizza joints nearby if hunger should strike you durring your late-night coding.
Friday there will be a bar for the students of the school, we are welcome to mingle with them, the CCDC introduction will start at 20:00 friday.
During the introduction the “theme” will be announced, all applications that wish to enter the competition must reflect the theme. After the introduction the “pitching session” will commence, this is the time you find the project you want to work on, and the team-mates you want to work with, everybody can contribute with ideas, and as soon as your team is established, and registered (through an online google form), you are allowed to start coding.
There will always be someone at the school, though you can leave during the evenings to sleep at home, it is possible to sleep at the school, just remember to bring your camping gear (you will be sleeping indoors, so leave the tents at home).
If you do not want to participate in the competition, and just work on your own project from home, you are more than welcome. We would love to se what you are working on during the “open mic” session saturday night.
All applications must be handed in to the judges at 14:00 sunday deployed on a device, or a simulator, the App presentations will start 14:15, after everyone has been heard, the judges will decide who wins the loot, sponsored by nabz.dk, comprendo, and Joachim Bondo (we are looking for more loot, if your company wants to sponsor the event with physical goods, then let me know).
Information for programmers.
You need the development tools installed (developer.apple.com), and if you want to deploy your code on a device, apply for the iPhone developer program, getting in can take some time, so you better do it sooner or later. One person from the team would need a developer license, but if you want to be sure you can deploy your code on a device, go to developer.apple.com and pay + sign-up.
Most of the lectures assume that you know Objective-C, and at-least understand the basic principles of the language. If you want to get the most out of the event, and the lectures, CCDC recommends you to take a day to dive into the fabulous world of XCode and Objective-C, several resources are listed below.
Remember the lectures will be Saturday, and we already start coding Friday night, so it is essential for participating programmers to have some experience with objective-c before we start.
Information for Designers and Artists.
There is not much you need to prepare, just bring your own computer, though reading the iPhone HIG could be a good thing, it can be found here.
As the first western government in the world Canada has probed it’s citizens for their opinion, on what Canada’s next copyright reform should consist of (if any other governments have done this, please correct me). The deadline for voicing your opinion on Canada’s next copyright bill (C-61) is this Sunday, so remember to email your suggestions to the Canadian government before then. (more…)
It appears that C64 has been pulled from the App Store, because of the ability to enable BASIC. The developer has kindly asked if he could rephrase one of his answers, and I could remove his prior answer from my blog, I have agreed to do so, if I was allowed to make a post of this redaction, so no shady business occurs.
Me: Will it be possible to program the emulator from within the emulator?
[original answer REDACTED]
Yes and no, as mentioned before, BASIC has been disabled in the current version due to the rules of App Store, “interpreters” are not permitted, we have disabled it for now in order to enable it later if we succeed in convincing Apple about allowing it back in.
I will save a copy of the original interview, and I hope to post it in it’s original form sometime in the future, but for now I will kindly submit to the developers request.
Recently I have been watching talks on TED on the subject “biomimicry” (by Janine Benyus and Robert Full), which is the concept of looking at natures solutions as inspiration, for solving our own engineering challenges. An example of biomimicry could be cooling a building without air-condition, by looking at the way termites have cooled their mounds for millennia, this does not mean they fill a building with termites and let them work it out, they simply replicate some of the principles of mound-architecture into human-architecture.
This got me wondering if we took some of the concepts of nature into software and hardware design, like creating super-light, strong, and thin enclosures for laptops, super low-power displays yet vividly colorful, by mimicking the structure of butterfly-wings, or even compact wide-range speakers by looking at the way small animals can generate loud sounds. Hardware design has been evolutionary, but we still use square boxes for hardware, and since the first commonly available laptops, only the exterior dimensions, and internal components, have changed, it is still a hard box, perhaps by replicating the concept of a spine, which is one of natures widely deployed inventions, to develop a better hinge for the MacBook Pro, would provide us with an even sturdier product.
In software I am at the moment designing a product that relies on heavily self organizing phenomena, inspired by bird flocks, fish schools, and the audience at a sports event.
Designing software and hardware that mimics nature, both under, and over the hood, is interesting, and I believe that as the field of biomimicry grows, we will all soon have a piece of the genius of evolution in our homes, and perhaps in our pockets.
For more examples of biomimicry visit: AskNature.org
Remember CocoaHeads Öresund tonight 19:00, in Copenhagen, for more detalis visit the Google Group, where you can singup.
If you missed it, C64 is now on the App Store [iTunes link], the Commodore 64 emulator we all have been waiting for. I was fortunate to get to ask some questions to the lead designer of C64, regarding the whole approval process, I hope you enjoy it.
Me: So what did you do different since you got approved?
Brian: We got in touch with the App Store management, who helped us through the process. We had to disable BASIC, and all use of the word “emulator” had to be removed.
Me: Will it be possible to program the emulator from within the emulator?
[original answer REDACTED]
Yes and no, as mentioned before, BASIC has been disabled in the current version due to the rules of App Store, “interpreters” are not permitted, we have disabled it for now in order to enable it later if we succeed in convincing Apple about allowing it back in.
Me: Will C64 feature in-app purchases, so users can download more games later on?
Brian: If Apple accepts our model it will be more like “out-of-app-purchase” where you will buy a game/gamepack as an independent App (free or payed) and from within that App, you will have a LITE version of C64 to test it out, the user can then hit INSTALL, and it will open up in C64 and stay there for later use. So basically it is like installing a disc into the harddrive of C64.
This is done by passing the entire game, covers, instructions etc. via the URL to C64 app, you can send up to 1 MB this way, witch can contain 10 Commodore 64 games.
Me: Can hackers exploit this URL-model?
Brian: the URL is 64-bit encrypted with our Apple Certificate, so unless you work at pentagon – I doubt it :)
Me: How do you feel about the being an iPhone developer after all this?
Brian: I feel great, we started out with Flashback [iTunes link], the Amiga game (flashback.manomio.com) witch sold very well, and now we have our second product on sale in the retro category. We knew from the beginning that bringing an emulator to iPhone wouldn’t be easy, and now we are victorious, one long year after I got my crazy idea ;)
Me: Do you expect more openness from Apple in the future?
Brian: Yes and no – Apple has to make this work smoother as other great distribution channels are emerging, which will be in direct competition to App Store. But knowing how Apple management thinks, I doubt we will see a huge change in their policies, thuough the fact that they are now calling a few developers to see what can be done, is definitely a sign of change.
Me: What is your advice if a developers app is rejected?
Brian : video [YouTube link]
Me: What is the best thing Apple could do to make the App Store approval process better?
Brian: Several proposals have been out on the web, like having trusted/non-trusted developers model, or removing the approval process totally.
First of all, those models will never ever happen with Apple – it could happen with Android market, but Jobs would rather close the company, than embracing such models. What I think Apple needs to do, is the exact same thing as DSB (Danish trains) should do – work on communication. It is okay to be rejected, if you can get to someone who can help you to solve it out. The rules are clear for App Store, and if you cannot afford to loose, don not try to challenge their system.
One very simple thing Apple could do, would be to giving developers the possibility to ad some description of the App to the approval team. The approval team is non-tech guys, sitting with a binary and they have NO chance to know what the App is really doing or not. Our “gamepack” model has been rejected twice, because the approval team believes it is downloading the games from internet – it is not, but how will they know?
Me: Thank you so much for the interview, I will see you @ CCDC
The next NSCoder Night will be held at Café Retro, 19:00 the 15th of September, bring your code, and code with friends.
please leave a comment if you plan to attend.