tacow

Thanks to Brandon for last night’s guest presentation. His UI widget framework & IB plug-in will surely simplify a lot of developers’ lives — it’ll be released under a BSD-like license in the near future. If you ever wanted HUD controls or a no-code preferences window (w00t!), you’ll be really pleased.

There’s also some interest in holding a sequel to the first Toronto CocoaCamp, likely with more iPhone content (assuming the NDA is lifted). While taking the organizational reins is more than we’re up for, we’d be happy to have tacow’s resources serve as a clearinghouse for info.

Finally, one meeting attendee mentioned he wasn’t aware that we had dropped our original mailing list. Please subscribe to tacow’s Google Group for announcements & discussion.

See you at the next meeting, currently scheduled for Tuesday, October 7.

We’ll be holding our next meeting at 6:30PM on Tuesday, July 8 at the usual location.

We haven't decided on topics yet, but David will probably have some sort of WWDC & WOWODC recap, and I may blather on about something. Or we could do something completely different. If anyone has anything they want to present, please speak up. As usual, we'll post details here and on the Google Group as they become available.

See you there!

Update (7/1): Brandon Walkin, who started the IndieHIG, has volunteered to present his latest project. He’s been working on a framework & Interface Builder plug–in with a collection of UI elements useful for modern Mac apps.

We’ll be holding our next meeting at 6:30PM on Tuesday, April 8 at Ryerson University, thanks again to Bart and the Department of Computer Science. We’ll probably be in the computer science conference room ENG288/9 on the second floor of the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre at the south–east corner of Church & Gould. (We’ll post updates here or on the Google group.)

First, Steve Hayman will talk about the new iPhone SDK. Sure, it’s under NDA during the beta period, but Steve works at Apple and he has pull.

Then, we’ll discuss the possibility of holding a local Cocoa BarCamp. With no affordable local Cocoa training, it would be a great way to grow the community. Please bring come equipped with ideas for sessions. We can continue the discussion at the pub afterwards.

Update (4/4): Due to changes to Ryerson’s security, we may not have access to the conference room. We won’t know for sure until we get there Tuesday, but we may have to relocate to another room around the corner on the same floor (ENG207, IIRC).

Update (4/7): No room change is necessary — we’ll be in the same one as usual (ENG288/9).

Let's go to WordPress.

First the bad news: according to the gang at Ironcoder, the MacSB wiki is “down because of too much spam, and too few volunteers wanting to help maintain the wiki.” I've removed the link from the sidebar. Bummer. (The IndieHig wiki is still available, but it hasn't been updated in a while — the last note was a promise few months back to revamp it with a focus Leopard. Update (Feb. 16): It looks like the IndieHig wiki is down now too, but only temporarily. Visiting the site pops an authentication dialog with the zone identified as “Wiki (being revamped)”.)

Now the good news: the CocoaDev wiki now has forums in a bid to reduce mailing list mode in the wiki articles. It's always good to see another Mac developer resource in the community.

One more thing: we're on track for the next meeting on April 8. I plan on being there this time, and doing my presentation on licensing and serial numbers in Cocoa apps. I also heard that at the last meeting, someone volunteered to do a talk on the forthcoming iPhone SDK (assuming it's released in time and not under any kind of NDA). See you there.

After postponing the last one by a month so we could talk about Leopard, we're back to our normal quarterly schedule for tacow meetings. Our next will be at 6:30PM on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at Ryerson University, thanks to the Department of Computer Science. As usual, we'll be in the computer science conference room ENG288/9 on the second floor of the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre at the south–east corner of Church & Gould.

We've got a few topics on deck this time:

• I'll be talking about e–commerce providers and licensing in Cocoa applications: issues related to payment processing and license keys, with a focus on Aquatic Prime. I won't be able to make it on Tuesday, so I'm going to save this topic for a future meeting. Sorry.
• David will be presenting the State of WebObjects: what's new in version 5.4, Eclipse & WOLips.
• Hossein Rahnama (our host at Ryerson) will talk about his group's work in socially–aware systems. He'll demo their mobile–phone application that uses Bluetooth to reach out and touch someone (no, not literally). Development is Mac–hosted, so it should be interesting. For some background, check out the segment from CBC's “The Hour” (don't let the URL scare you — it's SFW) or this article from The Toronto Star.

Again, there's no need to RSVP. Just be there or be square.

P.S. Happy holidays!

We'll be holding our next meeting at 6:30PM on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at Ryerson University again, thanks to Hossein and the Department of Computer Science. There's no room reserved for us yet, so watch this space for updates. Room details are in Update 2, below.

First off, Iain Delaney, tacowhand and developer of the personal finance application Horizon will share his experiences getting started as a Mac indie. Then, David and I will talk about what happened at the C4[1] conference in August (I hope David kept notes). Finally, since Leopard will have at last emerged from NDA, we'll have an open discussion on the new developer features - API changes & additions, Objective–C 2.0, Xcode 3.0, etc.

No need to RSVP this time — we've got a pretty good handle on usual attendance. Feel free to discuss and offer suggestions on our Google group.

Update 1: New tacowhand Alan Quatermain has offered to demonstrate “how to implement Time Machine integration in your applications, in a manner similar to that used by iPhoto, Mail, and Address Book”. That nicely fits in with our hoped–for Leopard theme, so we're going to make C4[1] the discussion topic of the ensuing pub visit.

Update 2: We heard back from the kind folks at Ryerson, and they've booked the computer science conference room ENG288/9 on the second floor of the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre at the south–east corner of Church & Gould.

It’s official. After only assent in the discussion on the tacow Google group, we’ve decided to push the next meeting back a few weeks to Tuesday, November 13 at 6:30 PM. Presumably, Leopard will be available by then, and we’ll be free to discuss it to our little hearts’ content. We’ll pin down the presentations and location in a couple of months. See you all when the leaves have dropped.

It’s been a while since the demise of our mailinglist, and I appologize for that. To make ammends I’ve created a Google group for tacow discussions. You can find it here.

If you’ve rsvp’d for a meeting in the past you will probably receive an invitation email from the group in the next day or so. There is no need to wait however. If you are feeling eager, feel free to sign up at anytime.

Update from Karl: Now that we have a replacement for the mailing list, we won’t be broadcasting meeting announcements to individual email addresses. Instead, we’ll announce via the Google Group (plus the Apple and CocoaHeads mailing lists we’ve always used).

Read on for a quick summary of my presentation from tonight's tacow meeting.

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We’ll be holding our next meeting at 6:30PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at the same place as the last few: Ryerson’s computer science conference room ENG288/9 on the second floor of the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre (Church & Gould). Thanks to Hossein and the Department of Computer Science for arranging the room again. Note that, the TTC has been rebuilding the streetcar tracks along Dundas, so navigation may be a challenge. I was downtown today (7/6), and the streetcar track reconstruction near Ryerson is complete, though I think it’s still in progress in the Spadina to Bathurst stretch.

I’ll be talking about resolution independence in Cocoa applications, David will be showing off the new capabilities in the WOLips component editor and the ProjectWONDER Ajax framework, and tacowhand Rob MacGregor will be doing a short demo/presentation on interprocess communication using zero-hop multicast. After that, we’ll head over to a local establishment for the post–game analysis (though I think we should pick some place other than the Elephant & Castle).

Please drop us a line to let us know how many are attending. See you there!