Just a note to say that if you’re fortunate enough to be attending the awesome /dev/world/2010 then you should stop by and hear some of us speak!

Jon and Paris, as well as a few other friends and colleagues of, and at, Secret Lab are presenting the following talks:

• Failure Is Not An Option – on UX and intuitive design – Paris Buttfield-Addison (co-founder)
• Awesome Things You’ve Missed in Python – on Python, and how awesome it is – Chris Neugebauer (friend of Secret Lab)
• Using and Enhancing Mapkit for the iPhone/iPad – on being clever with MapKit – Tim Nugent (occasional coder and friend of Secret Lab)
• Computation on iPhone/iPad - on being efficient on the iOS – Alex Berry (Mobile Engineer at Secret Lab)
• An introduction to OpenGL – on the basics on Open GL on Mac OS X - Andrew Bennett (former co-founder)
• Not Lego: Doing Everything with Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch – on the power of Apple’s latest coding enhancements – Josh Deprez (frequent Mobile Engineer at Secret Lab)
• Using Web APIs in iOS Apps – on talking to the ever-important web backends – Nic Wittison (frequent Mobile Engineer at Secret Lab)
• 2D Gameplay Tips and Tricks – on building 2D games for iOS – Jon Manning (co-founder)
• Designing for Touch & Multi-touch – on designing killer iOS interfaces – Paris & Jon (co-founders)

Phew!

In short, it’s going to be an awesome conference.

OZCHI is Australia’s leading forum for work in all areas of Human-Computer Interaction and CHISIG’s (www.chisig.org) annual non-profit conference.

We invite original contributions on all topics related to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) including practical, technical, methodological, empirical and theoretical aspects.

The 2010 conference theme is Design – Interaction – Participation. It reflects the challenges of designing human interaction with and through digital technologies in ways that support diverse participation.

Awesome!

Paris

Jon and I are hard at work wrapping up the author reviews (the final stage of proof reading) for our book, iPhone and iPad Game Development for Dummies – it’s so close to being done and that we can practically taste the day off that we’ll get! We’re also working hard on a really cool article for a pretty prominent technology – stay tuned!

We’ll be starting another awesome book project when the first one is finished – it’s going to be an amazing one, we promise you’ll love it!

As far as client work goes, Secret Lab is working on some amazing games for some very cool Australia, American and Canadian clients – you’ll start hearing more in the next few weeks as the wraps come off the various projects. We’re, literally as I write this, putting the finishing touches on some amazing fitness-based iPhone apps for an innovative new Tasmanian company – we think you’ll like what you see! And there’s so much more to come… stay tuned! Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want us to build an awesome app or game for you.

We’ll be speaking at, and attending, a bunch of conferences in the next few weeks and months (and years) – so please come and say hello if you happen to run into us! In the short term, we’ll be at (more to come):

• /dev/world/2010 in Melbourne, Australia – late-September 2010
• Unite 2010 in Montreal, Canada – mid-November 2010
• OZCHI 2010 in Brisbane, Australia – late-November 2010
• CreateWorld 2010 in Brisbane, Australia – early-December 2010
• Interaction 11 in Boulder, USA – mid-February 2011

We’re also running, or creating the material for, a bunch of awesome training workshops! Just finished was Melbourne, Hobart, Brisbane, Sydney and Mountain View (USA) – soon is New York City, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Montreal, and many others! Check out the awesome feedback we got from some of the last few iPhone & iPad SDK workshops:

• “It was very good. Best IT course that I have ever been on. (I’m old and have been on lots of courses)”
• “This was the best course I’ve done in a very long time. I really liked the fast pace. The balance was very good.”
• “High intensity but very useful. Not to mention a ball of fun. The presenters are great – I like the tag-team approach. Keeps the active one from veering too far away or forgetting something.”
• “Loved it, it was very enjoyable. Very easy to ask questions and helpful peers as well as teachers.”

It’s not too late to register for the New York City iPhone Boot Camp either: 13th to 15th August, in New York City – using material by Jon and I!

That’s all for now!

Paris

After a busy month of teaching iPhone, iPad and Game Development and Design in Hobart, Brisbane and Melbourne, Jon and I are back in San Francisco/Silicon Valley to catch up with our clients here, as well as attend Apple’s annual developer love-in, WWDC 2010.

If anyone else is in the area and would like to catch up, please let us know! We love meeting other iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Game and Unity Developers, as well as chatting to fellow eccentrics of all kinds! You can find out contact details here, please do get in touch!

We’ll keep everyone updated with our reactions to the exciting things that are surely going to be announced at WWDC.

Until then!

Paris Buttfield-Addison
Production Lead

It’s time for another update on our very-near-future training and workshops! Jon Manning and I, the Secret Lab founders, will be the instructors for all these workshops.

ACS Tasmania iPhone and iPad App Development Workshop
10th, 11th and 12th May 2010, in central Hobart (Tasmania, Australia)
Three days of learning how to make awesome iPhone apps.
Open to the public! Sign up here!

AUC Unity Game Development Workshop – Melbourne
18th, 19th and 20th May 2010, in central Melbourne (Victoria, Australia)
Three days of learning how to make incredible games for PC, Mac, web, iPhone, iPad, Android and consoles!

iPhone Boot Camp Melbourne
21st, 22nd and 23rd May 2010, in central Melbourne (Victoria, Australia)
Three days of learning how to make awesome iPhone apps.
Open to the public! Sign up here!
(Sending a group from your organisation? Contact us for potential discount rates!)

AUC Unity Game Development Workshop – Brisbane
18th, 19th and 20th May 2010, in central Brisbane (Queensland, Australia)
Three days of learning how to make incredible games for PC, Mac, web, iPhone, iPad, Android and consoles!

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us (details on the sidebar) if you want more information about our training offerings.

Paris Buttfield-Addison
Production Lead

Well, this is interesting. iPhone OS includes a number of very exciting features, and we can’t wait to start playing with them.

If you want an iPhone or iPad application that takes advantage of the new features in the iPhone, there’s never been a better time to get in touch.

When you export a PDF from Pages and try and open it up in Adobe Reader on a PC, you get this:

What’s happening is that iWork’s PDF generation appears to be embedding fonts that Adobe Reader doesn’t know how to parse, and it’s falling back to placeholder dots. Which renders the entire thing illegible!

We’ve reported the issue to Apple, and you should too. There’s also an ongoing discussion of the issue on the Apple support forums, which you really should join in so that Apple notices the problem faster and pushes out an update.

This is a very serious issue that really makes iWork less useful! Sad face! Sad face, forever tears!

Jon Manning
Lead Developer

The iPad has had some interesting effects on the geek community at large. The majority of us love it, and a rather vocal minority hate it. They hate it for a variety of reasons – some because of a perceived lack of openness, some because they don’t see the point in using it, and some who just seem to be jealous.

But I’m not talking about that today!

After getting in to the Apple Store (to much cheering and apparently genuine joy on the part of the apple employees), I happened to see Scott Forstall wander in to the store. He was looking about happily as the population of Palo Alto expressed their adoration and love, $499 at a time.

I was planning on going up to him and saying hi, but then I noticed something.

The time on the images of the iPad had changed.

All promotional images of the iPhone show the time as 9:42 AM. Nobody knew the exact reason why, though theories abound.

But on the iPad, the time is shown as 9:41 AM. Hmm.

I wandered up to Scott, who was leaning against a table showcasing the new device, introduced myself, and got right down to business.

“Why’s the time changed? Heck, why does the iPhone show 9:42 in the first place?”

Scott looked around conspiratorially, and then chuckled.

“You want to know the real reason for that time?”

I nodded, with no small amount of eager anticipation.

“We design the keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience’s watches. But we know we won’t hit 40 minutes exactly.”

“So you add a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah! And for the iPhone, we made it 42 minutes. It turned out we were pretty accurate with that estimate, so for the iPad, we made it 41 minutes. And there you are – the secret of the magic time.”

“So what you’re saying is that you picked a number close enough to suit your needs, and used it in the keynote and all promotional images.”

“Yep! It’s as simple as that.”

I thanked Scott, and wandered off in a happy Apple-induced daze. A mystery was solved, and I had an iPad in my hands. It was a good day.

Jon Manning
Lead Developer

See a little more about iPad Day on Paris’ blog: http://bit.ly/dgYPpR

Any day that doesn’t explicitly say otherwise means we’re in Hobart, and we’d love to meet you when we’re in our home city too!