The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, May 10th 7-9pm at IndyHall. Post-meeting drinks commence afterwords; National Mechanics is our usual hangout.

You’ll need to use the intercom to get in (#022). If you are having any trouble feel free to call MikeZ’s cell (267-563-0616) and we’ll be sure to get you in.

We’ll have pizza and refreshments available. If you can, please bring a few bucks to help chip in.

Please RSVP via Meetup so we have enough Pizza.

http://www.meetup.com/PhillyCocoaHeads/

Meeting Agenda

Group Business

• WWDC is June 11th (sold out)
• Our June meeting will be the 14th so I’m sure we’ll have stuff to talk about.
• SnipSnap released and featured

Show and Tell

In addition to being an open mic to demo new apps or code, Show and Tell also invites people to bring problems or design issues they are encountering in current projects for feedback.

Planned Show and Tell talks include:

• Kostas Nasis will have a quick follow-up on the Git sync stuff he talked about last month. He’ll also talk a bit about the various “backend-as-a-service” providers that have been popping up (Parse, Kinvey, StackMob, CloudMine, etc); the differences and similarities, and his experience with trying each one out.
• Mike Zornek will review how the Shindig team is embracing code reviews via pull requests in its various repos. He’ll show how it works, why we do it and how you might be able to get started.

Talks

Unfortunately we don’t have a scheduled talk yet. If you have something you’d like to present let me know. The fallback will be either round room discussion or perhaps group viewing of a recent programming talk (I’m thinking Mike Ash’s Defensive Programming talk from Boston VTM — it was really good.)

About CocoaHeads

PhillyCocoa is a Philadelphia area Mac and iPhone programming group, a chapter of the worldwide CocoaHeads. All skill levels are welcome. The only requirement is an interest in Apple-related technologies and moderate tolerance for geeking out.

We hold our CocoaHeads group meetings on the second Thursday of every month at Indy Hall. A calendar feed can be found on the PhillyCocoa website.

We are always looking for feedback and suggestions on what topics to discuss at our meetings. We have a public writeroom (password is “password”) where we try to keep tabs on what people are interested in hearing about. Feel free to append your own ideas, especially if you are interested in speaking.

Group website: http://phillycocoa.org

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The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, April 12th 7-9pm at IndyHall. Post-meeting drinks commence afterwords; National Mechanics is our usual hangout.

You’ll need to use the intercom to get in (#022). If you are having any trouble feel free to call MikeZ’s cell (267-563-0616) and we’ll be sure to get you in.

We’ll have pizza and refreshments available. If you can, please bring a few bucks to help chip in.

Please RSVP for April meeting on Meetup.

http://www.meetup.com/PhillyCocoaHeads/events/55239362/

This will help us make sure we have enough pizza. Important stuff!

Meeting Agenda

Group Business

• Philly Tech Week is coming!
• Mobile Lightning
• April Office hours canceled for PTW.

Show and Tell

In addition to being an open mic to demo new apps or code, Show and Tell also invites people to bring problems or design issues they are encountering in current projects for feedback.

Planned Show and Tell talks include:

• Kostas Nasis has been working on a system that uses Git binary diffs to update assets on the iOS devices. He’ll discuss, demo and take questions.
• Corey Floyd will talk about “How to abuse NSOperationQueue for fun and profit” or YAIaRDCS (Yet Another Images and Remote Data Caching System)
• Conrad Kramer is a young iOS programmer and recent acquaintance of our own Kostas. He’ll be showing off some of his projects and can answer your questions about iOS jail-breaking and Cyanide.

Talks

Modern iOS Unit Testing with Kiwi

Kiwi’s goal is to bring rspec style, easy to read unit testing to iOS development. In this talk Mike Zornek will show you how to get started with Kiwi, why it’s better than the default OCUnit, and how he is using in in a new iOS project.

https://github.com/allending/Kiwi

About CocoaHeads

PhillyCocoa is a Philadelphia area Mac and iPhone programming group, a chapter of the worldwide CocoaHeads. All skill levels are welcome. The only requirement is an interest in Apple-related technologies and moderate tolerance for geeking out.

We hold our CocoaHeads group meetings on the second Thursday of every month at Indy Hall. A calendar feed can be found on the PhillyCocoa website.

We are always looking for feedback and suggestions on what topics to discuss at our meetings. We have a public writeroom (password is “password”) where we try to keep tabs on what people are interested in hearing about. Feel free to append your own ideas, especially if you are interested in speaking.

Group website: http://phillycocoa.org

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The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, March 8th 7-9pm at Indy Hall. Post-meeting drinks commence afterwords; National Mechanics is our usual hangout.

You’ll need to use the intercom to get in (#022). If you are having any trouble feel free to call MikeZ’s cell (267-563-0616) and we’ll be sure to get you in.

Sponsor: The Neat Company

The Neat Company creates integrated software and scanning solutions that help you tame your paper moister. Transform receipts, business cards, and documents into organized digital files that are easy to user, easy to find, and easy to share. Think of it as a digital filing cabinet - a place to track and manage all your information - except without the paper, or the filing cabinet.

Neat is a Philly-based, with software products ranging from Mac and Windows desktop applications to the soon to-be-launched Neat Cloud platform, which will include iOS and Android apps.

Meeting Agenda

Group Business

• Philly Tech Week

Show and Tell

In addition to being an open mic to demo new apps or code, Show and Tell also invites people to bring problems or design issues they are encountering in current projects for feedback.

Planned Show and Tell talks include:

• Kostas Nasis will be showing off some new tech including the latest build of SnipSnap.
• Michael Raber would like feedback on the tools his company has been working on. The tools make it easier and faster to build iOS app front ends.
• The Neat Company will be demoing it’s latest products and current job openings.

Talks

Automating your Xcode Builds by Alfie Hanssen

Xcode automated build and OTA distribution via ruby, bash, and a wee bit of Apple Script. Touching on use-cases, code signing, keychain intricacies, and more.

About CocoaHeads

PhillyCocoa is a Philadelphia area Mac and iPhone programming group, a chapter of the worldwide CocoaHeads. All skill levels are welcome. The only requirement is an interest in Apple-related technologies and moderate tolerance for geeking out.

We hold our CocoaHeads group meetings on the second Thursday of every month at Indy Hall. A calendar feed can be found on the PhillyCocoa website.

We are always looking for feedback and suggestions on what topics to discuss at our meetings. We have a public writeroom (password is “password”) where we try to keep tabs on what people are interested in hearing about. Feel free to append your own ideas, especially if you are interested in speaking.

Group website: http://phillycocoa.org

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The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, February 9th 7-9pm at Indy Hall. Post-meeting drinks commence afterwords; National Mechanics is our usual hangout.

You’ll need to use the intercom to get in (#022). If you are having any trouble feel free to call MikeZ’s cell (267-563-0616) and we’ll be sure to get you in.

We usually all chip in and order some pizza and refreshments, so if you can bring a few bucks for that please do.

Meeting Agenda

Group Business

• Assistant wanted for keeping meeting notes, spell checking, marketing help.

Show and Tell

In addition to being an open mic to demo new apps or code, Show and Tell also invites people to bring problems or design issues they are encountering in current projects for feedback.

Planned Show and Tell:

• Anthony Coombs, looking for feedback on a new project.

Talks

Introduction to Objective-C categories and key/value coding by Michael Raber

Michael has come to love some of the cool features of Objective-C that you might not discover while learning iOS and Mac programming. Categories can be used to add methods to classes without subclassing and key/value coding can be used to set and retrieve property values.

Michael will introduce the topics and show some example use cases. If you have used categories please post your favorites to share here:

https://gist.github.com/1761047

UIViewController Containment by Matt Thomas

Matt will be doing a talk on UIViewController Containment covering:

• The basic concept behind the “View Controller Pattern” and the difference between “content” and “container” view controllers.
• How iOS 5 formalized the concept of a container view controller.
• The odd dual hierarchies between “View Hierarchies” and “View Controller Hierarchies”.
• Apple’s built-in container controller.
• Why you would want to implement your own container view controller
• How to implement your own container view controller, tips, and pitfalls

About CocoaHeads

PhillyCocoa is a Philadelphia area Mac and iPhone programming group, a chapter of the worldwide CocoaHeads. All skill levels are welcome. The only requirement is an interest in Apple-related technologies and moderate tolerance for geeking out.

We hold our CocoaHeads group meetings on the second Thursday of every month at Indy Hall. A calendar feed can be found on the PhillyCocoa website.

We are always looking for feedback and suggestions on what topics to discuss at our meetings. We have a public writeroom (password is “password”) where we try to keep tabs on what people are interested in hearing about. Feel free to append your own ideas, especially if you are interested in speaking.

Group website: http://phillycocoa.org

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The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, January 12th 7-9pm at Indy Hall. Post-meeting drinks commence afterwords; National Mechanics is our usual hangout.

You’ll need to use the intercom to get in (#022). If you are having any trouble feel free to call MikeZ’s cell (267-563-0616) and we’ll be sure to get you in.

We usually all chip in and order some pizza and refreshments, so if you can bring a few bucks for that please do.

Meeting Agenda

Introductions & Group Business

• Assistant Wanted for keeping meeting notes, spell checking, marketing help.
• Should we continue doing Office Hours?
• Any other goals for the new year?
• Want to spruce up website a bit, volunteers welcome.

Show and Tell

In addition to being an open mic to demo new apps or code, Show and Tell also invites people to bring problems or design issues they are encountering in current projects for feedback.

Planned Show and Tell items:

UXFlip Demo by Michael Raber

UXFlip is a new technology making it easier to build and manage the building of the UI for mobile apps. We would love early feedback on the concept and for developers to poke holes in the idea or implementation.

Implementing a RFID scanner on iOS by Mike Zornek

Mike recently did a small project to prototype a RFID scanner for iOS. Was a fairly painless process. He’ll demo how it went down and what you should look for if interested.

Talks

RestKit by Corey Floyd

Per their website: RestKit is an Objective-C framework for iOS that aims to make interacting with RESTful web services simple, fast and fun. It combines a clean, simple HTTP request/response API with a powerful object mapping system that reduces the amount of code you need to write to get stuff done.

Corey will walk us through how he is using RestKit in his latest iOS project.

Cocoa Quiz

The quiz show from our canceled holiday meeting has been refactored. We’ll have a little trivia on the code and culture of Apple, awarding software license prizes as we go. Bring your thinking cap.

About CocoaHeads

PhillyCocoa is a Philadelphia area Mac and iPhone programming group, a chapter of the worldwide CocoaHeads. All skill levels are welcome. The only requirement is an interest in Apple-related technologies and moderate tolerance for geeking out.

We hold our CocoaHeads group meetings on the second Thursday of every month at Indy Hall. A calendar feed can be found on the PhillyCocoa website.

We are always looking for feedback and suggestions on what topics to discuss at our meetings. We have a public writeroom (password is “password”) where we try to keep tabs on what people are interested in hearing about. Feel free to append your own ideas, especially if you are interested in speaking.

Group website: http://phillycocoa.org

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For the upcoming December’s meeting we’ll skip the traditional tech talks and have a more social atmosphere, including a quiz show featuring cocoa code, culture and history questions; hopefully awarding some prizes along the way to the winning players.

If you’d like to suggest a question to ask please use this form.

If you’d like to donate a prize (software serial, ebook, etc.) use this form.

We are also have open sponsorship for the pizza if any local company/vendor out there is interested. Let me know.

Thanks for you help.

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The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, November 10th 7-9pm at Indy Hall. Post-meeting drinks commence afterwords; National Mechanics is our usual hangout.

You’ll need to use the intercom to get in (#022). If you are having any trouble feel free to call MikeZ’s cell (267-563-0616) and we’ll be sure to get you in.

We usually all chip in and order some pizza and refreshments, so if you can bring a few bucks for that please do.

Meeting Agenda

Introductions & Group Business

• November Office Hours Canceled due to Turkey Day.

Show and Tell

We don’t have a planned mini talk for this month’s meeting. I encourage people to bring some notes and demo some recent projects they’ve been working on.

In addition to being an open mic to demo new apps or code, Show and Tell also invites people to bring problems or design issues they are encountering in current projects for feedback.

Planned Show and Tell:

Mike Zornek

Working with AddressBook in cross-platform (iOS/Mac) code using Google Toolbox.

http://blog.clickablebliss.com/2011/11/07/addressbook-record-identifiers-on-mac-and-ios/

http://code.google.com/p/google-toolbox-for-mac/

Some issue you may run into if you still support armv6 (iPhone and iPhone 3G) and move to Xcode 4.2

http://blog.clickablebliss.com/2011/11/07/xcode-4-2-llvm-built-armv6-floating-point-crashes-fixed/

About CocoaHeads

PhillyCocoa is a Philadelphia area Mac and iPhone programming group, a chapter of the worldwide CocoaHeads. All skill levels are welcome. The only requirement is an interest in Apple-related technologies and moderate tolerance for geeking out.

We hold our CocoaHeads group meetings on the second Thursday of every month at Indy Hall. A calendar feed can be found on the PhillyCocoa website.

We are always looking for feedback and suggestions on what topics to discuss at our meetings. We have a public writeroom (password is “password”) where we try to keep tabs on what people are interested in hearing about. Feel free to append your own ideas, especially if you are interested in speaking.

Group website: http://phillycocoa.org

Read More

The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, October 13th 7-9pm at Indy Hall. Post-meeting drinks commence afterwords; National Mechanics is our usual hangout.

You’ll need to use the intercom to get in (#022). If you are having any trouble feel free to call MikeZ’s cell (267-563-0616) and we’ll be sure to get you in.

We usually all chip in and order some pizza and refreshments, so if you can bring a few bucks for that please do.

Meeting Agenda

Introductions & Group Business

• Next Office Hours, October 27th
• BarCamp
• TEDxPhilly
• iOS 5 / Xcode 4.2 GMs

Show and Tell

In addition to being an open mic to demo new apps or code, Show and Tell also invites people to bring problems or design issues they are encountering in current projects for feedback.

Update: Functional Testing with Frank is postponed for a future meeting. I’ll be doing my best to pull together a talk but welcome everyone to bring stuff for an expanded show and tell.

Functional Testing with Frank

Kevin Griffin will present Frank, a framework for automated functional tests for your iOS UI. Yep we’re going to run Cucumber and test our UIs, because business folks LOVE tests (and so do I). In this talk we’ll walk through setting up Frank, and some basics around how it works. Then we’ll pray to the demo Gods and show some Frank in action. You will leave with an unbearable urge to test your applications, and your users will thank you!

About CocoaHeads

PhillyCocoa is a Philadelphia area Mac and iPhone programming group, a chapter of the worldwide CocoaHeads. All skill levels are welcome. The only requirement is an interest in Apple-related technologies and moderate tolerance for geeking out.

We hold our CocoaHeads group meetings on the second Thursday of every month at Indy Hall. A calendar feed can be found on the PhillyCocoa website.

We are always looking for feedback and suggestions on what topics to discuss at our meetings. We have a public writeroom (password is “password”) where we try to keep tabs on what people are interested in hearing about. Feel free to append your own ideas, especially if you are interested in speaking.

Group website: http://phillycocoa.org

Read More