February Meeting Agenda

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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January Meeting Agenda

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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December CocoaHeads Meeting Canceled

I’m really sorry for the late notice but tonight’s CocoaHeads meeting is canceled.

Sadly, I’m still recuperating from a bad head cold and since I still had some prep work to do for the party plus run the quiz it’s not something I can easily hand off to someone else with late notice.

We’ll have a condensed version of the quiz in the January meeting along with a speaker (TBD).

Thanks for your understanding.

~ Mike

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December CocoaHeads Party

The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, December 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.

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

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.

Quiz Show

We’ll split up into teams for a quiz show answering questions covering code, culture and history of the Apple universe. We’ve got prizes for the winners so bring your game faces.

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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December Holiday Party

Charlie Brown Christmas

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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November Meeting Agenda

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

October Meeting Agenda

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

September Meeting Agenda

The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, September 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.

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, Sept 22nd

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.

Subclassing UIScrollView

Corey recently took a second take on creating a cloning of Apple’s Springboard Control and is now properly subclassing UIViews to take advantage of Cocoa Touch. He’ll walk through why this is better and how the code works.

Mockups

In the last four weeks Mike Zornek has been mocking up a number of new apps targeting all his major development platforms: iPhone, Mac and Rails. In this talk he’ll demo some of his mockups and talk about the tools he is using to build them.

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

August Meeting Agenda

The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, August 11th 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, Aug 25th
  • Future Meeting Topics Brainstorm

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.

AMMO Rack

Kostas Nasis will present AMMO’s latest product called AMMO Rack. It’s a document management app with some pretty advanced UI and should be in the store soon.

iOS Monetization

Pay for download or free download? Ads or in-app purchase, or both? Consumable or non-consumable? In this presentation Mike Zornek will review the various pros and cons of each pricing style while sharing some data from one of his own (free/ad/in-app upgrade) apps, Dex.

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

June Meeting Agenda

The next Philly CocoaHeads meeting will be Thursday, June 16th 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

  • New Office Hours Schedule
  • Big Nerd Ranch “Mobile for Global Good” contest
  • Upcoming Events: iOSDevCampDC, SecondConf, i360

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.

WWDC Recap

We had a handful of local friends make the trip out to San Francisco for WWDC and at this meeting we’ll have a roundtable discussion of what’s new both Lion as well as iOS 5 (including iCloud).

To prepare for the meeting be sure to check out the Apple docs, including:

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