iPhone Developer Camp 3

This past weekend I attended my first iPhone Developer Camp. This year was the third annual iPhone Developer Camp, IDC3, which was developers, UI designers, testers, and other that came to share ideas, collaborate, and make some pretty cool apps. The event encourages individuals at all levels to continue to stretch the development boundaries of the iPhone and iPod touch.

Held in Sunnyvale at Yahoo's main campus, the main focus of the event seemed to be the Hackathon competition. Saturday and Sunday were nothing but people with heads down on computers as the Hackathon is an exhibition of attendee and those joining via web projects and was a showcase of some of the best iPhone and iTouch innovators.

The event had great keynotes and even a musical guest BT who performed Friday night. He came back on Saturday to speak about his app called Sonifi. I have been playing with this $4.99 music mixing app and it is fun. It needs more songs as it only comes with one, but BT announced that more are coming soon. I had the chance to ask him some questions after his talk and concluded besides being a kick ass DJ, he knows his tech and can hang with the geekiest.


I saw apps for nurses to allow them to pass along medical charts at shift change, one that recognized sign language, and one from a friend that was there called BCard Express. I will share more about this app when it comes out. May the tech gods bless Christopher Peri for this app as it is extremely useful for those that hate dealing with business cards.

The winner of my award for most innovative and actual winner of the Hackathon event's "Best Open Source Project" was a group that developed an Augmented Reality Kit for the iPhone. I got the chance to chat with the team leader Chris Haseman and look forward to get deeper into this ARkit. It allows developers a chance to build on top of a library for augmented reality applications. This example (a little blurry) was taken at the IDC3 and looks very much like the Wikitude app I was playing with on the Google Android HTC phone. This really is the type of thing that excites me most as AR applications on mobile devices will really drive the mixed reality Metaverse to the mainstream.


There were also vendors at the event with some useful hardware accessories for iDevices. OWLE (Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement) is currently working on a mount that gives you a much more stable way to hold the iPhone, improves your recording quality by including a 37mm camcorder lens and includes a front facing microphone, which plugs into the iPhone’s headphone/mic jack. It also has spots for external lighting and a tripod. FastMac is a device that snaps on iPhone/iTouch that will triple the amount of battery life. It also has a flash-type light on it to solve the problem with in the dark iPhone pics.

Overall I was awed at the apps these die hards could create in a weekend. This was one of the best exhibits of collaboration for innovation I have seen. People of all ages were there. One of the Hackathon entries was made by a young lady around 12 yrs old that wrote the app with the help of her dad. To see true innovation with this revolutionary mobile Internet device, skip the WWDC and attend next years iPhone Developers Camp.

*I am putting together a video of the footage I got from the event so stay tuned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A quick response to QR and Data Matrix code.

Image
So lately I have been seeing more Data Matrix and QR code around. Data Matrix and QR code is a 2D barcode consisting of black and white "cells" or modules arranged in either a square or rectangular pattern that represent encoded information. Unlike augmented reality markers, data matrix code only represents text or raw data. Data Matrix (DM) symbols are rectangular in shape and usually square, they are made of cells: little elements that represent bits . Depending on the situation a "light" module is a 0 and a "dark" module is a 1, or vice versa. Every Data Matrix is composed of two solid adjacent borders in an "L" shape (called the "finder pattern") and two other borders consisting of alternating dark and light "cells" or modules (called the "timing pattern"). Within these borders are rows and columns of cells encoding information. The finder pattern is used to locate and orient the symbol while the timing pattern p
Read more

Full of AWE at Augmented World Expo 2017

Image
Augmented World Event 2017 There are not many event series I can say I have attended since day one but the Augmented World Expo , formerly the Augmented Reality Event, is one I can put in that category. This was the 8th annual event and no doubt it sure has come a long way since that first event I visited in 2010 . AWE is the largest event focused on the commercial side of AR, VR, and includes wearables. “AR and VR are bringing superpowers to the people and this year we are on a mission to highlight how to use these Superpowers to Change the World. This year’s conference and expo will showcase speakers, startups and organizations who are using AR & VR to drive economic growth, encourage empathy and collaboration, democratize healthcare and education, and promote sustainability in the world.” - event website This year was the best year for AWE in my opinion and their biggest ever. The event brought in 4,700 attendees, 351 speakers, and 212 exhibitors from all over t
Read more

Artificial Intelligence & Robots

Image
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. Released during the Game Developers Conference, the now viral “Kara” concept video made by the Paris-based Quantic Dream, developers of the Heavy Rain game, is a look at the future of gaming, using full-body motion capture and a new computer-graphics engine. It is running in real time on Sony’s PlayStation 3 platform. The video is thought provoking as a robot comes to life and is quickly scared by the idea of how precious that can be. What I find interesting is that this type of artificial intelligence is not too far in the future thanks to friends like David Hanson of Hanson Robotics . I got the chance to hang out with David for several days during a trip last year to New Zealand and I was amazed by his work and the state of the A.I. industry. While I have some reservations about 'smart machines' thanks to Hollywood (Terminator, Matrix), David assures me th
Read more