Simon G's Blog

With 300 attendees registered for this year, there were a lot of Web developers, designers, lawyers, investors and others in one place with several un-conference sessions running in parallel at Barcamp Auckland 5. A summary of my interpretation of key points from sessions I attended is below. Write once, run everywhere HTML 5 applications SmartBiller HTML 5 based desktop/iPhoneAndroid app. Used jQTouch as a framework; supports Webkit only. jQuery Mobile wasn’t ready at time, but this would be preference if rebuilding (better support). Sync driven from server. Device detection being done adhoc on client & server side. Would use MVC if writing again. fluidapp.com for Mac wraps any website and makes it appear like an application. Need to consider how to handle multiple open windows Check instancecount then “ping” other instance may be an option. Screen size, browser quirks / CSS, Intera...

I had yet another excellent time at Barcamp Auckland 4 #bcak4. This is an unconference run each year that brings together developers, designers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and others for discussion about topics of interest.  The sessions are always thought provoking and there are lots of super knowledgeable people and hence great discussions. My notes from the sessions are below. Building client side libraries in the enterprise Simon Lieschke, @slieschke Build on top of Yahoo! User Interface library YUI doc tool for generating source code notes Developer declares dependencies and this will then determine what libraies to use Have generated tag library docs When building javacript libraries, use a functional test page (e.g. if change CSS then show all different buttons) #regressiontesting currently build page manually Selenium mentioned as a...

Following on from the largest tweetup I've ever attended on Friday night with 50+ people in Auckland (and was awesome), I attended Barcamp Auckland 3 (#bca3) today (which was also awesome). These were both excellent opportunities to network with a wide variety of people, have some great discussions and learn from them. If you want to know what a Barcamp or Unconference is check out my synopsis of Barcamp Auckland 2 . I attended a number of sessions throughout the day. My key notes (as aggregated from my twitter stream ): Easy iPhone Game Development cocos2d-iphone is a framework similar to Flash. The Spaceship Tutorial (based on cocos2d-iphone ) sounds like it is worth checking out as an introduction to iPhone game development. Augmented Reality Different types: projector based, window based, retinal display (most common). Augmented Reality Phone requires GPS + Compass + Video + Accelerometer. More information can be found at http://www.8degrees.co.nz/2009/07/12/is-augmented-rea...

I had the privilege of spending the weekend with lots of great energising, exciting people doing great stuff in New Zealand at KiwiFoo 2009 (aka Baa Camp) . Run in an unconference style, the topics were wide and varied and included a variety of topics such as the opportunities of Real-time data, the Economy, Section 92A, Cloud Computing, Sustainability, Broadband, Building Communities, Working globally from New Zealand, OpenID, Utility 2.0 and the list goes on. There were so many exciting sessions that one of the biggest challenges was working out what to go to. The conversations during, in-between and after the sessions went early into the morning on both Friday and Saturday nights and were packed with great intellectual discussion and debate. Some of my takeaways (respecting the FrieNDA rules i.e."what goes on tour, stays on tour") included: Working globally from New Zealand If we can work out how to work well remotely then this can help to keep smart young people in New...