Letter from the Technical Chair

Come Explore the iPhone Future in San Jose!

"What's the impact of the iPhone going to be on the delivery of rich content to mobile users? How does Google's new Android differ from the iPhone SDK and iPhone Safari development? When should you use the iPhone SDK versus developing web applications?

The release of the Apple iPhone and the iPod Touch has renewed interest in computing devices controlled with direct hand input (either by touch and/or pen), putting "gesture-based" interfaces squarely onto the menu of what developers want to learn more about.

But gesture-based design is just one of the myriad topics that have suddenly become red-hot. Others include questions about how to build apps using the new ASP.NET MVC framework, how to build "social applications," and how to develop high-quality, iPhone-style web-based GUIs for applications.

Come join us at the first-ever iPhone Developer Summit on October 20-21, 2008, in San Jose - either as a delegate, a sponsor, an exhibitor, or a speaker. I look forward to meeting you there!"

October 20-21, 2008 - Sessions Include...

Creating On-Demand Enterprise Applications for the iPhone

The arrival of the iPhone has heralded a new era for Internet-enabled devices; however, the device wasn't designed with the enterprise user in mind. To be successful, enterprise apps need to be optimized for the user experience and fit business requirements. In this session, Dave Carroll will demonstrate how developers using a modern Model-View-Controller (MVC) development approach provided by the Force.com platform can shape the presentation of data to a specific context and use standard web development technologies—including HTML, and AJAX—to create on-demand enterprise applications. With these technologies developers can easily add the iPhone to provide mobile access to their enterprise.

Speaker Bio: Dave Carroll is Principal Platform Evangelist at SalesForce.com. His focus is on growing the developer community and inspiring developers to think creatively about using various Web 2.0 technologies with the company’s Force.com on-demand platform and AppExchange marketplace.

iPhone in Action: Web Development or SDK?

There are two distinct ways to develop applications for Apple's iPhone, the top tech gadget of the year. Programmers can choose to create optimized web applications using web languages, or to write native programs using the iPhone SDK. Rather than seeing this as an either-or proposition, developers should consider the choice a continuum and pick the right tool to create each individual program.

With iPhone web applications, programmers can enjoy all the advantages of the Internet, including ease of development and deployment, speed of updating, and off-line server access. Meanwhile, with iPhone native applications, programmers can immerse themselves in a sophisticated development environment, dig deep into an object-oriented language, and access the iPhone's built-in utilities, like its accelerometers and its GPS. This session will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each style of programming and discuss ways to hybridize them, creating integrated projects that utilize the best of both worlds.

Speaker Bio: Christopher Allen is one of the leaders of the iPhone developer community. He is the host of iPhoneWebDev.com, which is the largest independent community of iPhone-based web developers, and manages its mailing list. He is also one of the founders of iPhoneDevCamp and oversees its Hackathon, and is co-author of iPhone in Action:Introduction to Web and SDK Development . Christopher is a longtime technologist, and is also a leader in social software and was one of the authors of TLS, the next-generation SSL protocol.

Understanding iPhone JavaScript Extensions

Apple has introduced a number of extensions to the JavaScript programming language to assist iPhone web developers. Including new fast lookup functions, native SVG graphics processing, CSS effects, database storage and full screen mode. These new functions will transform the way web and AJAX developers look at the iPhone for application development. This session introduces the JavaScript extensions, and shows practical examples of their usage.

Speaker Bio: John Fronckowiak is the President of IDC Consulting, Inc., providing consulting and technical writing. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor in Information Systems at the Adult Learning Program of Medaille College and is the author of several books and articles about iPhone development, programming, database design and development and networking. Fronckowiak has previously spoken at the Internet Commerce Expo in Boston, and the Conference on Instructional Technologies. In addition, he has over a decade of experience in the classroom as a college professor and runs dozens of training sessions for application developers.

Web Apps for the iPhone: Duplicating the iPhone Look and Feel in Safari

In this session, you'll see first-hand how to use stylesheets and an easy arrangement of divs and spans that will let you make your web application just like many of the native iPhone applications that come with the phone.

You'll see how to do the "Edge to Edge" and "Rounded Rectangle" layouts that are the hallmark of native iPhone applications. You'll also see how to use the iPhone's Safari Debug Console to get hints on how to improve your web application as well as point out errors in your HTML and JavaScript. Lastly you'll see how to go from nothing to hosting iPhone/iPod Touch test pages on your Mac laptop in 5 minutes.

Speaker Bio: Kevin Hoffman, editor-in-chief of SYS-CON's iPhone Developer's Journal is Technical Chair of iPhone Developer Summit. He has been programming since he was 10 and has written everything from DOS shareware to n-tier, enterprise Web applications in VB, C++, Delphi, and C. Hoffman is coauthor of Professional .NET Framework (Wrox Press) and co-author with Robert Foster of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed. He authors The .NET Addict's Blog at .NET Developer's Journal.

Scaling Web Apps to Meet the iPhone Challenge

Demystify what it takes to build a web application that can scale to the millions of users in the iPhone ecosystem. Learn about the need for pre-development architecture and the requirements for the deployment and ongoing maintenance environment for the applications. In this session we will discuss real-world examples of how good ideas can go completely wrong.

Speaker Bio: Guy Naor is CTO of Morph Labs, Inc. A veteran of the technology world, building and implementing software solutions since 1981, in his most recent role he served as CTO of Famundo, a Web 2.0 start-up. Prior to that, he led the development of Goldmine software for four years and has served as an advisor and a consulting architect on a variety of Web 2.0 products.

Mobile Collaboration Using the iPhone

The iPhone is a very successful mobile device. This session shows how to use it for business: How can I access my records? Where to manage accounts? How to deal with customer requests and other employees? The session will also includes development guidelines for your own enterprise mobile clients, mail support efficiency and case studies.

Speaker Bio: Marcus Franz is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of BF Blogform Search GmbH, a company based in Berlin, Germany, with offices in Oslo, Norway, and Santa Monica, CA. Prior to this, he worked as an independent consultant and was a researcher at several universities.

Social Computing: the iPhone as an Ideal Platform

Without a doubt, Social Computing is the preeminent phenomenon rising on the second wave of the web, and the iPhone will become one of the dominant clients for Social Computing in the mobile space.

Come to this talk and find out how ICEfaces delivers the goods today for development of web-based social computing applications. The open source ICEfaces project pioneered web-based real time collaboration, an essential capability for truly interactive Social Computing, and its server-centric architecture is well-suited to resource-constrained devices such as the iPhone. During this session you will see several live demos of collaborative applications running on the iPhone. You will gain an understanding of ICEfaces' server-centric architecture and understand how it is a natural way to deliver high-powered, but light-weight AJAX capabilities to your mobile applications. You will also learn how to leverage AJAX Push to make your applications truly collaborative, and prepare yourself to deliver on the promises of social computing.

Speaker Bio: Steve Maryka is CTO at ICEsoft Technologies Inc., and leads the ICEfaces open source project. He has been involved in Java-based AJAX techniques since 2003 - a time before the term ?AJAX? was even coined. Prior to joining ICEsoft, Maryka was co-founder of AudeSi Technologies where he served as VP of Technology and led Java product development for Internet appliances. After AudeSi was acquired by Wind River Systems in 2000, he served as a Principle Technologist there until joining ICEsoft.

Developing Open Source Mobile Messaging and Sync Apps for iPhone vs. Android

The iPhone and Google Android platform are undisputedly transforming the mobile industry by bringing smartphone capabilities to the masses. They are also making for enticing new mobile platforms for developing and deploying new types of mobile apps and services for mass market users. Yet, developing for them is not that easy.

This session will focus on our experience of developing open source-based mobile messaging and sync applications for both of these platforms. It will compare and contrast the platforms in terms of the development methods and tools required, and their strengths and weaknesses from a developer's perspective. The presentation will ashare lessons learned as well as tips and techniques for developing for both platforms.

Speaker Bio: Stefano Fornari is co-founder, CTO and principal contributor of Funambol, the leading mobile open source project in the world, whose software has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times by 10,000 developers in 200 countries and is used by leading mobile operators and service providers. His most recent work includes developing for both the iPhone and Google's Android SDK. He holds a master's degree in computer science.