Cocoaheads Wellington takes place this Thursday from 6pm. It’s all about pods and libraries/utilities so most people should find it valuable.
To make the most of it, devs and designers are encouraged to bring their laptops and share how these utilities add value to them.
Apple will announce in just a couple of days more details about the Watch. I decided I’d join the bandwagon and comment on it.
In order to answer this question, I will first look at our use of the iPhone. During WWDC 2014, Apple introduced iOS 8 and its interactive notifications. These notifications are supposed to let you “stay focused while you stay in touch”. The problem is, in order to actually get anything done, the number of actions required of the user is surprisingly high.
Let’s now speculate about the steps required to perform the action using the Watch.
The benefits are clear: this is not just more subtle but it also comes with less friction. For as long as the watch is on the wrist you are always authenticated. A simple flick of the wrist can show you a glance of the event and seamlessly transitions into an actionable notification.
Let’s look at some potential use cases if you become an Watch owner. You’ll soon be able to:
All of the above can be done easily and with litte to no friction. Arguably, your iPhone can perform all of the above, but the way it does it requires a significant amount of steps and planning.
Having a device that is always on, always there, always ready to be my valet, is why I think this will be the most personal gadget Apple has ever built.
If it will be as easy as it sounds to interact with, then I might find myself interacting more often and more promptly. This is the kind of value that will make me want to own one.
I’m proud to announce the formation of Cocoaheads Wellington. For those who are not aware, Cocoaheads is an international Club for Cocoa (iOS & Mac) developers and designers.
The gatherings happen every 2nd Thursday of the month, from 7pm to 9pm. They are usually followed by a trip to a nearby restaurant or pub.
The first meeting will take place on the 12th of February at the Trade Me offices in Wellington. If you’re a Cocoa Dev / Designer then you should confirm your attendance here.
I intend to outsource the location. I’m currently hoping to convince one of the local Universities to host, but maybe another Wellington based organisation would be keen to put their hand up? If you know of any potential venues then please reach me via Twitter.
In terms of structure, I will propose when we gather that we break up the agenda in 3 parts:
If you’re passionate about iOS or the Mac, you are keen to share your knowledge or learn from others, you live and breathe development or design, then I hope to see you there!
This is one iTunes Movie bundle that nobody should miss out on, and I’m not talking about the $300 discount!
Bond 50: The Complete 23 Film Collection – NZD120 in HD. (Regular Price: NZD413.77)
What would be incredibly cool would be to buy such a bundle and automatically get given new movies that get added to the series…
The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage
The Design of Business
I just read this book, and it was good. Not quite 5-stars good, but a good book nonetheless. A couple of chapters definitely stand out. The P&G analysis is fantastic, while the RIM introspection is hilarious. To be fair, it’s only funny because RIM stopped doing what the book is praising them for.
Here are a some of the notes I took (hopefully I don’t break copyright):
The minute you start analyzing and using consumer research, you drive all the creativity out of the product.
No good product was ever created from quantitative market research. Great products spring from the heart and soul of a great designer, unencumbered by committees, processes, or analyses.
Even as corporate leaders chase the vital, elusive spark of creativity, their organizations structures, processes, and norms extinguish it wherever it flares up.
Once knowledge has been pushed to a logical, arithmetic, or computational procedure, it can be reduced to software.
In most large business organizations, three forces converge to enshrine reliability and marginalize validity: the demand that an idea be proved before it is implemented, an aversion to bias, and the constraints of time.
An organization that engages exclusively in exploitation will ordinarily suffer from obsolescence.
Of the original Fortune 100 companies, published in 1955, only eleven are still on the list.
When a team can come together around a creative cause or a knotty problem, they want to come to work every day.
Laliberté (founder of Cirque du Soleil) had done no research to forecast the size of the market for his new form of circus. How could he? The market did not yet exist.
and finally, one of my favourites:
Mastery without originality becomes a cul-de-sac.
Next on my list: Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street
It’s true. The Android developer community in Wellington is strong and mature, if tonight’s first Android Meetup is anything to go by.
Android Meetup Attendees
Just over 30 people took part in the first (of hopefully many more to come) Meetup that I was proud to facilitate and host together with the rest of the Trade Me Mobile team at our Market Lane office. We will try to make sure this becomes a regular event, especially now that the GDG Wellington was created.
The turn out was fantastic (we had to supplement the available slots at the last-minute). The show of hands confirmed that the majority of attendees were developers but we also had designers, testers and business folk. This diversity definitely helped during the Q&A sessions…
The theme of the evening was Material Design and the agenda was simple. I gave a quick intro, then we kicked off properly with a presentation by Matthew Shearer (our Lead Android developer) about the challenges that we face at Trade Me when tacking Material Design in our app, followed by an interesting Q&A, then the spotlight was given to Glenn Parker (Xero) who showed off a few ideas/early mocks for their product. Other people in the room mentioned that Material Design was high up on their TODO list but they just haven’t gotten around to it.
The evening continued with food and drinks followed by an open discussion around the future of this group.
We are very keen for this event to not be owned by one organisation. Instead, we’ll aim to put in place a roster so that other teams around town can host it and offer more diversity not just in terms of venues but also in terms of hours. We even floated the idea of doing it over lunch sometime to cater for those with young kids or who have engagements in the evenings…
Happiness Survey
As expected, the attendees behaved really well and communicated freely. There was no awkward job/hiring talk, nor any immature comments of any kind.
Toward the end of the event we brainstormed a few ideas for future sessions. We’ll vote on the group and we will decide what we will talk about next time (late January or early February). As this picture shows, people found the event valuable for the time they invested (2 hours) so I will call it a success!
Michael Lopp’s Being Geek: The Software Developer’s Career Handbook
is a book I wish that my team don’t read. At the same time, I hope that my current and all my future managers have already read it.
Despite being a collection of “Rands in Repose” posts, this book is surprisingly readable. I can definitely see how a senior developer, an HR manager, and a team Leader (uppercase “L” is not a typo) would benefit from skimming this book over one weekend.
Bonus: You can learn a couple of social games while reading this book: Werewolf, and Back Alley Bridge.
After a fair bit of research I decided to upgrade from my (basic) Kindle to the Kindle Paperwhite
Kindle Paperwhite, 212ppi, 16-level gray scale
My previous Kindle
The Kindle Voyage looks great. I wish that the Paperwhite had physical page turn buttons, but I can’t justify spending $120 more for page-press sensors, 300ppi (rather than 212ppi for the Paperwhite), and adaptive light. I’ll just buy a dozen books with that money instead!
I could make up tons of reasons, but the truth is that I’m just not disciplined enough. I love my iPad Mini
The Watch would be irresistible if it had kinetic charging.
If you’re in Wellington and have a passion for Android then you should probably register to attend the Wellington Android Meetup on the 9th of December.
I’m facilitating this event and the Trade Me Android folk will be sharing some cool stuff. Did I mention Free Pizza and Beer?
