I, on the other hand, am so glad that I managed to get my ticket just shortly after they were released. I have to admit that I’m really looking forward to this, though it seems that if you want to get in and see the Steve Jobs Keynote, you will need to be there queueing from 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. I’ll try my best.

The fourth version fixed a large number of bugs within the development kit and made it a lot more stable and even added a proper Interface Builder for the iPhone, but this new, beta 5 version, cements that even more and then some. It may even be getting close to an actual release candidate.

You now use OpenGL | ES on the iPhone simulator and it works a treat. The main thing to remember is that the simulator runs a lot faster than the actual device. I don’t know why they couldn’t have throttled the speed to match more closely the actual device.

I’ve been running the new version 5 for around a week now and haven’t found any real problems with it. It handles certain things differently than before and you end up having to go through everything re-coding your work just to get it working again, but this is, as they say, still a beta version.

There’s already a set of speakers lined up but they’re looking out for more if you’re interested. I would like to speak on something but fear that my areas of knowledge are sufficiently shallow that there’d be nothing I could really teach anyone, especially when faced with the people speaking there.

The subjects do tend to be tech-heavy but that’s the problem. The subjects I know well enough to talk about (or could brush up on) would be of little relevance to the audience (unless people really want to know about OSPF or MLTs…I know I don’t!) and I’m sure no-one wants to hear about my epic failure at becoming a programmer (it’s code night tonight in Bangor, oh yes…)

Make the effort to turn up.

“You can see Jordan’s portfolio at his site. I’m quite pleased with the results and highly recommend his work. This is not a paid endorsement. I just like to see good work rewarded, so send him your business. You won’t be disappointed.”

Jordan can be found on teh Internets at OneToadDesign.

A friend of mine was so lucky to receive their development certificate. Am I in the least bit jealous, YES. With this little electronic signature I would be able to try out the accelerometers and OpenGL 3D work, but hay, in the meantime I’ll just keep working through the APIs.

Doing a few small projects based on the iSDK just to get my head around the touch interface, Core Animation on such a small screen and a few others. The team at Infurious are hoping to have something ready for the launch of Apples AppStore, or shortly afterwards.

I’ll keep you posted.

You are invited to attend a Frameworks Entrepreneur workshop to be held at Northern Ireland Science Park, with a presentation on:

“The Venture Capital Process”

By Peter Stafford of A&L Goodbody

Programme Overview:

Raising money in today’s environment is no easy task — but it can be done if you focus on the right priorities and avoid common deal-killers. In this workshop, Peter Stafford from A&L Goodbody will provide you with a framework that will prepare you for raising capital from venture capital funds.

Benefits of Attending:

• An overview of venture funds and venture financings;
• Identifying the best approaches in dealing with investors;
• How the venture capital process works;
• Common terms used in transactions and what they mean.

Who should attend:

Founders, CEOs, and managers who are seeking venture funding, as well as scientists and technology experts considering a business start-up in need of venture financing.

About the Presenter:

Peter Stafford is a partner in the Belfast office of A&L Goodbody, Ireland’s leading law firm. He specialises in corporate finance work including public and private company acquisitions and disposals, management buy outs, private equity transactions and commercial contracts. Peter regularly works for venture capitalists, business angels and investee companies and is “particularly highly rated as a deal lawyer in the jurisdiction” (Legal Week, July 2006).

Confirmed Panelists

• Peter Stafford, Partner A&L Goodbody
• Alan Mawson, Executive Chairman Clarendon Fund Managers
• Sarah Bearder, CTO Datactics

DATE FOR YOUR DIARY

“How to land a whale: how does a small start-up land a big client?”

By Linkubator

Join us on Thursday 15th May for a panel discussion featuring several savvy entrepreneurs of Northern Irish companies that have successfully sold to, and worked with, some of the largest companies around. Learn how they’ve been able to get the attention of big companies, how they’ve closed the big deals, how they’ve made the most of big company relationships, and how they’ve been able to avoid the pitfalls. And since some customer relationships or partnering arrangements with big companies can turn into acquisitions, our panelists will also address “next chapter” issues in relationships with big companies. See you there!

The workshop will be led by John McKee, CEO of Linkubator, a business development organisation working with CEOs and senior teams in creating successful strategic growth for companies.

About NISP’s Frameworks Entrepreneur Workshops

NISP offers ongoing educational opportunities for entrepreneurs building and growing innovative Hitech, Biotech or Cleantech companies and offers member companies the opportunity to provide expert content to a responsive, interactive audience.

Many of today’s business founders and future entrepreneurs have scientific and technical backgrounds but have had limited experience in industry, so they often lack exposure to critical information which is essential to leading a start-up. To fill this gap, NISP offers InnovaNET Entrepreneur Workshops to provide these bright leaders with the vocabulary, foundations and framework around which they can build awareness of the many disciplines they will oversee as “C” level managers”.

It has to be said, that when developing using a beta release of anything, it’s best to use a dedicated machine. Well, taking this advice on board, I installed the original iSDK on my main machine and it worked fine, rather limited, but worked.

The latest beta release arrived with much anticipation. Feeling and expecting this version to be just as stable, it went on my main machine. Oops. A large number of basic functions had stopped working. Then the crashes started happening, just couldn’t figure what went wrong. It just got to the point that I have to wipe my hard drive and reinstall Leopard and the original version of the iSDK.

Two hours later and my problem iPhone app now works without any hitches. Now to clean up the code and find a development machine to work on.

Third rule: insulate your team from corporate silliness to the fullest extent of your power. Nothing will make these people leave your employ faster than making them sit in unproductive, boring meetings that don’t directly further the project. The kind of person you want, wants to be sitting in front of a Mac furiously coding away. Anything you make them do that’s not that, is counterproductive and damaging to your project.

Seems obvious.

Well the new version has the Interface Builder application, needed to create user interfaces for the phone. Will be interesting to see how this pans out. Looking forward to any improved frameworks as a number of key headers are missing from the original beta release.

More updates soon.

“…the case for Code Signing on a Mac - in the service of its administrator/owner - is very compelling. In a sense, the Mac is living on borrowed time - viruses and worms and other nasty bit-critters will surely come our way, and going to an all-signed environment is one the most potent weapons we have to keep your systems from being overrun. I realize this capability *could* eventually be abused in various ways, and I trust you’ll all keep Apple honest about it. But it can also be a powerful force *for* you.

Oh, and to put that to rest: I do work for Apple, and I designed and implemented Code Signing in Leopard. If you think it’s going to usher in a black wave of OS fascism, you have every right to blame me - it was, pretty much, my idea.”

Like some, I see code-signing as a necessary neutral. It’s neither good nor evil but it could be used for evil purposes (where evil is really just a shade of ‘not good’).

It’s all about trust again. When we first heard of Intel’s Palladium, there was an uproar. When we heard about processor serial numbers on the Intel platform, there was an uproar (despite the fact they had been quietly present for years on PowerPC).

The other commenters on the blog put forward scenarios where corporations will use this facility for evil and point to Apple’s DRM’ed music (using FairPlay) and also Apple’s odd restrictions within DVD Player.app on Mac OS X as an example of how the company is ‘evil’.

Of course it’s bollocks.

It took FairPlay to get the media owners (record labels) to start to play ball. Now we have DRM-free music available from multiple sources. Similar Apple’s DVD Player is compliant with the law because they want to avoid litigation. You can get round it by using other DVD-playing applications but Apple plays it safe. They’re not interfering with other third party apps.

It may be blind and stupid faith but I know enough people within Apple and I’ve read enough accounts of people working there that I trust them to do the right thing. Individual end users do need help in discovering which applications are bad and which are good and Apple, in order to reduce the amount of legwork required, is bound to have a review process where they solicit information from users of iPhone applications. This will have the dual effect of speeding up the eventual distribution of applications and also making sure there’s a peer review process.

I’d like to hear more from Perry on this debate as individual security on computing devices is important to me from the point of view of working in the IT business. There’s always a considerable difference in working with Macs and PCs - the latter is always slower in my experience (considering that my day job gives me a Core Duo machine running XP and my home machine is a Core Duo machine running Leopard) due to the need to perpetually run AV and firewall software and if not running them, due to the amount of malware that has been picked up.

Not enough people hear the reasons for design decisions and this is an Apple fault. They don’t make individuals publicly known. Every time there has been an outcry, I’ve always managed to speak to someone within Apple and they’ve given me the reasons for this and that. And yeah, in the wake of their spin doctoring I’ve always agreed.

For the average end user there needs to be a helping hand, an additional way to reduce the contact they have with malware. It’s something that will piss off some people who for political reasons want to have 100% access to their devices but I’m confident that the jailbreaking crowd will cater for them adequately.