Hong Kong CocoaHeads~ for Cocoa, Mac, iPhone developers

February passes quick. It’s Chinese New Year, it’s short month, it’s… me visiting France and CocoaHeads Paris.

We are doing something Mac related this month. “What’s on your dock?” is an event where you speakers spend 5 min demo-ing one of their favorite Mac apps.

It’s a great chance meeting app lovers and talk about apps – why and how people like them. You will definitely be inspired and get better ready for your next app. Or, maybe, you can recruit beta testers too.

So, come share your own experience with the speakers, discover new Mac apps and have some random chats with the fellow.

The speaker list will come up soon. It will be a good mix of local and expat speakers as usual.

You aren’t one of the speakers? No worries! Show it to us in the mingling time.

(There’s still room for one or two more speakers. If you’d like to share your favorite with us, please contact me)

Details as follow:

Topic: What’s on your dock?

Date and Time: 25 March 2010, Friday 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm, talk begins at 7:15 pm (iCal)

Venue: Ultimate PC & Mac Gallery, Central Shop Two – G/F, 99 Des Voeux Road, Central (Google map)

Registration: Facebook (this meetup is free of charge)

Event Contact: @billibala

Venue Sponsor:

The Cyberport IncuTrain Centre is organizing a free seminar on the Unity Game Engine on March 8th 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm. If you are interested in the event, please register email your name, company and phone number training <~at~> cyberport.hk with subject “iPhone Unity Game Engine Introductory Seminar on March 10″ on or before March 4th.

More details can be found in IncuTrain Centre blog.

Thanks everyone for showing up!

Ada gave us a detail and thoughtful review on the topic “Adapting for the small screen”. Her company goes further by offering a free usability review of 2 screens of your iPhone app!!

I will definitely make use of the offer and ask for advices on my app. If you have an iPhone app, don’t wait. Please go ahead to contact them about the details of the offer.

If you have missed the event, we have put up the speech in blip. Slides of the speech are up as well.

Happy 2010! Hope you all had a great time during the holiday.

Time for a dose of Cocoa pill

This month’s focus is “Adapting for the small screen”. Facebook app, New York Times app and Engedget app are just a few of the thousands of popular apps which serve as the mobile complement of an larger application. How did they translate a full-blown application to the iPhone? What did they do right and what did they do wrong?

Ada Yuen from AddiThink – a Hong Kong based usability consultation company will answer that for us. They will talk about usability and interface design issues when you adapt an existing desktop application or web site for small screen devices, namely, iPhone.

Ada is a veteran in usability and interface design. Having serviced in company such BunnyFoot Asia and Global Sources, she has finally decided to go indie running her consultancy company -AddiThink specialized in usability, interface design and SEO services.

You can find out more about her in AddiThink site.

Details as follow:

Topic: Adapting for the small screen

Date and Time: 28 Jan 2010, Friday 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm, talk begins at 7:15 pm (iCal)

Venue: Ultimate PC & Mac Gallery, Central Shop Two – G/F, 99 Des Voeux Road, Central (Google map)

Registration: Facebook (this meetup is free of charge)

Event Contact: @billibala

Venue Sponsor:

Cyberport IncuTrain Centre is running a usability workshop on Jan 28 to 29. Details can be found from their blog or here.

Guess most of us have been rejected by Apple in the app approval process. It’s actually quite annoying given that you have waited 3 to unknown days for the result of the approval process. And, the result is negative.

People have started sites which aggregate rejection cases and reasons. Here are the 2 that I know:

• App Rejections
• Apple Rejected Me

Please add yours to the comment

What a great evening meeting up George and the fellow CocoaHeads!

We are a late in posting update about the October meetup. Finally, the slides are up. You can download from here: Admob Creative Roadshow

Go check out the slides. There are loads of examples of successful ad campaign and, more importantly, tips.

The CocoaHeads Hong Kong bi-monthly meetup is back in October. It’s the meetup for Mac / iPhone developers, designers, advertisers, media buyers!!

The speaker this time… George Chen – Product Design Manager of Admob to share his experience with mobile advertising best practices and user experience.

AdMob is the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web. Mobile devices are a critical media platform and we are building the tools to let every business on earth leverage mobile.

Ad revenue is a major income source for free iPhone apps. Many developers just put an ad banner somewhere in the app interface. In many case, developers use ad network aggregators like AdWhirl and Tapjoy to deliver ads to the app hoping to maximize ad revenue.

This may not be the best option…

In George’s talk, he’ll discuss user experience and best practices in mobile advertising.

Want to know the best way to monetize your app? Looking for the best ad placement strategy? Don’t miss the coming CocoaHeads Hong Kong meetup.

Plus, you may notice, we are returning to the Ultimate PC & Mac Gallery in this meetup. There will be special offering to all event participants on software, accessories and hardware items. If you want to get the latest Mac gadgets, hold till 23rd! Get it from Ultimate shop!

Details as follow:

Topic: iPhone Mobile Advertising Best Practices / User Experience

Date and Time: 23 Oct 2009, Friday 6:45 pm – 8:30 pm, talk begins at 7:15 pm sharp (iCal event)

Venue: Ultimate PC & Mac Gallery, Central Shop Two – G/F, 99 Des Voeux Road, Central (Google map)

Registration: Facebook

Event Contact: @billibala

Last but not least, I want to thank George for making his time to share his experience in his personal trip to Hong Kong and Ultimate for providing the venue + special offer!

Barcamp Hong Kong 2009 is on this coming Saturday!

Sept 12 9:30 am till you are drunk @ 30/F Oxford House, Taikoo Place, Quarry Bay

Hey folks!

We’ve got some extra information to share… Just in case you do care for winning awards for your iPhone app, you can check out may check out the ICT Awards 2009 for Best Ubiquitous Networking Award.