CocoaHeads Hong Kong~ for Cocoa, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iOS developers

This is how much development resources you need to create the Zino app in 6 weeks!

While we anticipate the meetup on this coming Thur (March 3), I wanna share with you some existing resources Nicolas shared on the Internet.

Nicolas has been researching in the area of game mechanics for quite some time and applying them continuously in GoAnimate.com. He shared some of his early experience in apply techniques in game mechanics in an IxDA HK meetup back in October.

He quoted examples how apps and sites build game elements and psychology into their products. One example is Gild (gild.com) – a site which turns job hunting into a social game.

You can find out more about the previous talk in the slides below. And, on Thursday, March 3, Nicolas will be sharing with his with fresh, new, horned insights on the topic of Game Mechanics.

Game Mechanics in Design

I am back from summer vacation! Hope you had a great one too.

I know we have skipped our bi-monthly meetup ritual. That mainly because I couldn’t find someone who were free to organize the July meetup. Anyways… We are back! Let’s meet!

Details of September meetup will be posted over this weekend. I will also send facebook invite when its ready.

Please join our facebook group to receive event notification.

Derek is one of our guests in the upcoming meetup on May 26. Besides being the owner of a Newton MessagePad 2100, Derek is also the chairman of MACitizen – an active local Mac user group and co-host the 大蘋果時代 podcast. You can find his column in some local computer magazines and newspaper as well.

The idea of this May Meetup is inspired by MACitizen April event where, in one segment, they did a side-by-side comparison of the iPad and Newton MessagePad. We should thank Derek for bringing along his Newton MessagePad, and, for inspiring us to do this Newton Not iPad event!

Let’s meet Derek in the event.

The April issue of Wired Magazine is out! There’s 2 great articles covering the iPad and its implication to computing.

• How the Tablet Will Change the World
• 13 of the Brightest Tech Minds Sound Off on the Rise of the Tablet

Make these you weekend reading.

(there’s a short summary in my personal site too)

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

Stanford University should be the first few universities which offer iPhone programming course. (Well, not sure if any university in Hong Kong is providing such training…)

Anyway, you don’t have to enroll Stanford to study the course. This is the iTunes U link to the iPhone Application Programming course.

Enjoy!

I am sure you are using services or applications of some sort to track your App Store sales. I’ve been researching about these stuff on the web and wanna share some links with you guys:

• app store sales tracking – this post contains further links to some useful resources
• iPhone App Sales Report: Automate Download and HTML Report Script – a post by our friend Leon
• AppStatz – it’s a paid service recommended by my friend Lukhnos
• AppSales Mobile - it’s an open source iPhone app which allows you to analyze your sales on-the-go!

Check out the interviews in Macworld PULSE!! I think all software indie should at least check out the following:

Craig Hockenberry – Macworld PULSE

Wil Shipley – Macworld PULSE