The heart of a DevCamp is the Hack-a-thon and we are happy to (belatedly) post the results of the DevCamp hacking contest. Below is a list of teams that created some of the most inventive, fun, and useful applications at DevCamp and we’ve additional descriptions, links, and some contact information. If you have additional information you want us to post about your entry, email us at info@codefab.com.

Campfire Application – Most original!

• Created by: Vincent Youmans, James Sabia, Ron Anderson, Harry Bowen, Chris Welsh, Jean Leong
• Description: Great campfire effect, in which sound from iPad campfire cooks iPhone marshmallows. Proximity detection or shake to reset marshmallow
• Watch the App in use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgvwaaYBFeQ
• For more information you can contact: : james.sabia@team.aol.com

Bread Application – Most likely to be used by Steve Jobs in an iPad presentation!

• Created by: Sean, Sandira, Ariel, Steve Liu, Staney Sulamet
• Description: Runs as an application in Safari that rotates and manipulates images on the canvas to make pages more magazine like without Adobe Suite.
• For more information you can contact: sulamet@yahoo.com

I Peel Onion Application – Coolest app!

• Created by: Jesse Pickard, Lucy Zhang
• Description: Cut through the noise of lots of tweets, and shows tweets and dial and graph.  Add metadata to tweet
• Real time voting on events for people!

NSTeam Application – Most likely to be used by developers!

• Created by: Andy Rifkin, Jeff Barg, Devin Duty
• Description: Syntax editor for iPad, Split view with list of files and edit space with syntax highlights, Uses core text
• To see photos and read more about the app go to: http://www.4-iPad.com

Stewie- Most likely to be used by Jason Calicanis

• Created by: Daria, Gilad, Mike Feola, Martin Volerich, Steve
• Description: Social gaming, ipad server, iphones clients, Bluetooth, game kit, universal app, players connect.

Wee Atlas Application – Most useful!

• Created by: Steve, Joshua Vickery, Matt Ferry, Seanita, Nir Pengas
• Description: Zoom in on country and interact with pictures, slide show under each category
• To learn more, visit: http://jsv.mine.nu/gallery/v/misc/iPadDevCampNYC/

Dragonflies Application – Most educational!

• Created by: Tom Fruenhoffer, Eva Potter, Praveen Aravamudham, Steve Bull, Charissa Smith, Ann McDermott, Hiroumi Mitani
• Description: Backyard bugs! Catch bugs or squish, look in jar, get info about bugs and uses cocos2d

Twitter All Stars: Heltweetic.3 Application – Best social app!

• Created by: Thomas Alvarez, Lucius Kwok,  Jeff Soto
• Description: Shows twitter avatars in a grid, allows user to randomly choose one.
• For more information you can contact: jeff@indiancode.net or dmthomas@mac.com

VectorZombie Application – Best game!

• Created by: Jonathan Miller and Karen Jones
• Description: Snowboarding through a field of zombies!
• To see more go to: http://cryptogram.com/zombieboard/
• if you have any questions you can contact: jm@jonathanmillertechnology.com : @notjonathan on Twitter and Karen@geekgirl.com

Ghost in the Machine – Best iPad app!

• Created by: Dominic Tancredi, Danny Sand, Peter Levine, Carolyn Gargano, Catrina Lohan, Scott Benglo, Yan Wong, John Fitzpatrick
• Description: Ghost in the machine ouija board, and has sound, animation takes finger input.
• To see the App in use go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCTtI2TMdqA
• if you more questions you can contact: meta.phx@gmail.com

BoomBox Application - Most commercial!

• Created by: Steven Levy, Erin Disselhorst, Rob Kelley, Matt
• Description: Plays music and looks good

CookIt – Best Under Pressure (cooker)

• Created by: Tim Kaminski, Dana
• Description: Sound activated ipad cookbook, you can move to the next step in the recipe with a sound

If we got your name wrong, or lost a last name or contact email, or even if you just want to update the description, ping us at info@codefab.com – we want to get it right!

Well, in the simplest cases, when there are only a few messages, and only a few listeners, and few objects that wake up to look at the userInfo to see if it is interesting, one might opt for the simpler programming / inheritance model and have very little code, reused via inheritance that does all the work. E.G. all objects inheriting from BaseObject listen for message “foo” and then inherit the code for:

-(void)fooNotification:(NSNotification *)notif {
  if ([self.id isEqual:[notif.userInfo objectForKey:@"id"]]) {
    [self handleFoo:userInfo]; // do something
  }
}

The BaseObject class has the id filter notification handler (above), a no-op handleFoo:, which sub-classes can override, and the sender always sends out the same “foo” notification, with the differentiator tucked away in the userInfo for the recipient.

Sounds good, no? Lots of inheritance, code reuse, simplicity. The “leaf-node” classes just implement handleFoo: if they need to. All works great. But where does this break down?

Say you had a thousand BaseObject subclass instances. When they are created, they ask a Loader for some resource and listen for loaderDone Notifications. Loader finishes each request, sends a notification, moves on to the next. (You are using an NSOperationsQueue to manage your Loader pool, right?) Instances get pinged after operations complete and one says “Hey! That’s me!” and does something significant, like update a bit of UI, while the others pass. The rub? One thousand objects wake up and run a few lines of code for each one that does anything. Code is simple, easy to test. Low message dispatch cost. Probably insignificant overhead on your spiffy new PowerMac. Zero problem in testing with a few objects. But on the iPhone / iPad this is 9,999 objects too many involved in handling the event.

What do you do?

First is just good practice: if you don’t care, don’t listen. Don’t register to observe a notification until you are sure you care, then if you no longer need to listen, unregister. For our pseudo-code, only listen between “I need a foo” and “I got a foo” – outside that take yourself out of the loop. That can only help.

The real trick, when you see this pattern, is to find a way from our default case above, where response time depends on number of potentially interested objects, to a response time dependent on just number of actual interested objects. In the base case, where we have N potentially interested objects and just 1 interested object, we are going from a fluctuating case, based on set size N, to a stable linear case. This in turn leads to more predictable and scale-free (or close to it) response times.

(In our initial example above, response time is equal to “([number of objects] * ([filter time per object] + [message time per object])) + ([number of interested objects] * [handle time per object])”. What we want is to only message the interested objects, so we can be “[number of interested objects] * ([message time per object] + [handle time per object])”.)

So what is the simple trick to do this? Have the listening objects listen for a NSNotification with a name like:

  NSString *notifName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"foo-%@-notification", self.id];

and have the Loaders post matching notifications. The observer lookup table will be a bit larger, with more messages registered, but the observer count will be the same. The lookup will mostly be a hashed lookup based on the memory location of the notification name’s unique string, and on ObjC / Foundation, that kind of lookup is FAST for the set size we are looking at. And even for large sets, we are so much better off paying the price to look up a single observer, than to have to run 4 lines of code in a very large number of objects.

Things that can make the bad case worse?

1. Side-effect cost: You never know what the cost is of asking an object you haven’t written yet a simple question. (“My id? Sure, that’s stored in my NIB file. Which needs to be (re)loaded sometimes. Which instantiates other objects. Which do stuff.”)
2. Threads: An even worse cost is the per-object code that does something that launches or spans thread boundaries. (“My id? Let me fetch that in a new thread. Or in the main thread, which could block stuff.”) Opportunity for thread overload or lock-ups with contention for resources.

Linear response is your friend. Do a little extra work. Easier to debug. Easier to optimize. Happier users.

Remember – your iPhone is like a 100mhz Pentium. CPU cycles are your most precious resource. And less executing code in less objects usually means less less memory, which is our second most precious resource. Less work, less memory, app runs faster, users happier. Everyone wins.

NOTE: For everyone going to WWDC this year, CodeFab will be hosting several iPad/iPhone related events at the SF iPhone Mansion again. On the Saturday and Sunday before WWDC we will be hosting a Mini iPad/iPhone DevCamp (Register Here) in conjunction with our LA iPhone DevCamp/Developer Meetup partners. We will also be hosting a fabulous iPhone Party on (tentative) Tuesday Night. (Hope you remember last year’s blast!)

Next up the wrap-up of the wildly successful NYC iPad DevCamp. Thanks to everyone who participated, I’ll have the winners for the various categories posted today and will start linking in the videos. Anyone with app videos, please send me links! The session videotapes are being edited and I should have them up this week too.

For everyone going to WWDC this year, CodeFab will be hosting several iPad/iPhone related events at the SF iPhone Mansion again. On the Saturday and Sunday before WWDC we will be hosting a Mini iPad/iPhone DevCamp (Register Here) in conjunction with our LA iPhone DevCamp/Developer Meetup partners. We will also be hosting a fabulous iPhone Party on (tentative) Tuesday Night. (Hope you remember last year’s blast!)

More soon!

Registration

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About
iPadDevCamp is an annual not-for-profit gathering to develop applications for iPhone and iPod touch using both the native SDK and web standards. This is a follow-on event to the previous NYC iPhoneDevCamp event, held in August 2009. The event will be held at AOL in NYC and will link to the primary iPadDevCamp event in San Jose, CA.

Agenda
Reception Party: Friday April 16, 2010 6:00-10:00
Party Venue: Gigapixel Creative 220 West 30th St, 2nd Floor (between 7th and 8th)

Hack-a-thon: Saturday and Sunday, April 17-18 2010 10:00-6:00
Venue: AOL NYC Offices

Travel: New York Magazine has some great cheap hotel suggestions

Registration is open.

The event is inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, and MacHack, to develop Cocoa Touch and Web-based applications for iPad. This follows the previous iPhoneDevCamp events held at Adobe Systems in San Francisco, July 2007 and August 2008, and Yahoo! in 2009 and the NYC Satellite in 2009. Out-of-town guests are welcome.

Attendees will include Cocoa Touch developers, web developers, UI designers, and testers, all working together over the weekend. Development projects will include both solo and team efforts. While some attendees will wish to work solo during the event, we encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams. All attendees should be prepared to work on a development project during the event.

Attendees will be able to:

• Create new applications for iPad.
• Migrate Mac OS X applications to iPad.
• Test and optimize applications for iPad.

Attendees are encouraged to attend Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

We are sensitive to the NDA that Apple has in place on the iPhone SDK, and we have no intention of violating the terms that individual developers have in place with Apple on the iPhone SDK.

iPadDevCamp NYC is organized by CodeFab and Gigapixel Creative.

iPadDevCamp is not affiliated with Apple, Inc.

Agenda

The goal is for you to be able to show up and build some cool apps.
You code, and leave the rest to us.

Hours

• Friday: 6pm-10pm
• Saturday: 10am-6pm
• Sunday: 10am-6pm

Agenda
The agenda for iPadDevCamp will evolve over the weekend. Please check back as we get closer the event date, and throughout the weekend.

NOTE: Special $10.00 tickets are available for people wishing to attend just the Publisher Panel. These will not be good for the hackathon, awards ceremony or the California keynotes. Tickets: PUBLISHER PANEL ONLY

Here are the details so far (times are EDT):

Friday:
1700-1800 – Organizer’s Meetup with Volunteers
1800 – Doors Open
1800-1830 – Welcome and Introductions
1830-1900 – Keynote speaker: TBD
1900-2000 – Mixer
2000-2130 – Musical Performance (?)
2200 – Doors Close

Saturday:
1000 – Introductions
1000-1100 – Keynote Alex Cone
1100-1200 – Publisher Panel: Products and Publications in the Age of iPad
(for panelists see Speakers below)
1200-1300 – Pizza Lunch / Watch California Keynote
1300 – Begin freeform collaboration
1600 – Entries for Hackathon Contest Teams

Sunday:
1000-1100 – Tech Talks: iPad Market/iPad Development
(for speakers see Speakers below)
1100-1300 – Hackathon
1300-1400 – Lunch / Watch California Keynote
1400-1530 – Hackathon
1530 – Hackathon Entries due
1530-1600 – Hackathon Show
1600-1730 – Awards & Prizes
1730-1800 – Pack It Up
1800 – Doors Close

Speakers & Presentations
If you are interesting in speaking / presenting at iPadDevCamp, please contact Alex Cone: abc@codefab.com

Contest
iPhoneDevCamp Hackathon, the Hackathon Show, and Rules

As we gear up for iPadDevCamp, we want to repeat the success of previous years’ Hackathon Contests where many were presented during the Hackathon Show, some created by teams that had never met each other before the conference started.

To do this, we want to reward those who represent the following values:

• Contribution: by assisting the commons, offering value, and in general by being useful.
• Sharing: by offering help, sharing code or expertise, or by assistance in testing or debugging.
• Openness: by asking good questions, by answering them, by being open to people and ideas, and by making source code available.
• And of course, by demonstrating a “Can Do” attitude.

Like iPhoneDevCamp, iPadDevCamp staff will be handing out “tickets” when we see participants demonstrating these values. Then on Sunday, each team that participates by presenting during the Hackathon Show will also receive a ticket. These tickets will be used by raffle for many of the General Prizes — the more tickets you have, the more likely you’ll receive a General Prize.

Schedule

• Friday night — During the party is a good time to start sharing your ideas, choose your project, and begin to find your team.
• Saturday morning — After the keynote, we will have a session where people can have an opportunity to recruit others to help with their projects. Last year everyone was valued, even those without significant programming skills, as almost every team needed design and testing help. Several teams last year won a prizes without any prior iPhone coding experience, and one team won a prize that didn’t even have a coder!
• Saturday afternoon though Sunday mid-day — Find something undocumented and share it! Show us how you made something work! Create a cool demo of a feature we didn’t know about! It doesn’t have to be perfect, just enough to be able to share it! If you haven’t started a project or found a team, find one of the iPadDevCamp staff and we’ll help you find some people who need you.
• Sunday 3:30pm Entry Deadline — all entries for the Hackathon Show should be submitted to the Hackathon web site (TBD) . If there are more submissions then what we have time to demonstrate, submissions that offer source code will be given first priority, then submissions that the moderators think are “cool”. While you are waiting, help us rearrange the lunch room for the Show.
• Sunday 3:30-4pm The Hackathon Show — Demos should be around 3 minutes, so practice your presentation before you get to the podium. We will have two overhead projectors set up so that we can transition from demo to demo quickly. You can also use a Mac with the iPhone Simulator to demonstrate your App.
• Sunday 4pm Break — The Hackathon Show moderators will take a break to consult with the other iPadDevCamp staff, and select the winners of the Special Awards. Winners are at the sole discretion of the iPadDevCamp staff.
• Sunday 4:15pm Special Awards — The more valuable prizes given to us by our Sponsors will be given out for each of the Special Award categories. Each Special Award Sponsor will have the opportunity to say some words and personally give the reward to the winner if they are present. At their discretion, the iPadDevCamp staff may also allow some others who did not demo the opportunity to get a chance to win a Special Award if they demonstrated values of sharing, participation, and “can do” attitude during the iPhoneDevCamp.
• Sunday 5pm General Prizes — Some of the more desirable General Prizes will be given out by random draw to those who participated in the Hackathon. Any remaining General Prizes will be given out to those holding the most tickets.
• Sunday 6:00pm End of the Hackathon! — Source code and demos will be released to the public that evening!

General Prize Eligibility
Everyone is eligible for the General Prizes — you just have to earn a ticket.

Special Awards Eligibility
First, to be eligible for a Special Award, the iPhone App must not currently be available via the iTunes App Store OR if it is available, you must have source code available on a public website. iPad Web Apps are always eligible. In addition, please do not submit Jailbroken apps for the Hackathon.

Next you must sign up for the Hackathon Show by 3:30pm on Sunday.

You must have demonstrated your iPhone App or Web App during the Hackathon Show. Remember, if there are too many submissions, the Hackathon moderators may have to make a judgment call as to what Apps will make the cut to be demonstrated. If you don’t make the cut, you can’t win a Special Award, but you are still eligible for General Awards.

The staff of iPadDevCamp are not eligible for any of the Special Awards.

Special Awards Criteria
There will be a number of categories of Special Awards, each will have different requirements as set by the Special Award Sponsor.

In general, Apps in most categories will be judged on not only on their function, but also if they are fun & cool.

We also value Apps with simplicity and elegance.

We will give priority to Apps that were developed entirely during iPadDevCamp.
We also give priority to Apps that offer source code under an open source license, however, this is NOT a requirement to win.

iPad Apps or Web Apps do not have to be “finished” to win — we would rather you demonstrate what your App can do well, rather then worry about what may be not complete.

Special award categories and prizes

• Best Open Source
• Coolest
• Most Useful
• Best Developer Tool / Helper
• Most Educational
• Best Social App
• Best Game
• Best Web App
• Best New Developer
• Best Student App

Speakers
Saturday Morning Publishers Panel: “Products and Publications in the Age of the iPad”

• Moderator:Michael Prenez-Isbell, Director of Mobile Development at Blueswitch
• Peter Costanzo, Dir. of Online Marketing for Perseus Books Group
• Nina LaFrance, VP of Consumer Marketing for Forbes Digital
• Tarik Sedkey, Chief Digital Officer, Young & Rubicam

Sunday Morning Tech Sessions: iPad Market/iPad Development

• Greg Yardley, VP of Product, Flurry
• Douglas Gottlieb, VP of Digital, Barnes & Noble
• Alex Cone, CEO CodeFab LLC
• Others? TBD…

Sponsors
Interested in being an iPadDevCamp NYC Sponsor? Please contact the organizers ASAP!

Confirmed Sponsors:

Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble, Inc., the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 723 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features hundreds of thousands of titles in its eBookstore (www.bn.com/ebooks). Customers can buy and read eBooks on a wide range of platforms, including nook™ by Barnes & Noble, the iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry® smartphones, as well as most Windows® and Mac® laptops or full-sized desktop computers.

Flurry
Recently merged with Pinch Media, Flurry is among the largest smartphone application analytics and monetization platforms in the world, now tracking more than 80% of all consumers across iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and Android devices. Each month, Flurry tracks over one billion end user sessions per month across iPhone, Android, Blackberry and J2ME devices.

Flurry Analytics, its flagship service, is designed to help developers make better applications to increase retention and grow revenue. Flurry AppCircle, now in private beta, is designed to help developers acquire the most valuable users, faster and for less money. Flurry is venture backed with offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit www.flurry.com.

Blipp Media
Blipp is a leading innovator of interactive solutions spanning iptv, mobile and social media. We use emerging media channels to create engaging Marketing and Health Care solutions with measurable results. Blipp is privately owned with offices in New York and New Jersey. For more information, please visit www.BlippMedia.com, or follow us at @BlippMedia

AOL
Time, Inc
mad.house
CodeFab LLC
Gigapixel Mobile – The Hatchery

Press
Press Inquiries
info@codefab.com – 646.250.3864 (Alex Cone).
Credentialed members of the press will be given free admission to iPadDevCamp.

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