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Raven Zachary and myself are going to be at the Wednesday Oct. 8 meeting of Portland Cocoaheads discussing the Obama ‘08 application and its development.

I was going to make a more in-depth posting about TouchMap, but then something kind of big happened. The code is however in the TouchCode google code repository. So have at it. (You’ll probably want to check out all of TouchCode, TouchMap currently depends on other code within the repository).

The problem:

I make my living by writing iPhone and Mac OS X for hire. I’ve been doing this for a while with some level of success. But ever since the iPhone SDK was announced earlier this year I’ve been getting many, many more work enquiries than I could possibly handle. I’ve often referred enquiries to friends who I have either worked with in the past or whose work I respect. But this ad-hoc system doesn’t scale very well.

The Solution:

To try and make this informal referral approach work I’ve set up a private invite only Google Group called “iPhone Software Professionals”. Currently this group is made up of a handful (more than 10 less than 1000) software developers who specialise in iPhone development (although I’d say all are equally capable on Mac OS X). The group is made up of either people I have worked with personally (and would love to work with again) or people whose work has generated such a reputation that I would have no problem recommending them to a potential client.

The list is currently made up of software developers but I would like to open it open it up to any independent professional involved in the production of iPhone software. This includes, but is not limited to usability experts, graphic designers, quality assurance experts and so on.

The group will probably remain quite small, with new members invited and referred only by current members. There is no commission or finder’s fee involved, the group is just an informal group of professionals forwarding work that would otherwise be rejected.

Looking for an iPhone Software Professional?

So if you have some iPhone software that needs to be written then I think I might be able to find someone to help you out. I might be able to help you myself, but if I have more work than I can handle (which currently is very likely) I’ll forward your request to the group. Either way contact me directly at iphoneswpro@toxicsoftware.com and I’ll try make sure your software gets written.

Well, the project I was so excited about last week has now officially seen the light of day and is on the iPhone AppStore. The project is the Official iPhone application for the Obama/Biden ‘08 campaign (Direct link to AppStore!).

The application was created in less than three weeks by an all volunteer team of ten developers, artists, web designers, quality assurance specialists and project managers. You can see the name of everyone who worked on it in the credits of the application itself.

I started work on the application the day after C4[2] after some very clandestine meetings in Chicago. After about a week of writing TouchRSS code on my own, the project suddenly jumped into high gear, with the indomitable Mike Lee, Tristan O’Tierney and incredibly talented Louie Mantia (responsible for the application’s amazing and distinctive look).

I feel really honoured to have worked with such a great team (see Raven Zachary’s blog posting for links to everyone). The project was a sprint and of course suffered from a lot of ups and downs. But I think we managed to create a really great application in a very short space of time.

Here are some blog postings from the other team members

• Aileen Jeffries
• Dom Sagolla
• Jason Grigsby
• Louis Mantia
• Lyza Danger Gardner
• Mike Lee
• Raven Zachary

Official Links:

• http://www.barackobama.com/iphone
• AppStore Link

A quick teaser for TouchMap. I’m hoping to release this on TouchCode later today.

TouchMap.mov

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/

Thank you Apple.

The following tweets are one of reasons why I (despite initial misgivings) really enjoy Twitter.

I can’t talk about the actual thing in question until Sunday 28th at the earliest (probably more like Monday). But I’m very excited (as you can tell by the fact it is four AM and adrenaline is still keeping me awake) about it and can’t wait for it to be released

schwa I want to tweet something of great excitement and interest to many of you. But I can’t. SO pretend I did and JUST CONGRATULATE ME.
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific

lyzadanger @schwa Ditto.
about 3 hours ago from web in reply to schwa

annekate @schwa Congratulations, ya lucky bastard!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

chockenberry @schwa YOU ARE AWESOME BIG THUMBS UP FOR YOU
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

SenorDanimal @schwa congratulations Jonathan! (payment can be sent to me via check or cash)
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

oleoptene @schwa and @lyzadanger my most discreet congratulations!
about 3 hours ago from web in reply to schwa

tjw @schwa Go code tease, go!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

atomicbird @schwa Congratulations, I’m sure!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

mzarra @schwa Congratulations!!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

sherryness @schwa Nice job! high five
about 3 hours ago from web in reply to schwa

bobtiki @schwa congratulations!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

hjon @schwa Congratulations! For nothing. ;-)
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

heckj @schwa Congrats, absolutely and obviously.
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

rentzsch @schwa . Fault may be resolved upon submission of actual data
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

bsneed @schwa w00!! congrats on [insert neat shit here]!!!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa

brentsimmons @schwa Congrats!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

rcw3 @schwa Grats!!!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

ashponders @schwa wooo!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

SenorDanimal @schwa of course this reminds me I need to d/l touchcode before I get on my return flight so I can mess with it.
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

somegeekintn @schwa Oh hey, congratulations!
about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

ganyard @schwa Who’s the rock star? You are. You are man. You, you’re a rock star.
about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

natevw @schwa [REDACTED]
about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

chicagobob @rentzsch ’s congratulations to @schwa totally FTW
about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to rentzsch -

dom @schwa you are superhuman.
about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

macdevnet @schwa that was the most awsome tweet ever man, you’ve raised the bar for us all, well done
about 1 hour ago from twitterrific in reply to schwa -

janl @schwa CONGRATS!
about 1 hour ago from mobile web in reply to schwa

simX @schwa is like Bush and his Twitter followers are like the Democratic Congress: he tells them to do things (congratulate him) and they do it 24 minutes ago from web in reply to schwa -

simX OH YES I DID GO THERE I JUST SAID @schwa AND BUSH IN THE SAME SENTENCE. 13 minutes ago from web

I’m really happy to be able to say that TouchCode won the “Best Open Source Project” at iPhoneDevCamp this weekend. The prize was a gift certificate for an iPhone 3G (a big thank you to Apple Phone Show for sponsoring this award). Very awesome.

While it was really gratifying to be recognised by the judges of the competition, it was even more gratifying to see portions of TouchCode in use by the some of other winning contestants. The Taxi application in particular stood out as a great use-case for TouchJSON and I really expect Taxi to sell like hot cakes when it gets uploaded to the AppStore.

I had a great time talking to other iPhoneDevCamp attendees, some of which wanted to thank me for parts of TouchCode. Other attendees were interested in the project and I relished the chance to tell them all about. Hopefully I’ll be able to add more projects to my “who uses TouchCode” blog post.

I’m at iPhoneDevCamp and am entering all three of my TouchCode libaries (TouchJSON, TouchXML and TouchSQL) into the development contest.

This is a great chance for consumers of these three libraries to show their appreciation by voting for them on iUseThis.com. Please go to the tag page iUseThis.com and mark the libraries you use (or plan on using, or just really dig then).

As you can see there are a few well known users of TouchCode already. I know of a few other well known apps that use TouchCode but for various reasons have not been able to comment in that post.

Thanks!

Vote here: http://iphone.iusethis.com/tag/touchcode

Online friend Seth Dillingham this weekend is “riding across the state of Massachusetts in the PMC, along with about 5500 other riders. Riding the bike for 300 miles is the easy part. The real challenge is meeting my $10,000 goal for this cancer-care-and-treatment charity.”

Much like Mike Zornek’s Child’s Play Day auction back in 2006 Seth is asking for Indie software developers to donate licenses of their software to him. Seth will then auction off the software on ebay to help raise $10,000 for the charity.

I’m leaving it a little late to blog about this event, and I’m sure most of the indie developers already know about the event (there are 126 applications already donated right now) but any more eyeballs I can send Seth’s way would be appreciated.

Even if you’re a developer you can help by donating directly (follow link here) or by buying the donated software when it is auctioned, see Seth’s blog for more information.