Brief notes about the iPhone Tech Talks

The banner for the event

Last week I’ve been in Rome for the iPhone Tech Talks, Apple’s so-called worldwide event promoting iPhone development. Apparently the moto “Stay where you are. We’re coming to you.” didn’t apply to Greece, so I decided to fly to Rome and attend the one-day seminar. In the beginning of the day, we were informed that the event was considered to be confidential and we shouldn’t blog/tweet/facebook about it, but I think it’s ok to express my impressions about the event as well as my (probably useless) comments about my trip.

Roaming with the iPhone

Apart from the original frustration of not being able to connect to any cellular network (because for some stupid reason my carried switched roaming off when I upgraded my plan), the iPhone’s done well roaming into a foreign country. I don’t know if italian 3G networks are slow or if it was the roaming, but even on 3G everything was pretty slow.

Getting to the event

When I walked to the La Sapienza University, I thought I’d spot the familiar Apple logo on a banner or something, directing me to the place where the event was held, but as much as I looked around, I saw no apples at all. And almost everyone I asked was either unaware of it, didn’t speak english or would rather not talk to a stranger. I spent about 15 minutes asking and going from one place to the other, until I finally found it. They had a banner, but it was up on a balcony at some place.

A few minutes before the first session began

Event sessions

The day consisted of many sessions, some of which were more informative than the others. I’d rather like it if all sessions were tech talk, but hey, it’s their promotional event. Information on the actual technical stuff was coming fast enough so you can keep up and yet include as much as possible. Some people were taking notes but I think it wasn’t really useful to do so. I wouldn’t consider most of the talk being confidential, since in essence it’s all written down in the Apple documentation about the iPhone, but oh well.

One of the reasons I wanted to attend the event was to get to ask some questions to an Apple evangelist, but I wasn’t that lucky. The only chance to ask a question was to find the one Apple guy during the breaks, but that means fighting your way through the crowds that engulfed him instantly the minute the sessions ended. And all this talk between the developers and the Apple guy was in italian, so it was useless to me. Well, at least I had time to visit the buffet, but hey- don’t forget it was a free event.

It was funny that I was the only non-italian person attending, so the host had to speak in english throughout the sessions even though he was italian as well. Sorry guys!

Some interesting notes

Being there among all those italian developers, I quickly came to notice some stuff (most of which I Tweeted about anyway). First, I thought everyone would have an iPhone, but that was not the case. However, almost all laptops were Macs, I didn’t spot a PC in there. New MacBooks could be seen, but old aluminum Pro’s, plastic MacBooks and even my 12″ PowerBook G4 diversified the gamut.

When the audience was asked, quite an impressive amount of people raised hands about using Xcode and Objective-C. Less people were actually developing an iPhone app, and about a dozen and half already had an app deployed on the app store. I wonder how many of the rest of the developers are actually going to build an app, since it was a free event and it was obvious that some people attended maybe out of curiosity only.

Evaluation time

So was it worth it? Well, if they come to your city, it’s definitely worth it to go if you’re interested in developing for the iPhone. But flying abroad just to attend the event (at least the European schedules) wasn’t something I’d recommend, since most of the stuff is readily available in the documentation. The event was probably a good chance to hook up with other developers (an italian start-up was looking for developers there) and often great start-ups form out of such meetings. So if you’re an upcoming developer that haven’t dug deep yet into iPhone development, you should definitely go since it puts you into a mood and briefs you about the technical difficulties involved (i.e. memory management etc.)

Night shot of the Pantheon using the iPhone's camera

As for me, I tried to increase the value of my trip to Rome to make it par with the money I’ve spent, so I took a nice walk the evening after the event, re-visiting most major sites in the historic center. Piazza Di Spagna, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Campo Di Fiori, Fontana Di Trevi and other small piazzas here and there, a taste of italian pizza and buying souvenirs and gifts for my wife made that evening worth the trip! And since it’s all about the iPhone, here’s a (slightly enhanced) night shot of the Pantheon using the iPhone’s built-in camera.

Twitter delivers the news faster than the media

There are still enough people that don’t get what all this social networking/microblogging thing is about. I was one of them, when I first learned about Twitter when it launched. I mean, why should I inform the public of what I am doing? Why is it so important to post details about my (probably meaningless to others) daily activities? Heck, I was even negative to blogs at first. Social networks, I deterred from for some time. But Twitter? Come on, that’s absurd!

But after some time, I realised that focused people posting articles about their domain of expertise was a good thing and blogging is not useless after all. The social stuff was harder to grasp though; I admit that I wasn’t an early adopter to Facebook, MySpace or the rest of the social networks. For quite some time, I stayed away from them, but then I started to realize the potential that comes from connecting to people. There’s no better advertising than virally spreading the news to your connections, and they forward it to theirs and so on. It’s fun too.

But Twitter? Posting status updates in 140 characters? Why go back to a primitive Internet-style SMS when we’ve got computers, and Internet, social networks- I couldn’t get it. But as in all things, it’s more probable to grasp the idea of something if you participate in it, rather than judging as an observer.

The power of microblogging

Had it been only for status updates, I’d still consider it silly, but it turned out that Twitter evolved into the so-called micro-blogging platform which has potential and momentum. Messages are instant, short (hence easier to read), spread around all followers immediately, it allows personal communication and it’s accessible on-the-go from virtually anywhere on Earth there’s cell signal. If you provide useful content, people follow you and get informed; you can evangelize and promote your stuff and services; you can get the news first.

Get the news first? There’s no “breaking news” sessions in Twitter, that’s only in TV. But the latest tragic incidents in India, showcase (in a very sad way) that the microblogging platform is not only a news source, but the news come faster than traditional media. At least that’s what Arrington claims, and I agree with him. In fact, when I read about the Mumbai attacks on Twitter messages from the people I follow, I asked my wife “hey what’s going on in India?” but she didn’t know, even though she was on the TV.

Uses and abuses of the microblogging wonder

Twitter may not be the most credible news source out there (but is the media credible anyway?) since people can always lie. But when many people seem to claim the same thing and it reaches a critical mass, it becomes a reality. When, for example, you witness the public timeline and everybody’s talking about the attacks, you can’t claim it’s false news, there’s no way all these people would lie at the same time.

But there are cases where people could lie. Think of it, even before Twitter and the Internet, rumors still spread fast and many times they were proven wrong, but it would take longer to span the globe. Today, with the power of the interconnection of billions of people, a malevolent rumor can spread like wildfire affecting millions of people before they get a chance to distrust it. For example, imagine how some fake news could impact the stock market, if some “insider” claimed something “hot” is going on. I bet that a hoax about Steve Job’s heart attack originating from a paramedic (perhaps with a photo attachment of poor Steve in the ambulance) and then being confirmed by numerous other witnesses and insiders, could travel faster than an official statement of Apple about the matter (and Apple is indeed a bit slow when it comes to press releases).

When a critical mass of people lie, that lie becomes a reality. It may not be true, but all that matters is what people believe to be true.

Power to the people

Traditionally, the power of information was a privilege of the media, so when people begin to claim back some part of it, it sure is not a small thing. De-centralizing the news sources and spreading it to individuals around the globe could potentially harm long-standing balances in society. People-casting is radically different from news media, yet quite powerful. The strange thing with people is that there are too many of us and almost totally uncoordinated, yet from within this soup of (mostly useless) information, patterns begin to emerge and it’s not at all improbable for a small piece of information to cause a “hurricane” in a worldwide scale. It’s chaotic, and it can’t be controlled.

I’m pretty sure more and more power will come to the hands of individuals and if the media don’t jump on this wagon they’ll probably regret it. But perhaps the most thrilling aspect of this interconnected information chaos is how it can be (ab)used to deliberately inject information into the network. Will the people maintain the power of information-anarchy, or are they simply going to be the medium through which the same old powers are going to rule the world?

Trapster: A Nice Idea Poorly Implemented

There are lots of uses for an iPhone and it’s good to have one in your car, especially in the case of Trapster, an iPhone app that aims to alert you about speed cameras and other gear out there in the streets that can get you fined. It’s a brilliant idea, but let’s see if this app does what’s promised and whether it performs that task well enough.

How does it work?

First of all, even though the app’s description doesn’t clearly mention it, the app alerts drivers based on a user-populated database; the iPhone does not have the necessary equipment to detect speed cams! What that means is that you get alerts only for those traps that other people have reported, and that data may be inaccurate or even completely false. There is though a means of rating each trap and the app calculates a confidence level for each one, but still this is all based on people’s good will.

One case in which the user-centric database can be of no use is that of systematically submitted false alarms. Some anti-trap-alerting group, for example, could massively submit numerous traps that are not real, thus making the app useless for a driver that would constantly get alarms for cameras that are not there. But assuming that there are no such groups (yet) and the authorities would never come up with this, false alarms shouldn’t be a big issue, although some of them surely exist.

Jeez, where’s that camera?

The main problem with Trapster is not the data, but the way it reports traps to the user, who in this case is, the car’s driver. This is where Trapster fails to deliver in a practical way, for many reasons. First of all, the reports are using a synthesized voice that not only sounds rather ridiculous, but is hard to notice at times over the noise in the car. Also, don’t hope that you can scroll the map as in the Maps app -no, no! The map stays fixed and you have to hit a “center” button to re-position your car in the map.

But most importantly, the problem is that the algorithm for trap detection is based purely on proximity and doesn’t account for the car’s direction, thus alerting drivers for traps that are monitoring the cars that are going to the opposite direction! This can be rather frustrating if you’re driving in quarters that you’re not familiar with (but that’s the point of this app, if you already know by heart where the traps are, it’s of no use, right?) since you’ll be alerted for traps that aren’t meant for you, but you’ll still be slowing down and wondering where in Earth that trap is supposed to be.

Another problematic area that can be improved is when a user submits a trap, since the map problem mentioned above doesn’t make this too easy for a driving person. I think it would be a good idea to let users log in to the site when they get to their computers and fine-tune the data they entered in a hurry while driving, or even add some more details about the trap.

Bottom line

Trapster is a nice idea that is poorly implemented, at the moment. However, it can still be quite handy and save your from a speed ticket or two, so it’s good to have the app running in your iPhone while driving in a highway. Knowing it’s problems and limitations will reduce your frustration, and keep in mind that this app uses data generated by people like YOU - so don’t forget to submit the traps you see, or rate the existing ones!

Wishlist

Here’s a list of a few ideas that would make this app much better:

• Detection algorithm should account for the vehicle’s course (e.g. create a vector simulating the vehicle’s track and associate that with a user-submitted trap, then check against this before alerting users).
• Use a clear and loud human-recorded voice for reporting traps.
• Calculate the vehicle’s speed and use audio cues to report how close the vehicle is to the trap (i.e. a driver’s that’s moving too fast should be notified earlier than one who’s barely above the speed limit).
• When such audio cues cease, drivers would also be informed that they have passed by the trap and are no longer in it’s range.
• Fix the interface, please (draggable map, zooming with gestures, auto-following the vehicle - you know, like the Maps app!).
• Allow users to refine trap data through the website.

Going to iPhone Tech Talks, Rome

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Apple confirming my registration for the iPhone Tech Talks in Rome, on 19 November 2008, so I’m glad to announce that I’m going. Hopefully the event will be useful for a newcomer to iPhone development, like myself. Plus, Rome is a wonderful place and it will be a pleasure to be there again!

When I get back after the event (and NDA forbid) I’ll share as much as I can. If anyone else who’s reading this is attending the event, let me know!

During my trip and on the day of the event I’ll be posting updates via my iPhone which you will be able to read on Twitter and FriendFeed.