Author: aucadmin

Sebastian Beswick, University of Tasmania

Track: iOS; Audience: Beginner

Do you know if it’s worth upgrading your Spotify account to stream songs at 320kb/s?

An understanding of the fundamentals of computer sound is essential for the well-rounded IT professional. Audio is a field that is teeming with jargon, but it doesn’t have to be so scary! In this session we’ll go back to basics and take a look at the core components of sound, including how we (as humans) perceive sounds, how we can represent them within a computer, and how to avoid common gotchas. We’ll then take a quick look at some popular sound synthesis techniques, and finish up by learning how to create our own synthesiser from first principles using the low-level iOS Audio Unit.

Chris Neugebauer, University of Tasmania

Track: Web & HTML5; Audience: Intermediate

Behind every mobile app that does something even remotely useful is a network API, and more often than not, this API will be delivered over HTTP in JSON format.

Developers love JSON, because it’s less restrictive than XML, and it’s easier than crafting your own data format. Developers hate JSON because it’s less restrictive than XML — it’s near impossible to verify, and small errors in a server-side implementation of a format can make for convoluted error handling in clients for years to come.

And then there’s HTTP — a feature-rich protocol, that can handle advanced querying, with great semantics for timeliness and formatting… Not that any server developer ever uses any of these.

If you’re a server developer, this talk will show you ways to make sure that your web-based API doesn’t suck, how to make it maintainable, and how to keep it easy for developers on every platform.

If you’re a mobile developer, this talk will equip you with the tools you need to force your server developer to make things easy for you.

This mostly code-free talk is a sequel to my popular 2011 talk, but covers entirely new material, but you’ll get value out of it, regardless of whether you attended that talk.

Robert Gardam, Griffith Univeristy

Track: iOS; Audience: Beginner

This presentation will explore the integration of Apple push notifications into a enterprise server monitoring system. I will give a quick overview of the importance of enterprise monitoring and how important a reliable notification system is. I then intend to explore how I used push notifications instead of SMS’s to send notifications from our monitoring system in a reliable and effective way by interfacing with a rails back end.
The major technical fields that are covered are:

• Where to begin iOS Development
• Apple push notification ins and outs
• Rails integration with iOS
• Fundamental monitoring system concepts

At the end of the presentation I will demonstrate the app that I’ve built.

Adam Debono, University of Wollongong

Track: Tools & Tech; Audience: Intermediate

This talk is about how to use Grand Central Dispatch and Blocks. I feel that this is a very important subject as parallelism is becoming much more useful with multi-core processors now creeping into iOS devices as well as being in desktop computers. GCD and blocks simplifies the process of parallelising programs to maximise efficiency.

Talk Outline:
1. Why use GCD & Async?

• 1. unblock the main thread
• 2. run background processes
• 3. execute operations that don’t need to be run immediately

2. Intro to Blocks

• 1. What is a block
• 2. Where would you use blocks?
  • 1. Completion/Error handlers
  • 2. Concurrency (GCD)
  • 3. Use functions like variables.

3. Examples

• 1. Create and use a block var
• 2. blocks in function parameters (C and Obj-c)
• 3. block types
• 4. Global blocks

4. Blocks and Variables

5. Dispatch Blocks
3. Intro to GCD

• 1. queues
  • 1. declaring
  • 2. get main/global queue
• 2. Queueing tasks (async, sync, after, apply, once)
  • 1. dispatch_async/dispatch_sync
  • 2. suspend/resume queue
  • 3. recursive decomposition
• 3. Looping/Multiple runs
  • 1. std. for loop with dispatch_async
  • 2. dispatch_apply
  • 3. fast enumeration/forin

4. Other

• 1. dispatch_after
• 2. dispatch_once -> singleton

5. lock functionality
6. groups

Plus lots of demos and examples.

Judit Klein, Auckland University of Technology

Track: iOS; Audience: Beginner

We live in an age defined by mobility; the iPhone and iPad not only enables us to be more mobile, but also offers us new ways to engage with each other and the world around us. This talk looks at exploring what this means for creating apps when dealing with devices that are simultaneously context aware and independent. To be context aware means that the device knows where it is and how it is being held and moved. To be context independent means that the user is no longer tethered to any one physical location.

This talk will introduce how to integrate location awareness and working with the CoreLocation framework. Looking at the bigger picture, learn how to harness the potential of being context aware: go beyond simply knowing where the user is and use that information to enhance user experience.

However, it’s a scary world out there and there are some key things you have to take into account when dealing with a platform that is inherently mobile; to be context independent means providing the same user experience regardless of where they are. This talk addresses key considerations for when your app goes out into the real world and has to dynamically deal with changing environments.

Aimed at beginners, introduces some code but also look at the underlying functionality, bigger picture implications and overall best practices.