Student Developer Scholarships

We’re seeking up to two students who have a talent for, and demonstrated experience in programming on Mac OS X and/or iOS, a strong academic record, and an innovative project idea that doesn’t reinvent the wheel. This is a golden opportunity for top-tier student developers to further their development skills and produce a great software product.

The Scholarships are valued at nearly $10,000 over a two year period and includes travel to Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, a MacBook Pro, access to the latest developer tools through the Apple Developer Programs and much more.

Applications close on 23 March 2012.

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WWDC 2012 Staff & Student Scholarships

We are pleased to announce our WWDC Scholarships to University staff and students to attend this years Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) being held in the USA in 2012.*

To be eligible to obtain a competitive scholarship, you should be a staff member or student of an AUC Member University and have a background in programming (Mac, Unix or Windows) and in interest in learning about the latest OS X & iOS development.

Successful Scholarship recipients in 2012 receive a financial subsidy to assist in covering the cost of:

  • Return economy airfares to San Francisco, USA from Australia or New Zealand.
  • Twin-share Accommodation in San Francisco at a designated hotel for up to 7 days.
  • WWDC 2012 E-Ticket (staff only)

Staff interested in the Allocated Scholarship should contact their local AUCDF Co-ordinator to check on their local closing date. An application form is available on the AUC web site.

Staff and Students interested in the Competitive Scholarships must apply by completing an application form available on the AUC web site. Applications close 23 March 2012.

* Dates for WWDC 2012 have not yet been confirmed by Apple Inc.

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Welcome to our new site

We’ve been putting a lot of work into the new site over the past few months, and we rather proud of what we’ve accomplished. The new site is built on a modern CMS, and is running on new hardware. Pages should load faster than before, and look great as well.

We’ve added new features like comment support (via DISQUS), so you can share your thoughts on our content not just with us, but with your friends on most of the popular social networks.

We still have a way to go with the redesign, and we still have quite a bit of content to bring over from the old site, so please bear with us as we continue the process of renewal.  And please, feel free to provide feedback on the new site, and let us know of any problems you find. We’ll be grateful for your input.

Tony Gray
Chair, AUC




Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs
1955-2011

The Apple University Consortium in Australia was founded in 1984 with the release of the Macintosh computer and was based on a similar model to that setup by Steve Jobs in the USA. Steve knew that tomorrow’s leaders and innovators were studying at Universities around the world, and he wanted them to have the latest technology in their hands to make sure they could appreciate the role technology would have in the future.

This year the AUC in Australia is celebrating its 27th year of supporting users of Apple technology amongst Australian & New Zealand Universities however our celebrations will be tinged with sadness as we remember Steve for his vision, inspiration and support of teaching and learning for all.


Mastering MapKit

Tim Nugent, University of Tasmania

Audience: Intermediate

Abstract:

This talk will cover the basics, and a few of the advanced features of CoreLocation and MapKit frameworks to use the location and map services provided with iOS devices. Starting with how to add maps into your apps and how to show and follow the user on the map, moving onto adding annotations and overlays for additional information, how to geocoding and display addresses. Moving onto how to do both foreground and background location monitoring, with different levels of accuracy, and finishing up with some some techniques to debug and test your apps.

Speaker Bio:

Tim is a UTas PhD student in the School of Computing and Information Systems, and his research area is awareness systems – systems that allow people to get an insight into what other people (and occasionally themselves) are doing. He is particularly interested in further exploring what use location has in promoting awareness amongst groups of friends towards the goal of task completion, and has a good knowledge of iOS development both from his own tinkering and from his university studies. For his honours research Tim wrote a custom MapKit and CoreLocation based app to try and enhance awareness amongst a small group, and has since refined and enhanced that application for his first round of PhD experiments. Tim presented at /dev/world/2010 on using and enhancing the MapKit Framework.


An Introduction to the Bump API for iOS Applications

Zac Fitz-Walter, Queensland University of Technology

Audience: Intermediate

Abstract:

Bump is a service that allows two users to connect and transmit data to each other by ‘bumping’ their mobile devices together. Bump works in two parts, an app running on the device and a smart matching algorithm running on the Bump servers in the cloud.  Using the accelerometer the app can determine when a physical bump occurs and send that information to the cloud. The matching algorithm listens to bumps from around the world and pairs phones together that bump at the same time.

This presentation will provide an overview of Bump, explore how it works and provide an introduction to integrating it into your iOS application. We’ll work through developing a simple Bump application in Xcode that covers creating a Bump session, transmitting data to another phone and then terminating the session.

Speaker Bio:

Zac is a Phd Student, tutor and guest lecturer at QUT.  His achievements include the award of a Student Developer Scholarship from the AUC in 2011, an APA scholarship for PHD studies and a top up scholarship for PHD studies from the Smart Services CRC in 2012.


Getting Your App Out There – Marketing from the App Store

Tim Oliver, Edith Cowan University

Audience: Beginner

Abstract:

Building the app is only the first step.  Once the app is released, it’s not enough to sit back and rely on the App Store ratings – the app must needs to be promoted so more users are made aware of it.  This presentation will cover what to expect once an app has been made live on the App Store, and what can be done to help improve the app’s prominence on the World Wide Web.

The main points I will present include:

  • what to expect on the App Store, including general downloads in proportion to the App’s current rating
  • tips on choosing effective keywords that can be used to search for the App
  • the process of submitting Apps for review by third-party websites
  • the benefits of localization and the possible outcomes of it
  • engaging users with social media tools like Twitter
  • providing a user feedback facility so users can contact you
  • taking note of user reviews (and not letting the trolls get to you!)
  • incorporating analytics services into your App to allow tracking of App usage
  • third party services that can track App metrics better than iTunes Connect

Speaker Bio:

Tim is a Multimedia Developer at the Centre for Learning at ECU.  His responsibilities include maintaining the centre website, graphics design, video production and new technologies research, and his areas of expertise include web development, graphics design, 3D animation, games development, iOS development.  Tim recently developed an iOS app that reached 250,000 downloads and made it to #7 on the Japan App Store.


Creative Coding with Apple Devices

Andrew Clayphan, University of Sydney

Audience: Beginner to Intermediate (C++ knowledge helpful, but not essential)

Abstract:

While the Apple ecosystem brings us a lot, some people ultimately have other backgrounds and are familiar with them.  One that has sparked interest of late is openFrameworks.  This is a C++ toolset for creating rich applications, information visualisations and rapid prototypes. Due to its widespread uptake in the design community (especially amongst people coming from a sandboxed Processing world), a number of bridges have been created for the iPhone, which leverage pre-existing codebases to provide an enormous set of opportunities.

In this talk I take a cursory overview of this framework, what it supports for the iPhone/iPad, and a quick demonstration of how to build an integrated application featuring some of its libraries.  My aim is to enrich the AUC community by bringing together even more developers, programmers and designers who have varied backgrounds to offer.

Speaker Bio:

Andrew is a PhD student and is currently exploring the fascinating world of tabletop computing and how it can be used to enrich small group interactions.  He looks at how people come together for a meeting, long term task, project or goal.  Andrew is currently trying to piece together a framework for understanding past interactions on this medium to help facilitate the capture and movement between states of a task.  His hope for this work is to bring about a unified view towards past interactions such that future designers for this platform are aware of what is required to build robust interactive applications that can take advantage of historical events.  This work is done within the Computer Human Adapted Interaction Research Group, with support from the Smart Services CRC.