Michael VanPutten » development

Free Stanford course on developing iPhone, iPod Touch apps

Michael VanPutten — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:59:30 +0000

Who wouldn’t want to learn how to develop apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch? A free online course was offered by Stanford in April 2009. The 10-week course, titled iPhone Application Programming, includes a full syllabus of fun activities, example applications (bundled up in zip files), and downloadable lectures. While the course doesn’t use the latest 3.0 iPhone development environment — you can still follow the assignments and weekly projects to learn what you need to make a successful app.

It looks like the course and downloadable materials are reset each semester. So, be sure to access the site and save materials from the full course while it is still available!

Want to learn to develop your own iPhone app? Then you should visit: Free Stanford course on developing iPhone, iPod Touch apps.

There is also a good looking book over at Amazon.com titled Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK that has received hundreds of positive reviews. Personally, I always like a combination of a printed reference, audio lectures, sample files, and specific/focused projects for learning to develop on a new platform. Now…all I need is about 100 more hours in the day. Happy programming!

Creativity and art

Michael VanPutten — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:34:29 +0000

I was watching a podcast episode of the 1UP Show. The hosts were discussing the upcoming Little Big Planet game for PlayStation 3. Little Big Planet will ship with a powerful set of level creation tools — lots of folks are excited about the possibility of dabbling in or doing full level design. One of the hosts described the process of making a good stage by referencing a quote that made me think.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

- Scott Adams (yeah, the Dilbert guy)

This quote rang true to me. I was surprised I never heard it before. I think another part of creativity and art is finding partners to collaborate with. You really need folks who are not afraid to fail, can look at things from a lot of different angles, and actually have a well developed sense for seeing potential and understanding benefits and consequences of going down certain paths.

Creative and artistic people are comfortable with play and are able to play well with others. It is amazing what can happen when all these things come together at the same time.

Flash Player Detection Kit

Michael VanPutten — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 17:04:49 +0000

An older, yet still useful link…

One of many helpful tools in deploying Flash Player based web media is the Flash Player Detection Kit, which provides a method for checking that visitors to your web site have the Flash Player installed.

The Flash® Player Detection Kit helps developers implement robust player detection for a variety of deployment environments by providing a set of templates and techniques to successfully detect the version of Flash Player installed on a user’s computer, and, if needed, to then install the latest version of Flash Player. The kit also includes a detailed explanation and sample files for implementing the new, player-based Flash Player Express Install experience.