Just a quick post to highlight some upcoming events I'm getting excited about.

If you're reading this and attending WWDC or Swipe Conf then hit me up on Twitter and we'll coordinate beers.

First up is WWDC 2011 in San Francisco and it's going to be awesome - I didn't go last year and this year I'm flying up along side a handful of Melbourne iOS developers from the Melbourne Cocoaheads group and the Itty Bitty Apps guys, Sean Woodhouseand Oliver Jones. There's a Pre-WWDC catch up in Richmond/Cremorne in Melbourne on 1/6/11 being organised by the Intunity and I will be attending that too.

Later in the year is Swipe Conference (swipeconference.com.au, @swipeconf), September 5 - 7 in Melbourne is the next big thing for iOS Devs and looking at the line up it's going to be an awesome three days. I'm hoping it brings in the iOS developers from near and far that have yet to turn up at a Cocoaheads meet - there's a lot of devs out there.

I'm also attending TEDxSydney on the 28th of May, but since I missed out on a proper ticket I'll be hanging out out the front all day like I did last year.

Stewart Gleadow (@StewGleadow) from Thoughtworks and I did a quick talk at the Melbourne Cocoaheads meetup this month quickly highlighting some of our favourite (or more obscure) Xcode 4 shortcuts.

The main take away of the whole exercise for me was finally memorising the shortcut symbols, overall this has improved the rate I remember new shortcuts greatly. I suggest you do the same thing!

The Control, Option, Shift and Command symbols

Update: Video and slides are now available below! and on the Melbourne Cocoaheads website.

Cocoaheads 04/2011 - Talk 2 - Xcode 4 Keyboad Shortcuts via Oliver Jones

I'm presenting a talk tonight at Melbourne Cocoaheads (Google Group).

The topic is Apple's iAd framework, including how to add them to your project, a handful of things to remember about using iAds and an overview my first hand experiences with Seoul City Metro as an iAd supported app on the App Store.

You can find the source code for the demo I'm presenting over at git hub and the slides are below. The demo code (JCAdSupportedNavController) is an open source project I plan on updating in coming weeks with more advertising providers.

I'll be heading to the Android Developer Lab in Sydney on November 5th, and Mobile Monday Melbourne the following Monday November 8th.

It'd be cool to catch up with anyone else who's going to either.

Update

I can now offically add TEDxMelbourne on Saturday November 20, to this list.

Just a heads up that I will be attending TEDx Canberra this weekend! After forgetting to signup properly to TEDx Sydney and having never published a blog post on it I will be making a much more concentrated effort this time around!

Of all the different contracting I've done recently I had a great time today at an impromptue photo shoot for a client of mine.

So much to update! Watch this space, as soon as I sort out the server issues there will be pretty pictures and graphics from all the work I've been up to the last 8 weeks.

TED is awesome

Prior to November 2008 I'd never heard of TED, TED.com or anything like it. It was only while reading Chang-Won Kim's Web 2.0 Asia Weblog and noticing a technology event called TEDxSeoul (that Chang was talking at) that I worked it all out. If you don't know, or haven't heard about TED then read the Wikipedia entry on it.

Any spare time I've had since leaving TEDxSeoul in November I've been watching TED talks. I'm also keen to get to the next  TEDxMelbourne (I watched the one recently  live online), and I'm dead keen hearing about what goes on at on TEDxSydney.

As well as watching TED videos, I've also been telling everyone I know about them and sending them links on facebook. In the future I will direct them to this post.

Here's a list of my favorite TED videos in no real order, I've never watched a bad one...

• JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure  Harvard University June 2008
• Steve Jobs: How to live before you die Stanford University June 2005
• David Blaine: How I held my breath for 17 minutes TEDMED2009
• Bill Gates on mosquitos, malaria and education. TED 2009
• Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero! TED 2010
• Brian Cox on CERN's supercollider. TED 2008
• Brian Greene on string theory. TED 2005
• Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food. TED 2010
• Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds. TED 2010
• Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs West - the myths that mystify. TEDIndia 2009
• Chang W Kim Korea Internet Galapagos TedxSeoul 2009
• Richard Dawkins on militant atheism TED2002
• Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe TEDGlobal 2005

Hans Rosling

Hans Rosling is fascinating with his statistics, and desire to get the world's publicly funded data accessable and searchable for everyone.

• Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen TED2006
• Hans Rosling's new insights on poverty. TED 2007
• Hans Rosling: Asia's rise - how and when. TedIndia 2009
• Hans Rosling on HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals

More on Hans Rosling and his gapminder data and software at gapminder.org

Now that everything is up to date and Seoul City Metro has been up on the App Store for a few months I think it's time for a sale! I've orchestrated some facebook advertising, updated the Seoul City Metro Website and given the App Store time to propagate both the 1.1.2 update and the new price.

Seoul City Metro and Busan City Metro are now on sale until March 22nd!

I've decided to finally attack the $1 price point, as well as give away a premium app for free. I'm hoping this sale can raise the rankings of Seoul City Metro on the Korean App Store over and above the competition apps by being the best looking app at $1. I'm also hoping some good reviews and happy users will lead to some increased exposure and eventually sales for Seoul City Metro. I'll post results of the sale (good or bad!) next week when all the numbers are in.

Checkout the Seoul City Metro website front page for more info!

I just got emailed this morning that my quick point release for Seoul City Metro has been approved. That was less than 48 hours from submission. Call me impressed!

It's a total change of pace when a new binary can be pushed to customers that quickly. My "What's new in this update" stated that it was just two small bug fixes, I wonder if that had any influence on the review team that saw the initial 1.1 release only 5 days ago.

Anyway, a win! Seoul City Metro Lite is also now in review.

SeoulMetroApp announces it on twitter