Here were four talks I enjoyed, plus Game Jam.

Poking a Hole in the Sandbox, using URLs on iOS

      By Greg Pierce, @agiletortoise, Slides

• Lightweight local messaging between apps.

• A way to test if certain apps are installed, great for cross promotion too.

• A protocol for iOS interapp communication http://x-callback-url.com

It’s All in the Tools

      By Nathan Eror, @neror, Slides

• How to wield Xcode with keyboard shortcuts (Jump bar: ^[1-6], learn keys from top menu items View and Navigation), Behaviors, breakpoints (logging, sounds, shell scripts, llvm allows breakpoints without restarting app), and powerful lldb debugging (formatters, summarizers, python integration, .lldbinit).

• Uses make to automating (things like removing sqlite databases), supports autocompletion. See his blog entry on this.

• Mountain Lion has Python bindings for Cocoa – see a nice Quartz example in his slides. This was news to me, and after Googling around didn’t find much into about this.

Creating Container View Controllers

      By Bob McCune, @bobmccune

• These are now easier to create in iOS 5+. A subtle API for adding/removing child controllers, get children, new callbacks. Only use this API within your container. Avoid common mistakes: Outside callers (since invalidates containers view of the world), disobedient children, meddling parents (let children be children)

• Demo code is here: https://github.com/tapharmonic

Galcon

      By Phil Hassey, @philhassey

• Phil following his gaming development passions with Galcon and other games, including his new Dynamite Jack.

Game Jam (7pm to 7am)

• Phil Hassey’s Galcon talk motivated me to give Game Jam a try.

• I enjoyed this for several hours before drinking and socializing set in.

• Had fun with cocos2d and box2d.