It’s been a very long time since my last blog post, so it’s about time I tell you what I’ve been up to the last year as well as what you might expect from me in the one that’s coming.
Writing for Apress
What started out as a an impulse ended up taking most of my time in 2009. When Dave Mark wrote me in December 2008 asking me if I wanted to write about the creation of Deep Green, I was so flattered I immediately said yes. My chapter ended up in Apress’ popular book, iPhone Games Project, and is available for free as a PDF download here. Go get it while it’s still there.
It was a very exhausting process, simply because I’d never tried it before, and writing – for me, and not just software – is a demanding process. Even more so when it’s not in one’s native language.
However, I’m very happy with the result. I think it encapsulates why Deep Green has been, and still is, so tremendously popular on the App Store. Apress also liked, and so much that I ended up contributing to another two books: iPhone Advanced Projects and iPhone User Interface Design Projects, the latter as the lead author and technical reviewer. Finally, I’ve been technical reviewer on another iPhone related book coming out soon.
I’ll probably be elaborating more on some of the subjects in these books in separate blog posts over time.
Coding Deep Green
Deep Green got a very nice feature upgrade in May.
One of the more important features was rich, acoustic type sounds. I was very lucky to work with Diego Stocco who’ve done some amazing work. Most lately as a featured soloist on Hans Zimmer’s score for Guy Ritchie’s latest movie, Sherlock Holmes. Read more about it here and be sure to check the video out.
Client Projects
Going indie as the sole provider for a family with two little kids is not something I’ll be doing overnight. Although Deep Green is doing very well, it’ll take a bit more than that. So while I’ve started other Cocoa Stuff projects, I’ve also been doing Mac OS X and iPhone consulting.
One of the these projects is the magnificent, Capture One RAW image workflow application from Phase One. In terms of image quality, it beats Adobe Photoshop Lightroom any day.
My latest iPhone client project is iSki Instructor by Danish iSki.
Other Ventures
Before focusing on Cocoa Stuff I used to consult and raise capital for early startups. As if the above didn’t keep me busy enough, it’s been difficult for me not to engage in some of the ventures my network is starting and asking for my advice on. I hope to be able to talk about some of these in the future.
2010
Like most other people, I have lots of ideas and very little time. These are my ambitious, professional goals for 2010:
- Launch Deep Green 2.0
- Launch another iPhone app
- Launch a Mac application
- Launch a more personal site for my free software
Please check in from time to time to see the progress or, even easier, subscribe to my feed.
2 Comments
Happy New Year to you too!
Deep green really looks beautiful, I just love chess!
I hope that on Wednesday you added “Launch Deep Green for iPad” to your list of things to do this year.
I’m looking forward to it.