The iPhone comes out this Friday and the line to buy one has already started. Now there is also the announcement of the first iPhone developer event the weekend of July 6th. Organized by several barcampers it is sure to generate a lot of interesting apps for the new device. From the wiki:
iPhoneDevCamp is an upcoming gathering, inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, and MacHack, to develop web-based applications and optimize web sites for iPhone. It is a non-commercial event, organized by volunteers, with attendance free to all. By the completion of the weekend event, a number of iPhone-ready web applications and web sites will be launched to the public. The event will be held at the San Francisco offices of Adobe, and out-of-town guests are welcome.
Attendees will include web designers, developers, testers, and iPhone owners, all working together over the weekend to improve the web experience for iPhone. Development projects will include both solo and team efforts. While some attendees will wish to work solo during the event, we encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams. All attendees should be prepared to work on a development project during the event. You do not need to own an iPhone to attend (although, a large number of iPhones at the event will make the development and testing process much easier).
Attendees will be able to:
- Create new web applications for iPhone.
- Optimize existing web applications for iPhone.
- Migrate Dashboard Widgets to web-based widgets for iPhone.
- Test and optimize web sites for iPhone.
You can follow the the iPhoneDevCamp on Twitter. People are going to want news about the iPhone for the next couple of weeks; I expect that this will produce enough items of interest to keep a fluff piece or two from being written.
Sadly, the iPhone doesn’t have a GPS. I hope that one of the first things built is a substitute, like a set of location-based tools for other iPhone applications to consume. Skyhook’s WiFi APIs would be good for this.