The first is 360iDev in Austin, where I’ll be talking about how developers can get their heads around the design process and enhance the beauty of their work from the ground up.

Then Kyle Richter and I will be talking at 360MacDev in my hometown of Denver. We’ll be going over the process of porting an iOS project to the Mac, with focus on both design and development.

Because the nice people at 360 Conferences love you, BE readers get a 22% discount with the code BetterElevation.

What does forkly do? I have no idea. I just know it’s from Denver’s own Martin May and Brady Becker, and it involves forks. Probably.

I went out drinking with Brent Simmons. Everything after that is kind of a blur.

About a year ago, I happened to be flying in to San Jose on business. As the plane touched down, I did what I always do: take my iPhone out of airplane mode. At some point over eastern California, my friend Alex sent an email to myself and Brent Simmons; he had noticed we were both going to be in the area and suggested we meet up. To be honest, I felt terrible that night. I just wanted to go to my hotel and get some sleep.

I had met Brent once before at Ignite Denver, but only briefly. The opportunity to buy the developer of one of my favorite applications a drink was too good to ignore. So I sucked it up and went out.

It just so happened that Brent was in town for 360|iDev, an event organized by a guy named John Wilker, who I sort of knew in passing and — again, by sheer coincidence — had just become my neighbor. Nobody could have said it better than Wilker himself when he walked up to me outside of the eBay Town Hall that night. “Dave? What the hell are you doing here?”

When Brent and I went out, we were joined by Dan Burcaw and Joe Pezzillo — iPhone developers and friends of Brent’s from, of all places, Denver. Jay and I had just launched Coathangr, the social network for fashion, and I asked Dan how much it would cost us to build an iPhone app for it.

He told me that the conversation couldn’t even start for less than twenty grand, and that we’d be better off doing it ourselves. So we did. And we fell in love with iPhone development. And a year later, Dan’s company acquired us. I guess he was right.

Of course, I’m leaving out an entire year’s worth of blood, sweat, education, experience, and perhaps most importantly, failure. I’ll save those for later posts. So part of it was luck, part of it was the truly awesome iPhone developer community, and a lot of it is owed to my generous and patient mentors. But if I had to trace it back to a single decision that changed everything, it would be going to grab that drink.

The lesson here is that when Brent Simmons invites you out, you say yes.

TechCrunch’s coverage is remarkably insightful:

With so many app developers around the Apple ecosystem, it makes sense for smaller iPhone app developers to pool their resources and talent and consolidate. I suspect we may be seeing more acquisitions and mergers in the near future.

Ding.

Alex King once told us that he wished someone would make an iPhone app based on the PwdHash project at Stanford to make it easier to use secure passwords on the iPhone. Rather than just rush something out, we decided to put some thought into the interface, how users would really want to use the app, and how refined the process could become. Should KeyGrinder save passwords? Should there be a bookmarklet? Should there be a web version? Should access require a password?

The end result is something that I feel is an elegant approach to the problem. There is no need to store passwords because they’re so easy to generate, but bookmarking of URLs provides a fast way to re-grind. The bookmarklet should be as easy to install as the iPhone will allow (tip: not very). And passwords should be easy to recover even if you lose your iPhone or iPod touch². And because no critical information is stored, no thief can steal your passwords even if they get their hands on your device.

We’re happy with this app. We hope everyone uses it and creates better passwords.

1. iTunes link
2. KeyGrinder.com

My concern, though, is that people may think that Mac apps should include every possible feature and preference. The reasoning would be like this: “It’s not an iPad or iPhone. It’s a computer. Therefore it’s for power users. Therefore it should be totally customizable and have every feature anybody might want.”

That would be a big mistake.

My hope, instead, is that Mac users and developers (all developers are users too, by the way) learn even better the virtues of focused, opinionated software that pays attention to experience more than to long feature lists and heavy preference windows. I hope we see even better Mac software.

Brent his this ineffable ability to be opinionated, strong-willed, and forceful without being even the least bit offensive.

I sure thought it was right up mine when I first spotted it last night. The game’s description warned me that it is ‘insanely addictive’. Really? An addictive game all about fonts?

Hell yes it is. Or at least that’s how I felt after roughly four hours of almost continuous play last night.

We might print this one out and frame it.