iCE Amsterdam

We visited this event at the 8th of March. A big happening on the terrain of the Westergasfrabriek. We were at the conference in the Westerunie. In parallel session there were developer bootcamps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7.

The first speaker was a programmer specialized in making apps through social media. He told us about “the web” and “the internet” that those are not the same.

But despites off the title I can’t say he was really talking about apps through social media he said something’s about twitter, facebook and other social media and in which layer such media should be divided. But the part about apps was non existing. His view on “the internet” was good and the difference with “the web” was made clear by him. I liked his way of thinking and he made clear how the internet will evolve.

The second speaker of the day: Walter aan de Wiel. Told us about “Our Mobile Generation”. He told us facts like the moderate lifecycle of a mobile phone is about 18 months and 140 million of them end up in landfills every year..

Besides the facts on mobile phones his lecture wasn’t valuable to our project but he gave a nice speech about Enviu and what they are working about.

Next up is PayPal. Deborah Lynch gave us a promotion tour on PayPal. This was a complete waste of time cause in our project we won’t use PayPal and using PayPal is not my favorite because it’s necessary to book money to your PayPal account first, before you can use it. And therefore I think iDeal is way more convenient to use. Anyway it was more of a promotional talk for PayPal, so not that interesting.

Martijn Jansen the public speaker for ebuddy gave us some nice insights into the mobile messaging. About the amount of users and the fact that it is sort of the red line through mobile development, it has always been there. Most of his speech was not really applicable to our project but the research they are doing at ebuddy is interesting to follow.

Ebuddy is known as a web based msn and other messaging channels. You can talk to your friends on msn by a web browser.

With the application Steape made you can easily create apps for the android market, app store and other application stores. And you don’t even need to be a programmer.  You tell the framework how you want your app to work and it will generate the native code for all the supported operating systems. Pretty awesome if I may say so.

The last presentation of the day was about a game called Chalk Ball. You can either buy the full version or a Lite version. I downloaded the Free Version. I even played it a bit in the beginning it’s quite addictive. You need to hold your ball above the ground by painting lines where it can bounce off. In the screen are other balls which you can hit for more painting chalk.

In the main area are some stands where people show off their products. One of them is BuitenBeter. It is created for Dutch people so they can inform their city about things that need to be repaired, improved or cleaned. (like garbage on the street, broken lanterns and many more) The application keeps you informed about the status of your problem/comment.