Most of the time our little flock is heads down, creating new apps and software solutions. On occasion, though, we do find the time to pursue other activities of interest. One common extracurricular theme of late has been continuing education.

UW – IPhone and Cocoa Development

Last year I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to teach Cocoa programming through the University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education department. With help of an all-star advisory board, we managed to create a very unique three-course program. Students with solid prior programming experience were taught the ins and outs of MacOS and iOS development and earned a handsome certificate after 30 weeks of study across 3 quarters.

We have had a fantastic response to the program. In our first year we filled two separate sections to capacity. Students completing the program have been overwhelmingly positive in their assessment. Several already have apps in the store or have started career changes based on the knowledge they gained. It has also been a great experience for the instructors to grow our own skills and be able to pass some wisdom on to a new breed of Cocoa developers.

Our certificate program is going for another round again this year. Both Hal and myself are returning to teach the MacOS and Advanced courses respectively. We are also adding two new faces to the instructor team for the iOS-focused class. Luke Adamson is a veteran Cocoa developer, having worked for The Omni Group and his own Cocoa consulting company for years. Luke will be joined by Paul Goracke, who has been programming Apple frameworks since back in the CodeWarrior days. The program is going to be even better this year and I can’t wait to see the student response.

If you are in the Seattle area and want to start your mastery of the Cocoa platforms I recommend you give our program a look. Our downtown Seattle session is now wait-listed, but the Bellevue session that starts in Winter still has spots. You can apply here. Hope I see you in class this Spring!

HTML5 Mobile Web Development

In addition to all this Cocoa learn’n, our very own Jake Carter is teaching a course of his own. HTML5 is the new hotness and Jake is your Jedi Master, ready to guide you in the ways of CSS3 on mobile platforms. I’ve seen some of the cool demos Jake has worked up and I’m sure this class is going to be great. If you are interested in mobile web development you can’t afford not to dive in and attend this FREE course!

Jake’s class is a live, 10-session, online offering through O’Reilly that starts in October. If you can’t make the online sessions, you can purchase a video edition after. Find out all the details and sign up here. Did I mention, it is FREE?

Our colleagues over at Flying Meat have just released an update to their respected Mac OS X image editing app, Acorn. The new version adds Layer Mask functionality similar to what you would find in Photoshop.

Acorn is a real bargain considering the price for all the power it packs. Be sure to check it out if you are in the market for a capable image editor for your Mac.

Things have been quite busy around here lately. We’ve been laboring in the RogueSheep application darkroom with our secret pixel-and-bit developing solution for months. The binary for our next application is hanging up to dry and I am proud to say our first iPad application is nearly done.

We’ve been known for our media-centric mobile applications in the past and our next effort continues on that theme. TouchUp for iPad will allow you to edit, enhance and get creative with photos and images on your iPad. TouchUp includes a variety of image adjustments and effects that you can draw directly on your photos by simply swiping your finger. The large surface of the iPad makes the hands-on manipulation of your images a new and extremely rewarding experience.

Our teaser web site is available at http://touchup.roguesheep.com. You can sign-up for our mailing list there if you would like to be notified when the application is ready in the App Store. You can also follow @TouchUpApp on Twitter or visit our page on Facebook to get more information ahead of the release.

We are almost done proofing the app. We can’t wait to get it in your hands and see the great stuff you all produce with it.