Publication time for our new book, Learn Xcode for Mac OS X and iPhone Development. This book has been over six months in the making and should be available from Apress, Amazon US, Amazon UK, and all good booksellers at around the turn of the year. It has been a real pleasure working with the good people at Apress Publishing to make the idea into a reality.

So what's it about?

At Tellura we have been writing software for the Mac and other Apple platforms like the Newton and iPhone for 25 years (that's as long as the Mac has been around!). While the Mac is uniquely designed to run software that is easy to use, the software development tools provided for people to develop Mac and iPhone software has historically been less accessible to the average mortal.

Well, not any more. The latest versions of the free developer tools provided by Apple are elegant and much easier to use than ever before. This book is designed to fill in the one remaining missing piece - good easy to follow documentation with plenty of relevant examples.

Visit the book website

Order from Apress (paper and electronic versions available

Order from Amazon US

Order from Amazon UK

Without in any way trying to diminish the work of the author, a substantial chunk of the work in creating a new IT book happens behind the scenes.

Typically the work of the author is backed up by a Co-ordinating Editor, a Development Editor and a Copy Editor. In addition there is usually a Technical Editor. His or her job is to watch the author's back: to read the text for technical accuracy in a way that a Copy Editor is not usually expected to read, to advise on presentation and understandability of technical matters and to check all of the technical assertions being made by the author. The Technical Editor is expected to install every application covered by the author and to recreate all example software described in the book.

We work as Technical Editors for Apress and Wrox, two of the best-known publishers of IT books. Here are a couple of recent books with which we have been involved in this capacity.

Ruby on Rails for Microsoft Developers (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

Foundation Joomla!

Build a Ruby on Rails application in less than ten lines of code. The buzz about Ruby on Rails has been relentless since its introduction in 2004. But a major obstacle for developers remains the work involved in getting set up. Well, yes, there is inevitably a certain amount of configuration involved, but once you have an environment it is possible to get productive incredibly quickly. This article shows just how little you need to do in order to have a complete working Ruby on Rails application.

Read more...

The Diffie-Hellman algorithm was a ground-breaking discovery. Its appearance marked a departure from traditional encryption technologies, and provided the first computer-based answer to the centuries-old problem of key exchange. It also led more or less directly to the development of asymmetric ciphers like RSA, technologies that underpin the security for most financial transactions such as those on ecommerce websites.

Read more about the Diffie-Hellman algorithm...