Introducing CocoaCheerleaders

Or the only site with application frameworks and pompoms…

If you’ve been wondering about the recent references to pompoms on this site, all can now be revealed: CocoaCheerleaders!

So, what is CocoaCheerleaders!? It is a collection of links to great resources — websites, blogs, podcasts, books, mailing lists, and code — for developers using Cocoa, Apple's object-oriented application environment.

The site started off as a joke — or rather it started off with the name. If memory serves correctly, it was in answer to the question, "If you had a cheerleading squad, what would you call it?”, which then led to the spontaneous creation of some cheerleading chants that incorporated software development themes — chants which you may now find incorporated on the site.

With the domain name safely registered (one drawback about being a domain registration reseller is that it makes it too tempting to register crazy domain names), the momentum and cheering ground to a halt. Then one night, after a particularly nice meal with some particularly nice people at a Hunan restaurant in San Francisco, a clearer picture of what CocoaCheerleaders could be started to form: a one-stop site that brought together links to really great resources — websites, blogs, podcasts, whatever — all to do with Cocoa development, all wrapped up in some cheerleading goodness.

Since we were working on loads of other projects, there was no time to concentrate on CocoaCheerleaders, so instead we started to use the domain as a testing ground for experiments in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, WebObjects, and other buzzwords. In fact, this is what I was talking about in the post about Code Doodles. For example, the item boxes were an excuse to experiment with the prototype and moo JavaScript libraries; the search field was an excuse to experiment with AJAX and WebObjects; the layout was an excuse to experiment with HTML and CSS; while the logo and navigation buttons along the top were an excuse to dust off my pompoms and cheer.

After a while the site slowly began to take shape and was almost complete when Scott Stevenson launched CocoaBlogs. Development on CocoaCheerleaders came to a halt, but resumed when we realized that despite the excellent content there was no sign of pompoms making an appearance on CocoaBlogs.

Now, on the eve of WWDC07, we're excited to launch CocoaCheerleaders!! There are still a few loose ends to be tidied up, but we're looking forward to adding links to lots of great new Cocoa resources. If you're at WWDC07 and see someone in a CocoaCheerleaders t-shirt please say "Hi!". Now all I have to do is look for those pompoms...