A conference or so ago I met Mark Lassoff. I sat in on his PhoneGap presentation and at the end, I did that annoying "So, I liked your preso, but here were a few things you did wrong" type thing that presenters just love. In my defense, I did it after he was done and I had him one on one, but luckily he didn't hold it against me. A few weeks ago he released a new online course, Ten Apps in Ten Weeks, and he sent me a pass to take a look through the material.

The basic idea of the course is to give you ten different applications to build over ten weeks. I don't necessarily think you will need a week each, but it is a good schedule to aim for and give yourself some breathing room. If you read this blog regularly, then you know that I'm a huge fan of the "cookbook" style of instruction. To me, the best thing to do after a general "101 Introduction" to a language/pratform/etc is start building real apps. Mark's course material is a perfect "next step" for someone who has learned the basics of PhoneGap/Cordova (or who have perhaps read a new and upcoming book) and need to see some real world examples. While each application is small, they all represent real world apps you could see out in the app market. Examples include:

  • MP3 Player
  • Weather Forecast
  • Restaurant Finder
  • Bat Hunt

Each app contains a video introduction, a video tutorial, and a PDF as well. What's cool is that you can watch the videos and then use the PDF to build the app at your own speed. Obviously you can also download all the assets (code, images, etc) for each app. When you begin, the course also includes a video introduction to help you understand the basic mechanics of the course itself.

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I do have some problems with the course. He misused jQuery Mobile a bit, which doesn't really impact the apps themselves, and he has a few other technical issues that I've mentioned to him. I don't think any of these technical issues should stop you from buying the course, but an experienced front-end developer looking to learn more about hybrid development will notice them. Again, I think they are problems to correct, but I'd still recommend picking up the course.

So what's the cost? You get the course for $149. But - that price actually includes two courses. You get the course mentioned above plus Mobile App Development with HTML5. Seems like a great bargain to me. If you check the course out, please let me know what you thought below. (Also let Mark know. He is very open to feedback!)