Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: ColdFusion/Flex Next Releases
If you've been reading the blogs, you'll have seen snippets of information regarding the next releases of many Adobe products: ColdFusion, Flex, Bolt and Catalyst. We'll take a look at some of the new features and discuss the potential impact they may have on our work and business alike.
We will have some giveaways also, and, as ever, dinner will be served. Please RSVP.
David
12:27 PM
Add Comment (0)Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Open mic
So, who's the presenter this month? You are! What are you presenting on? Yes, there are lots of great topics to get speakers to present on, but the more I talk individually to group members, the more I realize that we, collectively, are doing some really great stuff ourselves.
The May meeting will be an open mic event. Presentations should be 6-10 minutes each and should be a showcase of something you've learned recently. Want an incentive? OK, the best presentation will win the Adobe Software package (the big one). I'll see what we can do for participant prizes also (this will depend on the number of presenters)
Please RSVP and also let me know if you want to present, just so I can manage the time available. I'll unveil some rules on how we'll judge the winner of the software, but suffice as to say, all presentations will be welcome, no matter what the level.
We'll have some important group information to discuss also, so please do your best to make it.
Cheers,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Integrating Flex into your Products
In May of 2008, with very little hands-on Flex experience, the MediFit development team began to fill the business need of integrating Flex into our products. This session will detail the self-training process, the obstacles, pitfalls and success of integrating Flex into core products aimed at a corporate client market.
This session will look at three applications - Internal, extranet and Customer facing - and their movement from HTML rendered applications to Flash based.
This session is not a code review, but an examination of the business requirements and how the technology met the need. It will also examine the change in "mindset" of the developers, business Analysts, QA team and the end user themselves as we made the change to our products. That being said, the development team will be available for any technical questions that may arise.
As always, we will be serving dinner, so please RSVP.
Thanks,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Cloud Computing and ColdFusion
One of the latest buzzwords doing the rounds in the tech world is "Cloud Computing". But what is Cloud Computing, how does it work, and why should you be interested in it? We asked Spike Washburn of Stax Networks, in Seattle if he could help us out with understanding more about this new arrival to the technology scene.
Cloud Computing is a quickly emerging field that promises to reduce the cost and complexity of provisioning hardware and building/deploying applications. In this presentation, we'll examine the various layers of the cloud computing stack and discuss ways web application developers can leverage their features. We will also take a close look at how Stax Networks is exposing developer-oriented solutions for building and deploying elastic ColdFusion applications on top of Amazon EC2.
As always, we will be serving dinner, so please RSVP.
Thanks,
David
Spike Washburn is co-founder and CEO of Stax Networks. Since 1997, he has been a technology leader creating developer-focused products such as IBM WebSphere, Allaire JRun, Macromedia ColdFusion, and Aptana Studio. He is now putting his experience to work delivering Stax, a Java Platform as a Service, by combining the Java platform with the power of elastic cloud computing.
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Introducing Railo
Happy New Year everyone! Are you feeling the pinch yet? Most of us remember only too vividly the last time we had an economic slump - and the IT sector got hit pretty hard. While things seem to be holding up right now, has there never been a better time to be cost conscious? On that note, Gert Franz will be introducing us to Railo at the next user group meeting.
I've heard a lot of buzz about Railo, but never knew the details. I heard it was a "CFML engine", "free and open source", but that's about it. So, I sent an e-mail to Gert asking "Why Railo"? (with some smart ass references to Blue Dragon thrown in for good measure ;-)
The answer:
- 2-3 times faster than ColdFusion (with debugging turned on!)
- Video conversions with the Tag CFVIDEO
- Using virtual file systems
- Open Source
- Amazon EC2 deployment
Please RSVP, dinner will be served as usual.
Cheers,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: TBD
Unfortunately, I don't have a speaker lined up at this point and time, for various reasons that I will explain on Tuesday. I still have a few emails out and I am hoping for a positive reply before Tuesday.
Either way, we'll be meeting - we didn't have a meeting in November, and there have been some interesting developments in the ColdFusion space since.
If you have any suggestions for this meeting, please share them with me - we'll have goodies to raffle off also.
Please RSVP, we'll serve food as usual, and I'll see if we can squeeze a little more from the budget to make this a decent year end bash.
Cheers,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Intro to AIR API's
So, we've had a few topics on AIR, but mostly at a high level. We've never really dove into the actual code and API's that make up AIR. At our next meeting, Jeff Tapper will get us started with AIR development and API's. I think AIR is going to be an ever growing technology in 2009, especially with rumors of tighter ColdFusion integration being reported on the Blogosphere, and large companies like FedEx, Fox News and the BBC embracing the technology (to name but a few).
Jeff's bio is listed below - I've had the pleasure of attending his sessions at MAX and they were excellent. I hope you will join us - as ever, Pizza will be served, so please RSVP.
David
Jeff Tapper is a Senior Consultant at Digital Primates IT Consulting Group, which focuses on the development of RIAs and empowering clients through mentoring. Jeff has been developing internet-based applications since 1995, for a myriad of clients including Conde Nast, Harley Davidson, Toys R Us, IBM, Dow Jones, American Express and Morgan Stanley. As an Instructor, he is certified to teach all of Adobe's courses on Flex, ColdFusion and Flash development. He has been working with Flex since the earliest alphas of Flex 1, and started his ColdFusion development on CF 1.5. Jeff has written 10 books, among the more recent releases are including "Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source," and "Breaking out of the Browser with Adobe AIR."
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: The Adobe Developer Connection
Ed "Bahstahn Stranglah" Sullivan
Ed, for many years, was the User Group Manager at MacroMedia, and then Adobe, so we have him to thank for all the great swag over the years (rumor is, he'll be bringing some Tuesday
). Ed will be talking to us about the Adobe Developer Connection and will be walking us through the resources currently available in the ADC as well as providing some insight on a few new initiatives that are currently being worked on.
Dinner, as usual, will be served - please RSVP. Ed has a hard stop time, so we'll be starting promptly.
Cheers,
David
About the Presenter, Ed Sullivan:
As product manager for the Adobe Developer Connection in the Platform Business Unit at Adobe Systems, Ed’s responsibilities include driving visibility and programs for the Adobe Developer Connection and his role focuses on the strategy and implementation of those programs and resources to attract, engage and retain developers.
Ed has a history of working in technical communities and prior to joining Adobe he has held a variety of marketing roles at Macromedia, Allaire and Sybase. He holds a Bachelor's degree in business from The University of Arizona.
In his free time, he enjoys cheering on all his favorite Boston sports team, with a penchant for football, as well as trying to find time and ways to give back to his local community.
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: ColdFusion AJAX Features
OK, we'll try this again! Unfortunately, when we tried to host Ray back in May, there were some technical difficulties, but Ray has sorted them out and has offered to give his presentation again. This will be the last meeting before our summer break, so please join us if you can. Please note: The meeting will be a Wednesday, not the usual Tuesday.
Ray needs no introduction to the community at large. He has truly earned his "Jedi" status in the ColdFusion world, and has created many open source ColdFusion based projects.
It's amazing we've gone 2 1/2 years without a presentation from Ray, but better late than never! Please come armed with your AJAX questions and we'll see if we can stump him.
There will be lots of goodies, etc, to give away, and dinner will be served, as usual, so please RSVP.
Cheers,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Document-driven Applications with ColdFusion & PDF
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6cTZnqRIkUynZtdwhkjo3g_3d_3d
#1 requested topic: Admin and Server Monitor in ColdFusion 8 (enterprise)
#2 requested topic: PDF Manipulation
But here's the thing, Josh has recently completed putting together a presentation on PDF manipulation and would like to present that to the group. Here at MediFit, we clearly have at least one area in our application that could benefit from using PDF generation, we just haven't gotten around to really digging into it yet.
Here is an official abstract of the presentation:
Document-driven Applications with ColdFusion & PDF
Using Adobe ColdFusion 8 and PDF you can do much more than just create portable documents—you can manipulate PDFs in a wide variety of ways from extracting and merging to searching metadata and creating thumbnails. By using with Adobe ColdFusion 8 and PDF forms, you can take application forms offline, plus pre-populate the forms with data and process the submission of those forms. Using PDF and Adobe ColdFusion 8's ability to print from the server, you have access to a whole new world of opportunities: automated printing of things like pick slips and reports and even server-side faxing. Join us for this presentation as we investigate all of these capabilities and more.
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: ColdFusion AJAX Features
A little bit of a change to the previous notice for this months meeting - Ray Camden has made himself available, and will be presenting on all of the new AJAX features in ColdFusion 8.
Ray needs no introduction to the community at large. He has truly earned his "Jedi" status in the ColdFusion world, and has created many open source ColdFusion based projects.
It's amazing we've gone 2 1/2 years without a presentation from Ray, but better late than never! Please come armed with your AJAX questions and we'll see if we can stump him.
There will be lots of goodies, etc, to give away, and dinner will be served, as usual, so please RSVP.
Cheers,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: ColdFusion Round Table
It was suggested early in the year that we dedicate some time to the members to discuss and/or present the issues and/or situations they are facing with technology in their businesses. With no external speakers available, we're going to try this suggestion this month.
This is a call to all members to bring a topic to talk about, and there will be an incentive to give a short presentation to the group. Give a 10-15 minute presentation on something ColdFusion/Flex/AIR related and you'll get 5 extra tickets to the software raffle.
"The Software raffle?" I hear you say? Yes, in case you've lost track, amidst all the giveaways we've had this year, the big Adobe software raffle has to take place either this month or next. So, on Tuesday, we'll flip a coin and decide which meeting it will be. The more tickets you have in the box, the better your chances of winning*
I'll update this post with suggestions from the group - so please get back to me with your suggestions. As usual, dinner will be served, please RSVP.
Topic Suggestions so far:
- ColdFusion 8 upgrade - recently performed by the MediFit team.
- First CF supported iPhone web application
Cheers,
David
* NOTE: Eligibility to win the big Adobe prize has been explained at previous meetings - please email me with your questions. Howls of protest will be duly ignored.
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
http://adobe.com/go/2008_developer_week
I hope you enjoy it – these promise to be some high quality presentations, so if you can’t make it to CFUnited or MAX, you should try catch some of these.
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
Cheers,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Flex Builder 3 / AIR 1.0
Will we have software to raffle? Oh yeah!
- A copy of Flex 3 (professional) or ColdFusion 8 (standard) - winners choice.
- Adobe goodies
- Other raffle items - I'll have more details closer to the date.
We also have a copy of Flex Builder 3 to raffle off from the February meeting. Only members who attended (virtually) and are present at the raffle can win (Adobe rules).
Dinner will be served as usual, please RSVP.
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
Adobe's RIA technologies enable you to rapidly build and deploy the most engaging applications across browsers and on the desktop. We are hosting a special event to share exciting new information on Adobe's platform tools and technologies for building RIAs. You'll see an exclusive user group video presentation by Adobe Chief Software Architect,
Be part of the fun and excitement and join the rest of the Adobe developer community by participating in this very special event.
Tuesday, March 11 at the usual location - more details will be published closer to the date.
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: BlazeDS
According to the recent user group survey (the results of which I'll share at the meeting), one of the biggest gaps in our Adobe product knowledge is that of LiveCycle Data Services.
NOTE: The URL for this meeting is http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/r55524223/
Recently Adobe announced the release of BlazeDS which will make open source some key server technologies that are critical to building great applications with Flex and ColdFusion. This presentation will detail exactly what you get in BlazeDS and how it relates to LiveCycle Data Services and details some of the reasons why you might want to use these server technologies with Flex. Tom Jordahl of Adobe has offered to give a presentation on Blaze, what it is and how we can use it.
Will we have software to raffle? Heck Yeah! Ed Sullivan has graciously allowed us to raffle off a copy of either Flex 3 (professional) or ColdFusion 8 (standard) - you must be present to win.
We will be conducting this meeting over Connect, so if you cannot attend, please email me for the URL (domalley at this domain). We will, as ever, be providing pizza, so please RSVP, as I'll need a head count.
David
About the Presenter:
Tom Jordahl is a Senior Computer Scientist at Adobe and is currently working on the LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS team. Before making the jump to Flex land, Tom was the architect for ColdFusion 8 and over the past 11 years at Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe has designed and/or implemented a wide variety of features in both the original C++ and Java versions of ColdFusion. He was also a core team member on the JRun 4.0 and Apache Axis 1.x development teams and was the Adobe representative on the W3C WSDL 2.0 working group. Tom is busy working on making Flex and LiveCycle Data Services the best they can be.
Follow up:
A recording of the meeting can be found here: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p56945801/
Click here to download the Presentation file
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Code Reuse with Flex and AIR
Happy New Year to everyone. Before I forget, please click here to take the 2008 CFUGitives Survey. Your opinion will help us get the topics you're interested in.
2007 was a pivotal year in the technology world. Adobe, Google, Microsoft - all released new tools to increase productivity, and add new feature sets. One of the biggest news items in 2007 was the push to the desktop, with new, richer, and still connected applications.
All signs point to more momentum in this area, so we're delighted to be able to start the new year with a presentation on a hot new technology, Adobe AIR. A lot of people, and I'm one of them, don't "get" the desktop paradigm, so it's something we're going to spend some time tackling this year.
In this topic, Jeff will talk about ways to set up your project in order to maximize reuse of your Flex code when you want to deploy both as a web applications and as an AIR application.
Jeff needs no introduction to our group, but we'll do it anyway: He is the owner of Dot-Com-It, and hosts "The Flex Show" podcast. He is the author of many ColdFusion books, and has been a regular presenter at the group.
We'll be serving dinner, as usual, so please RSVP.
Thanks,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
First of all, thank you, all, for making this a very successful year for the group. We’ve increased membership, attracted some great speakers, and had a great turnout at the Scorpio event. Our November meeting was the last for 2007, so what lies ahead?
2008 is going to be a big year in our technology space. We’re expecting full releases of Flex 3 and AIR, and work has already begun on ColdFusion 9.
How do we top 2008? Well, that begins with getting the right presenters, and the topics that you want to hear. I’m working on a survey that will get your opinions on this, and then I hope to reach out to potential speakers to fill the needs.
Some other goals and ideas I’d like to see us work into our 2008 agenda:
1) A Codejam to aid a local charitable organization
a. Lots to be worked out here
2) Success stories / Show-and-tell
a. Got something to show off? If it’s a pet project or something that made you the hero at work – show it off. Maybe you’ve hit a road block and need some ideas from the group?
3) Spreading the software joy!
a. I’ll be excluding ex-winners of the Adobe software from the big software raffle – sucks to be you, but we need to spread the love a little (hope you understand). You’ll be eligible to win any other software or goodies we have going.
b. When I have the agenda set, I’ll be picking two months when the software will be raffled, but it’ll be a secret – so don’t miss your chance to win big!
c. Merit system for the tickets – bonuses for regular attendance, presenting, bringing new members, etc.
1) Flex
a. $10 for a full day of Flex presentations? Hard to beat that!
b. http://www.flexcampboston.com/ to sign up – there will be lots of prizes given away. Details at the site.
c. There are a few of us signed up already, and our own Jeff Houser will be on the experts’ panel.
d. Possibly, we can car pool? Email me if you are going and we’ll try arrange something.
2) A new ColdFusion Community in town
a. www.ColdFusionCommunity.org
b. I’ve created a group called cf_connecticut – we’re trying to get as many members from the
3) Management update:
a. I’ll still be the manager in 2008, but I’ll need help. Phil Hayes has generously volunteered (you did volunteer, didn’t you?) to be the co-manager, and help me out with the finer details. Still, if you want to help in any way, please let us know!
That’s it for now, looking forward to a successful 2008.
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: HostMySite - The ColdFusion 8 Upgrade
How did they do it? From the time that Adobe announced ColdFusion was in Alpha, to final release, HostMySite seemed to be in lock step with Adobe. They were the first to offer free beta accounts on CF8, and the first to offer CF 8 hosting services.
So, what were the technical challenges? How difficult was the transition? Have there been any unexpected road bumps? What about server performance gains - has ColdFusion lived up to the hype? More importantly, what can we learn from their experience?
Matthew Ferrari is the Infrastructure Manager for HostMySite.com and he will be here to answer all our questions.
If you have any specific questions, or a particular area of interest, please forward them ahead of time, so that Matthew can prepare his presentation accordingly.
This is our last meeting of the year, so I hope you can make it. Pizza will be served - please RSVP.
David
Speaker Bio:
Matthew Ferrari is the Infrastructure Manager for HostMySite.com. He has been with the organization for 5 of its 10 years of existence. When he joined the organization in 2002 we were a little over a dozen employees and are now over 180 in size. We host over 3000 physical servers and have a wide variety of platforms such as windows, linux, virtual machines, etc. Matthew manages a group of about thirty individuals and focus on testing and deployment of new hardware and software technologies for the organization, in addition to managing our escalation team who handles all server down issues.
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: MAX 2007 Wrap up
MAX is the premier Adobe event, held annually. This year it was held in Chicago, which Ron Hiner and I attended.
Previously, Ron and I have both attended MacroMedia events, but this is the first Adobe event we attended. We posted some notes on the site about sessions we attended, but we'd like to give a higher level view of what's going on, and update on some new announcements made by Adobe at the conference.
Without a doubt, the landscape is changing - the line between "developers" and "designers" is blurring. How badly would a designer like to take a photoshop comp and create a fully functional Flex app? That's not a pipe dream any more. For the past number of years, tools gave developers the ability to cross over into the designer domain, using programming languages. Now, the pendulum is swinging the other way.
We have some goodies to give away, so don't miss the raffle. Please RSVP so I know how much food to offer.
Cheers,
David
(p.s., Disclaimer: Ron Hiner is "scheduled" to appear!)
(p.p.s, it's our 2nd year anniversary - can you say "cake"?)
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor,
Topic: Securing ColdFusion, by Shlomy Gantz
Think you know security? Yeah, well you don't know Shlomy!!!
Securing ColdFusion servers involves more than just setting an administrator password. From OS and HTTP issues to SQL injection attacks to vulnerabilities in installed software and more, there's a lot to lock down and a lot to keep an eye on. It's enough to keep you awake at night!
Thankfully, Shlomy Gantz, President of BlueBrick Inc, has been around the security block a few times and he does know security. He doesn't just talk about security risks, but actually demonstrates the risks and how they are exploited, and offers practical guidance on how to address the risks.
With security issues, and customer data becoming more front and center these days, we hope you'll join us for what will be a very informative presentation.
As usual, dinner will be server, so please RSVP for a headcount.
Cheers,
David
Posted by David OMalley having to do with All Points Bulletin
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services