CFugitives

Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - March Meeting

March 9th, 6pm (Tuesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
Topic: iPhone Development - Getting Started

Link for the presentation tonight: https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a200985228/cfugitives/?launcher=false

Everywhere you go, there seems to be "an app for that", right? If you haven't started down the path of iPhone development, it's not too late, and Adobe's Josh Adams will get us started this month. He'll even (in true CF evangelist style) re-affirm for us why ColdFusion is the best platform for providing data to your new iPhone apps.

Here's the official blurb: In this session, Josh will give you the information you need to know to get set to start developing for iPhone. In addition, he will demonstrate that ColdFusion is the ideal server-side data provider for iPhone applications.

Josh needs no introduction to our group. Literally. He's the most frequent presenter to our group - this will be presentation #4. But, if you need to know more, go see his bio.

What? You want a software raffle too? OK! .

As ever food will be served, please RSVP so I have a headcount.

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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - February Meeting

February 15th, 7pm EST (Monday)
Online - Adobe Connect (link)
Topic: Integrating ColdFusion and BlazeDS

Please Note: Meeting recording can be viewed here
Code samples can be found at Aaronwest.net.

So, one of the great things about Rich Internet Applications is the ability to update certain sections of a page without needing to refresh the entire page. Of course, your application still has to "poll" the server to see if there's anything worth refreshing for the user. Wouldn't it just be a better experience if data could be pushed to the client? Well, that's where Adobe's Blaze Data Services comes in, oh, and it's bundled with ColdFusion 9, and it's free!

Personally, I love the idea of pushing data to the client, to keep information fresh, but it's a frontier I just don't know much about. Thankfully, I know Aaron West, and he knows lots about it :-)

In this presentation Aaron will show you how ColdFusion 9 and BlazeDS are integrated into one server. Aaron will demonstrate how to build a one-way, real-time messaging application from start to finish, using Flash Builder 4 beta and ColdFusion Builder beta.

As it's a corporate holiday for MediFit, we'll be holding this meeting online, while I can't raffle off s/w at an online meeting, let's just say that your attendance at this meeting will so incredibly stack you're odds at winning in March ;-)

As ever please RSVP.

Speaker bio:

For the past nine years Aaron West has been heavily involved in the Web development space building enterprise-level, database-driven Web applications and leading technology teams. Aaron is incredibly passionate about what he does and attempts to inject his enthusiasm and love for technology in all those around him.

In his overall strategy of building high performance teams and managing enterprise-level projects Aaron could be described as a "cohesion warrior." He strives each and every day to challenge those around him to build the absolute best software for his customers. This involves coordinating efforts from sales, marketing, executive management, product development, customer support, and ultimately the folks writing code, to ensure the best possible technology experience is delivered. Aaron has a learned ability to communicate across an entire enterprise, from executive management and owners to customer support, bringing teams together to solve difficult business problems.

Whether it involves writing code or leading teams he aims to make a positive difference in the lives of those around him.

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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - November Meeting

November 17th, 6pm (Tuesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
Topic: ColdFusion/Flex updates from MAX

Wow, where did October go, and what was going on? Oh yeah, Adobe MAX was on in L.A., and there were many interesting developments on the Flex and ColdFusion fronts, including the official release of CF9. This month, we'll bring you a "best of" presentation from MAX on these two products.

And by "best", I mean Adobe evangelist Ryan Stewart. We've been very lucky to have Ryan present in the past - he knows his stuff, and has been blogging about RIA technologies for many years before he joined Adobe. Officially, his title is "Platform Evangelist", but Ryan probably spends more time hiking and dreaming of ways to integrate GPS technology into just about every web application on earth.

Oh yes, I'm sure we can find some software to raffle, too .

As ever food will be served, please RSVP so I have a headcount.

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Meeting Calendar

The November meeting will be:
November 8th, 6pm
At the offices of Medifit Corporate Services
17 High St, Norwalk, CT

Additional information is in the "Meetings" section of this site. Pizza and soda will be served, please RSVP to domalley@cfugitives.com so we can order accordingly.

Presenting will be your ringleader, David O Malley, giving a wrapup of all the news coming out of MAX 2005.

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About CFugitives

"Never re-invent the wheel" - one of my college professors would actually fail us if we didn't re-use or share code! He was way ahead of his time. Some of the things that I miss about of college was the sense of community we used to have. My major was IT, and a group of us would regularly, in an ad hoc kinda way, meet to brainstorm ideas, solve problems and have fun doing it. (ok I also miss the beer games, chasing members of the opposite sex and skipping early classes after a long night out, but that's not exactly relevant to this post)

There's no doubt about it, if you want to get the most out of your specialty in the IT world, you need to be able to brainstorm ideas with others in that specialty. Alot of times, we don't just need answers to a specific problem, but we need know what we DON'T know about our specialty.

For this group, that specialty is ColdFusion, but we don't want it to end there. We'd like to consider ourselved "solutions" oriented. So, if that means touching on other technologies that are somewhat related, then we'll do it.

One of the best ways to get exposed to new ideas is to attend conferences (like Macromedia MAX, for example), but these days, with the corporate purse strings pulled tight, that's just not an option for most of us.

However, for the princely sum of 1 or 2 hours every month (and being force fed free pizza), we can offer a year round alternative. If you haven't done so already, check out the meeting schedule, and RSVP to domalley@cfugitives.com

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Contact the Group

Here's how you can reach us:

Email:
David O Malley (The Godfather): domalley@cfugitives.com
Aymii Couzelis (Ringleader): acouzelis@cfugitives.com
Steven Wood (25 to life): swood@cfugitives.com

Address:
MediFit Corporate Services
17 High Street, 3rd Floor
Norwalk, CT 06851

203-857-3700

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CFugitive Member Roster

Here is our current Membership Roster:

Name	Company	Link	Photo
Jeffry Houser	DotComIt	http://www.jeffryhouser.com/	Link
Steven Wood	MediFit Corporate Services	http://www.ooine.com	Link
Bob Naughton	Sirius Innovations	http://www.siriusinnovations.com/	Link
Phil Hayes	Sirius Innovations	http://www.siriusinnovations.com/	Link
David O Malley	MediFit Corporate Services	https://www.medifit.com	Link
Vincent Descoust	Big Ideas Productions	http://www.bipnet.com/	Link
Aymii Couzelis	MediFit Corporate Services	https://www.medifit.com	Link
Barry Hyman	RealtyView.net	http://www.realtyview.net/	Link
Paul Kukiel	CogState LTD	http://blog.kukiel.net

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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - September Meeting

September 15th, 6pm (Tuesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
Topic: Deep linking in Flex

So, the great thing about Flex is that it allows you to present a full application in a browser, the bad part about that is that the application needs its own menu / navigation system. That's not a problem if you only have one panel on your Flex app, or if it occupies the entire browser space.

What if you have a mixed HTML/Flash based application? What if you want to link into a specific view deep inside the Flex application and not have to worry about the user using a navigation system on that dashboard?

Bryan Elie is a developer at MediFit and has been working on such issues recently. At this meeting he will give a short presentation on his approach and implementation using the Flex/AJAX bridge. He will review the necessary code to achieve this also.

This will be a mini presentation (not taking the full hour), so there is an opportunity for anyone else to present for the second half of the meeting (please contact Paul or Myself if interested), or we'll have an open round table.

As ever, food will be served, please RSVP.

Cheers,

David...

Technical Resources

ColdFusion Sites we love:

1) The obvious ones are the Adobe support forums. While Adobe support for these forums are spotty, there are a few regulars that really take it seriously - I've even had questions answered by Ben Forta himself!

ColdFusion Support Forums : http://forums.adobe.com/community/coldfusion

Flex Support Forums : http://forums.adobe.com/community/flex

2) ColdFusion bloggers is a product Blog aggregator, and deals mostly with ColdFusion, Flex and CFML related development.
http://www.coldfusionbloggers.org/

3) ColdFusion podcasts/Flex! What more could a code geek ask for? Here it is:
http://www.cfhour.com/

http://www.cfconversations.com/

http://www.theflexshow.com/blog/

http://www.twicf.com/

http://www.riapodcast.com/blog

4) Cascading Style Sheets:

pTutorial: CSS Layout and Design
http://www.senocular.com/dreamweaver/tutorials/csslayoutanddesign/

pTutorial: Selectors, Lists, Floats
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm

p“Web Developer” Firefox Plug-in
http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

pUsing CSS for Search Engine Optimization
http://alistapart.com/articles/seo

pProblems: Common CSS Problems and Solutions
http://mezzoblue.com/css/cribsheet/

pSkinning: CSS Zen Garden
http://www.csszengarden.com

5) The following is a list of technical resources for Flex:

Flex sites/blogs:
http://flexcf.com
http://cfflex.net
http://learncf.com
http://coldfusionbloggers.com
http://www.flexauthority.com/
http://feeds.adobe.com/
http://www.everythingflex.com

Flex style Explorer:
http://examples.adobe.com/flex2/consulting/styleexplorer/Flex2StyleExplorer.html

Documentation:
http://www.cfquickdocs.com/cf8
http://www.brianflove.com/public/CFDocsOnAIR
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=Part2_DevApps_1.html

Lists:
http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders

Bugs/enhancement requests:
http://cfbugs.adobe.com/cfbugreport/flexbugui/cfbugtracker/main.html

Community:

http://workingwithcfml.com
http://www.coldfusioncommunity.org ...

Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - July Meeting

July 14th, 6pm (Tuesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
Topic: JQuery Introduction

"Write less, Do more". Sounds good to me! At this group, we've spent a lot of time over the past year or two talking about Flex as a Rich Internet Application platform. Less so at the available AJAX platforms that are available to us.

Ray Camden will start us off at the July meeting by giving us the rundown on JQuery - the framework of choice at many large corporations such as Google, Dell and NBC. There'll be information on how to integrate with ColdFusion, also.

About the Speaker:
Really? Do I need to write something in here? If you don't know who Ray Camden is, or what he does, ping me off line, I'll fill you in

As ever, food will be served, please RSVP.

David
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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - June Meeting

June 23rd, 6pm (Tuesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
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
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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - May Meeting

May 26th, 6pm (Tuesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
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

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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - April Meeting

April 21st, 6pm (Tuesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
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

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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - February Meeting

February 17th, 6pm (Tuesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
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.
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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - January Meeting

January 21st, 6pm (Wednesday)
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
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

Gert, you had me at "Hello" (well, "EC2 deployment", actually). Is this the real deal? I know I first heard about Railo when Ben Forta had some glowing things to say about it, recently. So, the question is: can it help you when marketing your CF based services to cost conscious clients? Gert Franz is one of the founders of Railo Technologies GmbH and accompanied the development from when it started back in 2001.

Please RSVP, dinner will be served as usual.

Cheers,

David
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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - December Meeting

December 9th, 6pm
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
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

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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - October Meeting

October 14th, 6pm
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
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."

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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - September Meeting

September 9th, 6pm
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
Topic: The Adobe Developer Connection

So, Adobe....what have you done for me lately? When all is said and done, after all the new releases, the cool tools, the new features, it's still all about.....the Developer! ME! And what does Adobe do to support developers? Funny you should ask, because for the September meeting, we'll be hosting none other than Ed Sullivan from Adobe to answer exactly that question.

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.

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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - July Meeting

July 9th, 6pm
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
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
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Connecticut ColdFusion User Group - June Meeting

June 10th, 6pm
At the offices of MediFit Corporate Services
17 High St. - 3rd Floor, Norwalk, CT
Topic: Document-driven Applications with ColdFusion & PDF

For the June 10^th meeting, Adobe’s ColdFusion evangelist Josh Adams will be presenting to the group – A topic has yet to be decided, but we’re letting you guys decide. Please click this link to answer a Survey on which topic you would like to see.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6cTZnqRIkUynZtdwhkjo3g_3d_3d

6/4/2008: Survey Results are in!

#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.

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