Jacksonville Code Camp Needs Sponsors

The Jacksonville Code Camp needs sponsors. The Code Camp is a free event for developers now in its forth year.

Sponsorships can be as low as $25.00. The code camp needs to raise $10,000 for the entire event.

This years camp should be very good, because there will be tracks for .NET, Java, Ruby, Flex and ColdFusion.

Next JaxFusion meeting on Flex/Air ColdFusion integration

The fine folks at SouthWest Signal will be hosting the next JaxFusion meeting. July's meeting will be covering how to integrate ColdFusion with Flex/Air applications.

We will be giving away a lot of goodies from Adobe. We hope to make this a regular occurrence again. We are also going to have a presence this year at the Jacksonville Code Camp.

Personal update

I have not been blogging much over the last month. I have had a few funerals and weddings that I have been attending. I have recently switched jobs. I was working for Idea Integration as a Microsoft Consultant, mainly around SharePoint and SQL Server consulting, but I left them at the end of last month. By the way, if you are looking for SQL Server or SharePoint consulting, go with Idea Integration.

I am now working as a .NET developer for HCR Software in Jacksonville. We build web based software for Human Resources.

I hope to blog more about .NET, but I am still active in the ColdFusion and Flex space. I plan on having meetings next month for JaxFusion user group on Flex and ColdFusion.

Adobe Air goes 1.0 today

Adobe released Air today, the Rich Internet Application runtime that lets run web application technology on the desktop.

I have written some flex apps that I am planning to release as Air apps. Adobe has lowered the price for Flex Builder to $249. You can upgrade for as low $99 if you have a license for Flex Builder 2.

Ben Forta coming to speak in Orlando on January 21st

I received the following message from Brian LeGros;

Hello everyone,

The Adobe Developers of Greater Orlando (Adogo) user group has been selected as a stop on Adobe's Flex 3 Pre-release Tour. We're fortunate enough to have Ben Forta, Adobe's Senior Technical Evangelist, speaking to the group for this leg of the tour. The meeting will be held on January 21st, 2008 @ 7:00 PM in the Oleander Room at Westgate Lakes Resort and Spa (located at 10000 Turkey Lake Road, Orlando , FL 32819, parking at The Smokehouse). We'll be giving away a copy of Flex 3 and CS3 Web Premium, a pass to CFUnited 2008, as well as lots of branded schwag from Adobe and CFUnited. Food and drink will be provided to all in attendance while it lasts. Registration for this event is available at http://adogo200801.eventbrite.com/. Additionally, more information can also be found on our website at http://adogo.us.

Since this will be the only stop on the tour in the state, we would like to extend an invitation to all of the Adobe User Groups in Florida to join us for our meeting. We are attempting to promote this event as much as possible, but our channels outside of the Orlando area are somewhat limited. If anyone is open to helping, we are definitely grateful for any cross promotions you and your groups can provide for this event.

I apologize if this email has reached you in error; I took these emails addresses from your user group's websites as well as the contact information from Adobe. If there are any questions we can answer for you, please don't hesitate to contact myself, Adam, or Max (see CC). Thanks for your time and we hope to see you all at the meeting.

-Brian LeGros

Happy New Year

2007 has been an exiting year for me because of many changes in my life. The ColdFusion 8 launch was very exiting and has been successful for Adobe. I wish I had more time to devote to the JaxFusion user group this year to cover all of the new features.

I also started a new job working as a technical consultant. I did that to get more hands on experience using the BI features in SQL Server 2005. I also have had the opportunity to work with Microsoft Sharepoint and .NET this year. It has been great to learn new things related to these other products.

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy and safe new year.

Java on Mac OS X: The Silence is deafening

My software update feature on my older Mac showed that I had downloaded Java release 6 for Mac OS X 10.4. I got really exited until I read the release notes;

This release of Java for Mac OS X includes improvements for Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5.0 (J2SE 5.0) and Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 1.4.2 (Java 1.4.2) on Mac OS X. It features Apple's implementation of Sun's J2SE Versions 1.5.0_13 and 1.4.2_16.

It looks like this is a series of security updates. Before Leopard was released Apple had a prerelease version of Java SE 6 on their developer site, which they took down earlier in the year. I had hoped that Apple would release Java SE 6 with Mac OS 10.5, but I was let down when it was released to find it only had Java SE 5.

Apple is known for its secrecy when it comes to releasing new products. I can understand that when it comes to certain products and software. The problem comes when you are trying to develop for a platform. Developers have to have SDKs, APIs and the other tools so they can start to develop for the platform before it is released.

Right now the silence coming from Cupertino is deafening. Apple should come out and say if they are going to continue to develop Java on the Mac so developers can start planning what technology they need to use in their future products.

I have liked Java because I could write applications that can run on any platform, whether it was Linux, Mac or Windows. If Apple is not going to develop Java on the Mac anymore, Sun needs to start developing future versions for the Mac like they do for Windows.

In the mean time I am going to start taking a harder look at Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight as alternatives.

Adobe New Developer Site, AIR beta 2, Flex Beta 2

Adobe has been up to trouble for the last three days. They have launched a new developer site, new updates to the AIR and Flex 3 betas.

I hope to have several presentations coming out based on these technologies future JaxFusion meetings.

I just got my MacBook Pro

I just picked up my new MacBook Pro this morning. This is my first Mac based laptop, even though I have owned and worked with Macs since the 1980's. This is also my first Intel based Mac, so I look forward to start playing with the multiple operating system support.

I purchased Flex builder earlier this year, and I plan on moving that over from my desktop to my MacBook. I plan on installing ColdFusion and MySQL on it as well.

Animation and User Interfaces

Saw this article on Digg today. This Wired article talks about how Apple is adding a new Animation API to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). The important part of this article is that animation is starting to become a more important of the user experience.

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Flex to be Open Sourced

Adobe is Open Sourcing Flex and the Flex SDK. This includes the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers. It also includes the ActionScript debugger and the core ActionScript Libraries from the SDK.

Here is the link to the Labs page.

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