The planning has begun for the next Jacksonville Code Camp. The next code camp will be this August at the UNF campus. If you are not familiar with the Code Camp, it is a free one day development conference put on by the local development community.

One of the things we tried to do last year was to have differing development technologies presented on at the camp. We had a presentation from the Ruby Jax group, as well as several presentations on Adobe Air and Flex.

The conference is still looking for speakers and volunteers. If there is a subject you would like to present on, please submit your presentation subject at the web site.

I have been recently approached by two different companies in the Jacksonville, Fl area that are trying to hire ColdFusion developers. If you live in Jacksonville or are willing to relocate, these are good opportunities.

There are three open positions at Taleo. If you follow this link and do a search for "Software Engineer" it will show the open positions. They are also trying to hire Java, C# and Flex developers.

Another company that is trying find ColdFusion developers is called Andromeda Systems.

The Jacksonville Code Camp location has been moved to the East Pointe Church on Kernan Blvd. just north of Atlantic Blvd. The Venue change is due to Tropical Storm Fay.

The address for the East Pointe Church, 270 North Kernan Boulvard, Jacksonville, FL 32225. Please spread the word.

Today is the last day to register for Jax Code Camp. The code camp is free, and will be this Saturday. Be there or be square.

The Jacksonville Code Camp final schedule has been posted. I am giving all of my presentations in the morning in room 203.

I will be giving three presentations at the Jacksonville Code Camp this Saturday. Two of the presentations will be on Flex, and the other will be on Linq.

This years code camp will have multiple tracks covering development methodologies, .NET 3.5, Flex/Air, Java, Ruby, SQL Server. The event is free, and all you half to do sign up to attend. Tuesday is the last day to register. Here is a list of the presentations I will be giving at the code camp;

Intro to Flex/Air This presentation is a introduction to the Flex and Air technologies from Adobe.

Integrating Flex/Air with ColdFusion This is the same presentation I gave at the last JaxFusion meeting. It covers how to use server technologies with Flex/Air applications.

Linq for SQL This is the same presentation I gave at SQL Saturday earlier this year. It covers the basics on querying at database using Linq.

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.

Adobe has released the ColdFusion 8 updater 1. This contains some hot-fixes, but the real news is that Adobe has released 64 bit version for Windows, Linux and Mac OS 10.5.

Previously the only 64 bit version of ColdFusion ran on Solaris only. If you have been running any server software on 64 bit hardware, you have probably seen improvements in permormance and memory usage.

For Mac OS X users, the installer will now work with 10.5. All of my Macs are now using 64 bit hardware with Mac OS X 10.5. 10.5 also comes pre-installed with Apache 2.2

I am a big fan of open standards. One of the things that has prevented me from upgrading to a HDTV and a new high def player is that lack of a high def format standard.

There have been two camps for the last couple of years for high def video players, Toshiba's HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-Ray. This past weekend Warner Brothers anounced that they were going drop support for HD-DVD and go with Blu-Ray exclusively. I read today on engadget that Paramount was switching to Blu-Ray. That leaves only one major studio behind HD-DVD, that being Universal, and I am sure Universal will drop support as well.

I have not purchased one of these players yet because I did not want to get Betamaxed. I will probably buy a Blu-Ray player now, I am even thinking about getting a Play Station 3.

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;

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.

About five months back I started working as consultant for a company called Idea Integration based here in Jacksonville. I have been doing SQL Server consulting since I arrived. The group I work in specializes in Microsoft technologies, including SQL Server, ASP .NET, BizTalk and Sharepoint. We also do consulting in legacy systems, network infrastructure and Java.

I just finished up a project, and I am available for consulting work. If you would like to contact me for consulting work, you can reach me be going to this link.