ColdFusion News Desk

"Government IT Expo" to Highlight Cloud Computing and SOA

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:45:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today the latest event in its innovative series of real-world technology conferences, Government IT Conference & Expo, a two-day deep dive into the new wave of Internet-based technologies that are changing the way that Federal agencies leverage, procure and utilize IT. GovITExpo, which is being held October 6, 2009 in Washington, DC, builds on the success of SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo, the fastest-growing conference anywhere in the world devoted to the delivery of massively scalable IT as a service using Internet technologies. Data storage, security and software services are among the major themes of the technical program.

AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo Kicks Off in New York City

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EDT

In the tight economy, front-end engineers and front-end engineering can play a conspicuous role: good user experience, as the iPhone spectacularly demonstrates, means good business. At the 7th International AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo which opened Monday in New York, the speaker lineup is as usual dripping with real-world expertise. So here we bring you an A-Z of Front-End & RIA Engineering in the form of the sessions we're serving up today and tomorrow.

Adobe Tries Commercializing Its Online Software

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:30:00 EDT

Acrobat.com, Adobe’s nascent, still-evolving online productivity software, moved out of public beta Monday and into its first foray into commercialization, ahead of any similar move into the cloud by Microsoft. The base widgetry will still be free but Adobe has created two paid subscriptions meant for business users that add capacity and capabilities to the otherwise freebie software.

Adobe's Major Update to Acrobat.com

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:30:00 EDT

“Acrobat.com is poised to become the online destination for team collaboration, with the tools business people need to get work done faster, together, from anywhere. Our customers have moved from e-mailing multiple versions of documents back and forth to collaborating on documents directly in a fluid online environment,” said Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president, Adobe’s Business Productivity Business Unit. “Over the next 12 months, we will continue to add powerful yet simple-to-use team collaboration capabilities that establish a new way to work, while removing barriers to getting work done within and across companies and around the world.”

Ted Weissman and Lois Paul & Partners PR Firm

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EDT

I just read SYS-CON's response to the recent attacks in Fuat Kircaali's Social Media Terrorists blog entry. I realized the email quoted at the end of Kircaali's blog was also copied to Ted Weissman of Lois Paul & Partners, a public relations firm with clients in technology. If this email was sent to SYS-CON based on Weissman's advice to his client, then, in my humble opinion, Ted Weissman and his firm are not qualified to operate as a PR agency to serve technology markets and provide advice to any technology client until they sort out their facts from the Twitter mob fiction. After reading Kircaali's response, it sounds like this pr man is getting his news from Twitter feeds of Al Jazeera instead of reading the facts in a magazine such as Forbes before advising his clients about the "documented questionable business practices" of one of the most respected tech media companies in the world. My question is "Is this man in the business of providing public relations or creating public relations disasters for his clients?"

VeriSign Code Signing Digital Certificates for Adobe AIR Technology

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Learn how to digitally sign your applications on Adobe® AIR™ with a VeriSign® Code Signing Digital Certificate, which verifies the authenticity of the publisher and the integrity of the product.

Creating Layered PDFs with Escape Calls to the PDF Converter Printer

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EDT

The PDF format allows creating groups of mutually exclusive layers where showing one layer will automatically hide the other. These are called radio-button groups and defined using the RBGroups PDF keyword. One can also define which layers are visible by default and which are hidden, for example: /RBGroups [[ 11 0 R 13 0 R]] /ON[ 11 0 R] /OFF [13 0 R] indicates that layers 11 and 13 are grouped and that layer 11 is visible by default whereas 13 is invisible.

Adobe AIR for Linux Alpha Now on Adobe Labs

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced that the pre-release alpha version of Adobe AIR software for Linux® operating systems is available on Adobe Labs (www.adobe.com/go/airlinux). The Linux community of developers can now use proven Web technologies, such as HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash® and Adobe Flex® software, to build rich Internet applications (RIAs) that deploy to desktops across operating systems. RIA developers can extend the reach of their desktop applications on Adobe AIR to Linux users without writing additional platform-specific code, providing access to innovative, branded desktop applications that were previously only available to Mac and Windows users.

Growth by Leveraging Adobe Scene7

Thu, 28 May 2009 08:45:00 EDT

Adobe announced that House of Fraser, a premium U.K. department store group with 62 locations across the U.K. and Ireland, has achieved higher conversion rates, increased average order size and greater customer retention with the Adobe® Scene7® hosted rich-media platform.

Ulitzer’s Amazing First 30 Days in Public Beta

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:30:00 EDT

Even with these impressive first stats, Ulitzer users for the next 12 to 24 months will only be a fraction of the early adopters of tomorrow's social media tools. Ulitzer offers quality content under a managed environment. Google News keyword alerts are already contaminated with meaningless garbage largely due to its automated nature. Instant access to quality content will get more difficult as this erosion escalates. Sites such as Ulitzer will be the only answer to one-stop access to quality content on any subject.

Creating Adobe AIR Native Menu with Flash CS4

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

Menus are an integral part of your life as a software user. You find them on the Web, in desktop applications, on your own operating system, and even on mobile devices like cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) . You often don’t realize how important menus are when you use them. It’s so obvious to have them that you only realize how important they are when they aren’t available. On the Web, you normally have menus regarding the browser, which allow you to access the content of the site you are using. You rarely have menus that give you access to the specific commands and functions of the website. However, things are changing slowly with the advent of Web 2.0 applications, and menus—not only browsing menus but those specifically related to the web application—are becoming more and more frequent. As Flash web developers, you have the following options to create menus for your applications: Adding items to the context menu provided by Flash Player Creating your own menus Both options work very well, but the option of using Flash Player’s context menu doesn’t give you much flexibility. The other option requires a substantial amount of time and effort to obtain valid results if you create the menus for your web application from scratch. When you develop Adobe AIR applications with Flash CS4, you don’t need to worry about how to offer advanced functions with a menu. The framework itself provides various solutions to choose from according to your needs. AIR implements two new classes that aren’t available for Flash Player in a web environment in the flash.display package : NativeMenu NativeMenuItem These classes allow you to create native system menus to use as application menus (on Mac OS X systems), window menus (on Windows systems), pop- up menus, and context menus.

Ben Forta Presenting at Next UKCFUG Meeting

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:00:00 EDT

Ben Forta, Director of Evangelism at Adobe, will be presenting at the UK ColdFusion User Group meeting to be held on the 21st April at Adobe’s central London office.

Will Ulitzer Dominate News Content on The Web? -Gartner

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:15:00 EDT

'Will Ulitzer and SocialYell Dominate News Content on The Web (Eventually)?' is the blog title of Gartner's Anthony Bradley. In his blog entry, Bradley writes: "Hype around Ulitzer.com (the social-journalism news magazine site) is climbing. At one point they were offering authors 200% of their Google AdSense revenue... I am convinced that the only way to change the world is through collectively determining how we spend our money and our votes. Will Ulitzer be this vehicle?"

How Sustainability and Adobe Acrobat 9 Can Save Any Organization Time and Money

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:00:00 EDT

Participants will learn how to increase workplace sustainability with 'eco-effective' communication and collaboration workflows. Made possible though a generous sponsorship grant from Adobe, the eSeminar supports the ISC's mission to increase the understanding of sustainability best practices and to assist individuals and organizations in adopting more sustainable print and digital media workflows aligns with Earth Day.

Ulitzer Responds to Published Reports

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:45:00 EDT

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our readers, authors, and the newly born Ulitzer community for making our March 29 beta launch an astonishing success! Ulitzer is on its way to becoming one of the fastest growing professional viral sites on the Internet.

Clear Toolkit 4: The Road Map

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Here’s the roadmap for Clear Toolkit 4 for the year of 2009: 1. Offer data syncrhonization solution for AIR/BlaseDS applications - March 2009 2. Enhance Flex UI component to support PDF generation on the client - April 2009 3. Release documentation on classes from Clear component library (clear.swc) - May 2009. 4. Offer a solution for Flex-based portals - May 2009 5. Open source most of the components of Clear Toolkit - August 2009

Adobe and Facebook Drive Next Generation of Social Applications

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:15:00 EDT

Adobe and Facebook today announced a joint effort to enable Web developers to create more compelling applications using the Adobe® Flash® Platform and Facebook Platform. Officially supported by Adobe and Facebook, the new ActionScript 3 Client Library for Facebook Platform is a free and open source programming language library that is expected to be a complete resource supporting all Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs) including Facebook Connect.

Adobe's Progress Report

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:45:00 EDT

This week Microsoft will make a number of announcements in the RIA space. The rumor has it that Silverlight 3 is going to be out. The rumor has it that it'll start competing with Adobe AIR. Let's take a quick look at the Adobe's progress report in the RIA space.

Yakov Fain Launches Clear Toolkit Magazine on Ulitzer

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:15:00 EDT

Yakov Fain, one of the top 3 Ulitzer bloggers, launched a new magazine on Ulitzer as a one stop shop for all Flex/AIR/Java developers who decided to use open source Clear Toolkit framework for developing enterprise rich Internet applications.

Not the Newest Kid on the Block, But ColdFusion Has its Merits

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:10:00 EST

What is important about programming languages is to understand the merits of each language and decide which one best suits the application, not only in technical terms, but also in terms of time-to-market, cost of development, availability of a skilled workforce etc.

Ulitzer to Launch ColdFusion Developer's Journal 2.0

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:15:00 EST

Ulitzer to launch ColdFusion Developer's Journal 2.0. ColdFusion Developer's Journal was first launched 12 years ago. Ulitzer will bring more than 7,000 original CFDJ articles and ColdFusion authors from the archives to ColdFusion Developer's Journal 2.0 (http://coldfusion.ulitzer.com/).

Adobe Takes LiveCycle into the Cloud

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:18:00 EST

"By embracing Amazon Web Services to power this offering, Adobe combines its comprehensive enterprise solution with a cloud environment that knocks down barriers to productivity for enterprise developers worldwide,” said Kumar Vora, vice president and general manager for LiveCycle at Adobe, as the company recently announced the availability of Adobe LiveCycle ES Developer Express software - a full version of Adobe LiveCycle ES hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing environment.

Web Services Using ColdFusion and Apache CXF

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:59:00 EST

Since its emergence, Web Service technology has gone a long way towards perfecting itself and finding its right application in the real world. With the maturity of the specifications, Web Service technology, with its power of interoperability, is now the major enabling technology of SOA, which is being adopted by more and more enterprises to build their application integration infrastructure.

Adobe Creates a Sandbox in the Sky

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:20:00 EST

Adobe Monday means to announce that it has made its long-standing LiveCycle ES software accessible through Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3), figuring that this “sandbox in the sky” scheme will create more LiveCycle ES apps faster.

How to Choose an RIA Solution

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:00:00 EST

There are currently more than 200 RIA solutions available, and this number grows daily. Each RIA solution has its strengths and weaknesses, and the levels of security, accessibility, and integration vary. Choosing a suitable RIA solution for creating or enhancing Web applications becomes more difficult for both software architects and software project managers.

Adobe Comes Up Short, Cans 600

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:15:00 EST

As fate would have it, Adobe picked the worst possible quarter to roll out the great update to its flagship Creative Suite widgetry. Because the economy is tanking, it hasn’t been selling the way it was supposed to. As a result, revenues came up short in the November quarter and Adobe has decided to lay off 8% of staff worldwide, 600 people.

ARM to Get Flash

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:30:00 EST

Adobe and ARM are gonna put Flash Player 10 and AIR, the stuff of web video and rich Internet apps, on ARM widgets by the second half of next year. They mean phones, set-tops, MIDs, TVs, car mojo and personal media devices, which have so far only had access to Flash Lite, not the best in browsing. iPhone happens to be based on ARM though whether that'll be true a year from now is unclear since Apple bought Power chipmaker PA Semi.

It's Saturday Evening, and I'm in San Francisco

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:00:00 EST

Of all domestic air carriers, I like Continental the most. They showed Mamma Mia and the food was bearable. Last month, I was in the air for 14 hours flying to Japan, and now the trip across the USA is a piece of cake. I have only carry luggage with me. This small bag has all the clothing I need for four days (4 t-shirts, four pairs of underwear, socks, three shirts, camera, laptop, over-the-shoulder laptop bag, toothbrush and shaver.

MAX is One of the Best Places to Improve Your Technical Flex Skills

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST

I’ll just give you one example. Last week my colleague and I were running a private Flex workshop for software architects of a large corporation who are about to start development with Flex. Needless to say that they are smart and experienced software professionals. Some of them already started working with Flex. While explaining various types of library linking in Flex, I said that if you don’t mention a class in the application, it won’t be included into the compiled SWF. One of the attendees responded, “It took me six hours to figure it out by myself”. He said it all.

The Cloud Comes This Week to San Jose

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST

A round-up of the many themes and topics of interest to infrastructure architects, developers and IT managers featuring at SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo being held November 19-21, 2008 at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California. The conference is expecting a record turnout of senior technologists including CIOs, CTOs, VPs of technology, IT directors and managers, network and storage managers, network engineers, enterprise architects, communications and networking specialists, and directors of infrastructure.

Adobe AIR Needs to Become a Real Desktop Platform

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:30:00 EST

AIR adds to Flex has a pretty straightforward API for working with local files and directories. There is a simple mechanism of installing and upgrading AIR applications. If you want, you can digitally sign them too. AIR 1.5 introduces local encryption, which means that you can encrypt, say a user’s password and save it in a local storage. component allows you to build a Web browser in several minutes. Flex developers would love to have it too...

Adobe MAX 2008: Signing My MAX Speaker Agreement

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:30:00 EST

Reading conference speaker's agreements may reveal some interesting gems. Since I don't have a PR agent, I have to make the following public statement by myself: "I'm not going to damage anyone's reputation (including developers of PureMVC framework) for abuse of design patterns. I'm ready to buy a beer to any Adobe Flex team member who can convince me that LCDS is that much better than BlazeDS."

What Does Obama Revolution Mean to Cloud Computing?

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

The technology blueprint of President Elect Barack Obama, if implemented as promised, bodes well for the future of Cloud Computing. Let me consider some of the Barack Obama's Technology proposals and explain how it is relevant to the success of Cloud Computing. This is not a political post but rather an analysis of President Elect Barack Obama's policies and how it might help Cloud Computing. Please feel free to discuss the policies instead of politics in the comments.

Platform Computing CEO to Present at SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, November 19-21, San Jose, CA

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:00:00 EST

There is much debate raging over whether cloud computing and grid computing are one and the same. In fact, there are many similarities and one key difference separating these burgeoning fields. Both cloud and grid propose an architecture that masks the complexity of managing thousands of commodity servers from their users. Consequently, those managing a grid or cloud require specialized management tools designed for large scale implementation - making it possible to manage a large number of servers without requiring an army of administrators. In both cases, users often serve themselves and pay for their usage as a utility. The key difference, however, is in the types of workloads each system processes, as well as how demand for the utility is generated. This session will explore these similarities and differences and discuss the future of cloud and grid computing.

Adobe Named "Bronze Sponsor" of AJAX World RIA Conference, October 20-22, in San Jose, California

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:45:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that the leading global rich Internet technology provider Adobe Systems was named "Bronze Sponsor" of SYS-CON's upcoming AJAX World Conference & Expo 2008 West, which will take place October 20-22, 2008, at the Fairmont Hotel in the heart of Silicon Valley, in San Jose, California. Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information. For more than two decades, the company's award-winning software and technologies have set new standards for producing and delivering content that engages people virtually anywhere at anytime. From rich images in print, video, and film to dynamic digital content across multiple media, the impact of Adobe solutions is evident across industries and felt by anyone who creates, views, and interacts with information. With a reputation for excellence and a portfolio of many of the most respected software brands, Adobe is one of the world's largest and most diversified software companies

AJAX World RIA Keynotes by Kevin Lynch of Adobe and Scott Guthrie of Microsoft

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Kevin Lynch, who will be keynoting on October 21, 2008, helped originally coin the term "Rich Internet Application" in 2002. He has been at the center of innovation in Flash and Adobe AIR since their inception, and currently drives Adobe’s technology platform for designers and developers across desktops and devices. Previously Adobe's Chief Software Architect, he was promoted to CTO in February '08. Guthrie, who will be keynoting October 20, 2008, was a founding member of the .NET Framework team and today runs the development teams that deliver the CLR, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, IIS7, and the Visual Studio tools for Web, WPF and Silverlight development. Previously the General Manager of Microsoft's Developer Divsion, he was promoted to Corporate Vice President in February '08.

ColdFusion Developer's Journal Special: How to Prevent an SQL Injection Attack

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EDT

SQL Injection attacks are one of the easiest ways to hack into a website. One recent hack, using a script from verynx.cn, involves injecting sql into a web form that then appends some JavaScript code into fields in a database that then gets executed on the client side when a user views a database-driven page.

Voyager Offers Android, .NET CF, Java Runtime Support

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:15:00 EDT

Recursion Software released a private beta version of their Voyager mobile platform, with powerful interoperability for Android, Microsoft .NET and Compact Framework (CF), all Java editions (JME CDC, JSE and JEE), and more than 15 embedded operating systems. The Voyager platform is a powerful cross-platform development environment that allows developers to write one code-set natively in either Java or .NET and publish the code to mobile or desktop nodes that can execute transactions at runtime regardless of the virtual machine they employ. This beta version is an important step towards write once, run everywhere for application messaging and communications.

AJAX and Enterprise RIA Tools - JSF, Flex, and JavaFX

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:45:00 EDT

2008 is going to be an important year for Rich Internet Applications. Most organizations are delivering or planning to deliver Rich Internet Applications; however, at the same time, most IT managers are facing a dilemma: which Rich Internet Application technology and platform to use? The number of different frameworks and libraries is too vast to even consider evaluating a fraction of them.

CFDynamics Announces Renewed Agreement with SmarterTools

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:15:00 EDT

CFDynamics, a ColdFusion web host, has renewed an agreement with SmarterTools that will allow them to pass on immediate value to their customers. When a customers signs up for a dedicated hosting account they will now receive $750 worth of features including SmarterMail, SmarterStats and SmarterTrack.