Posted By : Dan Wilson     July 20, 2008 12:00 PM

I recently interviewed John Wilker. We talked about a variety of topics, his long ColdFusion career. His migration to Flex, His migration to Conference Co-Superstar... Snoop Dogg even gets a mention somewhere in there.

We even go behind the scenes at the 360Conferences series and hear some of the funnier things that go on in producing a top-notch technical conference. Even though he is busy preparing for the 360|Flex conference in San Jose, CA (August 18 - 20). John made time to talk with us. John is really fun to talk to and makes for a great interviewee. Listen to the John Wilker CFConversations Interview and let us know what you think.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     July 16, 2008 9:52 AM

While on a recent trip to NYC, I ran across a very large TV screen in Times Square. This thing was enormous, easily 40 foot square, if memory serves me right. At the bottom, I noticed a sign that made me proud, Powered By Adobe Flash

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     July 11, 2008 3:46 PM

Today is a special day for Mike Brunt as this marks the day he will be sworn in as an American Citizen. Becoming a citizen is a long involved process and getting to the finish line is an achievement and a great milestone in one's life.

So a raise of the glass to Mike Brunt, my newest fellow American!

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     July 11, 2008 12:29 PM

If you open a window and listen carefully, you can hear the moaning and wailing of the iPhone crowd as their iPhones are malfunctioning today. (This post isn't about the pure and flawless Blackberry Pearl I carry around and I promise not to bring up the fact that I've never had an update to that phone that left me stuck in 'Emergency Call Mode Only'.)

This post is about a statement of affairs on what I term 'the iPhone Crowd'. You can identify the iPhone crowd by their closely cropped hair, (a la Steve Jobs), their black turtlenecks (a la Steve Jobs), their jean pants (yep, iSteve again) and their mindless raving about how Apple products "Just Work" ^TM.

The iPhone crowd is in an uproar because a software update (just made available) rendered the iPhone unusable (for a little while). In modern day society, we are quite used to ubiquitous reachability. Our social and professional lives kind of depend on it. I take the pain of being out of contact seriously. My point isn't that the iPhone not working isn't a big deal, but the fact that people are surprised. Maybe to an iKoolaide swigging SteveClone this is unexpected, after all, what part of "It Just Works ^TM" doesn't the iPhone team understand.

To many of us, this is simply another software release that has hiccups out of the gate. I've been a part of a number of software released in my time. Most, had great intentions, a nice start, a rushed end, and some issues on deal day. This has been true across the board. From projects of 2 developers working from a napkin-spec to a developmental army augmented with a cadre of PMP certified project managers furiously tracking deliverables, timeboxing effort and managing the Critical Path.

Software development is not easy. In fact, it is downright hard. I'd be willing to bet 99.99% of all software projects have problems when they go-live. Even the best tested applications find gaps in their testing. Spots where the ugly Real World messes up their nice clean model. It is just how it is.

So, since this software 'upgrade' is going just like all other software projects, you can bet these problems are actively being worked on right now by stressed out, hyper-caffeinated people who really want to fix this problem. My iPrediction is that in a day or two, definitely by Monday, the iPhone problems will be largely forgotten. The iPhone Crowd will be back to prancing around in their black turtlenecks, jeans and closely cropped hair and spouting off marketing babble like "It Just Works" all the while sophmorically pointing and laughing at those with other handset brands...

The problem I have with it all is it doesn't "Just Work ^TM". Actually, it often "Just Doesn't Work", (Remember the Leopard release?) but no iSteveClone worth his black turtleneck would dare utter such a thing.

Business as usual, right?

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     July 9, 2008 11:53 AM

I am going to be giving a presentation to The Triangle Area ColdFusion User Group entitled Fun with ColdSpring.

This is the description I am shopping around:

This month Dan Wilson presents on Fun with ColdSpring. ColdSpring is a wonderful framework used when working with CFC based applications. Using ColdSpring effectively reduces the complexity of CC based applications, saves time, makes applications easier to understand and adds a nice tool to the Rapid Development toolkit. Come see what all the fuss is about.

My plan is to show practical examples of how to use ColdSpring in OO applications. I would like some ideas on the sort of stuff I should cover.

So, if you haven't used ColdSpring before and you have questions, please leave a comment and tell me what you would like covered.

If you use ColdSpring some, and you want to know about certain features, please add them in the comments below.

If you are an expert ColdSpring user and you have something fancy that you feel should be definitely covered, please leave a comment.

ColdSpring is a wonderful framework and the topic area is quite broad. I'd like to talk about the things people are most curious about..... your input is appreciated.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     July 9, 2008 8:26 AM

I am on-site this week in NYC. As luck would have it, the NYCFUG met with Michael Dinowitz (a.k.a. Papa Dinnie) presenting on the Google Webmaster Tools.

The majority of my IT experience has been in building enterprise class applications. I do not build websites (DO YOU HEAR THAT, FAMILY?), though I occasionally take on a client that needs help raising visibility for a product or a service so I was excited to hear Michael present on the Google webmaster tools.

If you have never been to an NYCFUG meeting, you should go. Skip the Empire State Building, forget a Broadway show, just go to CFUG. It was probably the most active CFUG meeting I had been to. There were lots of questions from the audience and some heated debates over some of the answers. I laughed, I cried and I thought there might be a stabbing at one point (Editors Note: Remove Gratuitious Exaggeration before publishing). It was a really good time.

So on to the talk. Michael spent an hour going over the Google Webmaster Tools and various strategies to arrange the facets of a website to improve ranking by Google. For example, See those fancy links to content inside the filezilla website?

Have you ever wondered where those come from? Michael covers it in his presentation. He also covers content optimization, site maps, external link management, proper redirects and other important topics.

After listening to Michael talk about this for an hour, I feel much more informed about the tools, tips and tricks I can use to help search engines interpret my site better. I also have a much greater awareness of the tools available that help manage websites. A big thanks to Michael for giving this excellent presentation.

Michael will make his presentation materials available soon. Check the NYCFUG site for more information.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     June 24, 2008 10:48 AM

Today is the last day of the Stockholm AIR Browser War competition. Put on by the Stockholm Multimedia User Group, entrants create cool browsers using Adobe AIR technology and compete to win some cool Adobe software like CS3 Master Collection and CS3 Web Collection.

As I said, the last day to enter is June 25th. Get your submissions in!

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     June 20, 2008 10:06 AM

I've just finished my first CFUnited presentation on Refactoring from Procedural to OO. The presentation was slated for 8:30 and frankly I didn't expect many to show for it. We ended up with a pretty good group and had a nice time talking about sensible ways to migrate into better architectural practices.

While I've made the presentation available from my blog, and you can download the PPT (with CF.Objective Branding), and the supporting code files from the pod on the right titled Refactoring Preso, a better choice would be to view the presentation online at here at slidesix, a slidecasting project by the illustrious Todd Sharp.

If you missed the presentation at CFUnited this morning, I'll be giving another at 4:00 on Saturday. If you missed the CFUnited conference completely, I'll be giving it to the CFMeetup some time in the near future.

Thanks again to the good folks that came this morning, we had a fun time!

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     June 16, 2008 9:30 AM

I'll be at CFUnited 08 this week and am looking forward to seeing my buddies whom I only see a few times a year. I am also looking forward to meeting people whom I've only interacted with via Message Lists, blog comments and other anti-personnel means. Digital communications has been a boon for our civilization and for my career, but it is a little less than fulfilling for High-Extroverted personalities like me.

I'm friendly, wash behind my ears and am nice to animals. Here is a picture of me, if you see me at CFunited before I see you, come say Hi!

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     June 10, 2008 12:19 PM

June 12th, at 6:00 PM EST, I present Refactoring in ColdFusion to the ColdFusion meetup. This presentation helps to show how to move a procedural code base from a procedural architecture to an Object Oriented Architecture. Through the presentation, we look at some procedural code and then look at an object oriented representation. By comparing and contrasting the two code samples, the audience will get a better idea how to use Object Oriented structures and how to migrate an existing code base.

I am excited to give this presentation to the ColdFusion MeetUp. I also am excited because I have some special news to share. I'll let the proverbial feline out of the proverbial containment device during the presentation.

The website for this presentation is http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/calendar/8088894/. We begin at 6:00 EST. (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/)

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