Viewing by month: August 2010
Win a Free 2-day Pass to RIA Unleashed 2010
Posted on Aug 12, 2010
There are officially less than 3 months to go before RIA Unleashed 2010 in Boston and I am enlisting the community to help me spread the word about this conference. By doing so, you will have a chance to win one of three 2 day passes I will be giving away. All you need to do is tweet and/or blog about what you are most looking forward to at RIA Unleashed 2010 or your favorite moment from last year. You can actually get a total of 4 entries into the contest. Here are the rules:
- You get 1 entry for a tweet including your favorite moment from last year or thing you are most looking forward to this year. Your tweet must include a link to http://riaunleashed.com. Please include either the hashtag #RIAUnleashed or @riaunleashed for me to track.
- You get 1 entry for tweeting about this contest including a link to this post. Please include either the hashtag #RIAUnleashed or @riaunleashed for me to track.
- You get 2 entries for a blog post including your favorite moment from last year or thing you are most looking forward to this year. Your tweet must include a link to http://riaunleashed.com and a link to this contest post. Please comment on this post with the URL of your blog post so that I can track entries.
- I will pick 3 winners at random based upon all entries (yes, you can only win once) on Monday, August 30th.
Now, perhaps you already bought your ticket or you want to buy it now to ensure you get one of the few remaining early bird tickets in the event you don't win. Don't worry. If you already bought a ticket, I will refund you the ticket price. If that ticket was a 1-day pass for Friday, you will receive the cost of that ticket back plus an upgrade to a 2-day pass. So, what are you waiting for? Buy your ticket today and get blogging and tweeting!
Continue Reading →Intro to Flex 4 for ColdFusion Developers - Presentation & Code
Posted on Aug 09, 2010
I had a great time presenting an introduction to Flex 4 for ColdFusion developers at this year's CFUnited. I think the presentation went really well with the only issue being that there was too much to cover in just one hour. I knew this might be an issue, so I was prepared for it but it meant I had to gloss over some important issues. Nonetheless, the feedback I got from the presentation has all been good, so I think people got a lot out of it anyway.
For those of you who did not attend, essentially this was more an introduction to Flash Builder 4 and its new data-centric development features. The thing is, if you are unfamiliar with Flex, you are unlikely to pop open a text editor and start banging out MXML and ActionScript. However, you are likely to open Flash Builder and try using the built-in wizards...and I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The simple application that I showed was built almost entirely with the data-centric features and code generation built into Flash Builder 4 (and a lot of design view usage). As you get more experienced with Flex, you can begin to do more in straight code but don't be embarrassed to use the wizards and other features to help you get started - that's what they are there for!
Continue Reading →Creating a Simple Event Handler in ColdFusion Using Dynamic Method Injection
Posted on Aug 06, 2010
That’s quite a title, isn’t it? In case it leaves some of you scratching your heads, wondering what I might be talking about, let me explain the concept. Recently, I’d been using Mura CMS a lot and one of the nice things it has (like other projects such as Mango or frameworks in general) is the idea of events. Essentially, the application announces an event (for example “onSiteLogin” is a built in one, but you can create your own) and, assuming you have defined a function in a hanlder to handle that event, this function will be called. This allows you to organize and reuse your code easily because these events can be announced anywhere in your application but you only have one location where they are handled. I set about creating a basic event handler proof of concept myself, and this is what I ended up with.
Continue Reading →Coldfusion Open Source Update - August 4, 2010
Posted on Aug 04, 2010
Six new projects, four updated ones and a ton of announcement, tutorials and presentations this week in ColdFusion open source. Its nice to be back from CFUnited (though only to find out I am on an unplanned two week unpaid vacation before starting at Adobe). One of the things that came up during Charlie Arehart's excellent second day keynote focused on the ColdFusion Community was my open source list. There is some confusion I think since I started the list before I started the update blog post. However, I noted to Charlie and others that essentially the list is dead and if I ever got around to updating my site design (its been 90% done for many months) it would be officially gone. The number of projects outgrew the usefulness of the list format in my opinion. However, this weekly update is alive and well as it has been for more than a few years.
Continue Reading →Come to Beautiful Boston for RIA Unleashed
Posted on Aug 03, 2010
I just finished touring the awesome conference facilities at Bentley University for RIA Unleashed and can share that we are officially adding a fourth track for the Friday conference day. This means that you'll have your choice of any of 5 to 6 hands-on sessions during the each of the morning and afternoon time-slots and 4 sessions during most of the conference day sessions. All of this currently costs only $150 for both days if you caught me at CFUnited and grabbed a discount card with the code THECARD on it (woops...did I let that slip out ;) - code is for 2-day ticket only and gives you $25 off the regular price which essentially gives you the conference day for free). Oh, and don't forget that these prices include lunch both days and a party Thursday night (yes, there will be drinks and food).
Obviously, if you are in the Boston/New England area, this is a no brainer, in my opinion. Even if you factor in a night at the hotel, you're talking $250 or so in total expenses to attend a 2-day conference with hands-on training. However, many of you may be thinking that Boston is too far and that the trip might be too costly. Let me state clearly that nothing could be further from the truth. You can fly or ride to Boston, enjoy the conference and a 2-night stay at the hotel for a combined cost that is less than most conference entrance fees. Using the current sale fares on JetBlue (which is my personal favorite airline - so this is all-bussiness class seating. note: I cannot confirm that you can actually get the prices listed, I am just using them for example purposes), here's some example costs (excluding taxes and airport fees):
- From Washington, DC - $98 round trip airfare + 2 nights at $99 + $150 conference fee = $446
- From Pittsburgh, PA - $78 round trip airfare + 2 nights at $99 + $150 conference fee = $426
- From Raliegh-Durham, NC - $98 round trip airfare + 2 nights at $99 + $150 conference fee = $446
These are just a couple examples. Now, let's imagine you are coming from New York City. Well, you have a number of other options including the Bolt Bus (among others) which would be as follows:
- From NYC, NY - $20 round trip bus fare + 2 nights at $99 + $150 conference fee = $269
Honestly, at any of the above prices I can't imagine your boss not seeing the value in this event. Plus, you will have a great time and meet lots of people. You could even make a weekend out of it and enjoy the rest of Boston. Now, if you are considering attending for the first time, keep in mind we have always sold out and don't expect this year to be any different. Also, keep in mind that the hands-on session day has a cap on attendees because of the nature of the presentations. What this means is, buy your tickets ASAP! Hope to see you there. This is going to be a fantastic event!
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