Flexable Coder

Great Start-up seeks Engineers in San Franciso

Sat, 10 May 2008 15:11:00-0700

We need world-class software engineers to help deliver innovative content and community applications. You will work closely with other industry visionaries to create compelling new features and first of their kind solutions. If you like tinkering with widgets and Java is more than a drink to you, this is where you want to be! Your responsibilities will include: ? Actively participate in all phases of the software development lifecycle to develop cutting edge solutions ? Collaborate with the product managers in the realization of new products by developingboth the technical specifications andsoftware solution ? Participate in establishment of software development standards and processes ? Support business partners in the creation of new interfaces and delivery channels ? Drive the evolution of our unique mobile content delivery and advertizing platforms Qualifications: ? Experience programming and developing highly scalable applications written in Coldfusion and Java. ? Demonstrated ability to work within a large engineering team and share opinions in a collaborative manner ? Must have good oral and written communication skills ? Must be able to work in a quickly changing and fast paced environment ? Experience building international applications is desirable ? Strong hands on SQL relational database experience (Sql Server, Oracle, MySql, Postgres) ? 5+ years developing web server-based applications using Coldfusion and Java ? Must have knowledge of and experience working with web services; that is, coding, planning, and consuming. ? Essential technologies: Coldfusion, FLEX, AJAX, Prototype, Postgres, CSS ? Bonus Technologies: Java, Python, PHP, Linux ? A BS is required. About the Company The company is venture backed and provides a powerful web-telephony platform that seamlessly integrates SMS, IM and voice into a single hosted system compatible with any carrier or handset. Through its patented technology, the company provides a suite of communication widgets and services such as phonecasting, audioblogging, microblogging, instant and large scale group communication (calling & texting) as well as mobile advertising (SMS and audio interstitials). Please respond directly to me.

cfmemcached v1.2 released today - download yours now

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:05:00-0700

I tested and uploaded a new release for cfmemcached today. This update includes a new java library from each branch. Greg and Dustin updated their code, so i'm passing it along to you for your caching pleasure. This new release includes a number of upgrades to the coldfusion piece as well. cfmemcachedNew -

included the updated java library from dustin that has some performance fixes
Update coldfusion library to have a configurable timeout. Base timeout can be set as well as a time out per request, in case you want to extend it to wait for a long running cache or a bulk operation that needs to wait on several memcached responses
more cftries and catches - trying to make the application fail gracefully

cfmemcachedOld -

included the updated java library from greg that has some performance fixes
added a lot more cftries and catches to make it fail better, ie fail gracefully so that it doesn't impact your overall application.

as always, cfmemcached is located at cfmemcached.riaforge.org -- Coldfusion memcached

cfmemcached v1.1 released today

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:55:00-0700

I released a new version of cfmemcached today. I recently went through and made some changes that would make it easier to deploy in different situations. I also made some changes to the new memcached client to make it easier to use and to avoid some timeout issues. [More]

Adobe looking for Beta participants for CS3 Certified Associate Program

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:31:00-0700

Adobe is looking for Beta program participants to help them refine the test for certification. It's a great opportunity to get certification for free and help out the community by making the test the most appropriate test it can be. -------------------- from Adobe ------------------------ Our CS3 versions of the Adobe Certified Associate are in the beta process right now and we need your help to spread the word so we can get enough participants. The exam in beta right now is the Rich Media Communication using Flash CS3. Starting later this month, Visual Communication using Photoshop CS3 will start its beta and next month Web Communication using Dreamweaver CS3 will begin. Beta participant benefits include *Eligible to receive certification on the NEW Creative Suite 3 at no cost! *Set a successful foundation for life-long learning in the digital-media-21st century *Validate skills in one or more areas: Web Communication, Rich Media Communication, or Visual communication *Insure the user experience by providing feedback in the Post-Beta survey To participate in the beta, participants MUST fulfill the following criteria: 1. Be native English speaker (or native-level English speaker) 2. Intermediate level knowledge with current or previous version of Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash or Adobe Photoshop applications. Have any customers you feel would be interested in this sign-up for the beta exams by sending an email to adobebeta@certiport.com with the following information or go to www.certiport.com/adobe 1. Contact Name: 2. Contact Email address: 3. Contact Phone number: 4. Address: 5. City: 6. State or Province: 7. Country: 8. Organization Name:

Adobe Air and Flex 3 preview

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:45:00-0700

I woke up this morning and got this in the mail. Looks like the Flex team is ramping up to pushing Flex out the door. I'm really looking forward to being able to use some of the new Flex features in prod. The testing tools are quite nice as well. The Flex show is going to be here in the bay twice on the 21st in San Fran and 22nd in San Jose. Should be fun... see ya there. --------------------- mail below ----------- Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, the Adobe Platform Evangelist team is traveling to select cities to show off the great new features and some brand new demos. Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder. Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you've been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX. Don't miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour. Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded schwag, we will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability) and a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium at this event! Check out the comprehensive listing of dates at flex.org/tour to see if the tour is coming to your city!

external caching for coldfusion with memcached

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:10:00-0700

What is memcached? memcached is a lightweight cacheing program that allows you to store objects and items in an easily accessed format. The memcached server stores items in a binary format so that it's easy to get these items back. The memcached server is a very light-weight high-availabilty cache system. For you coldfusion heads out there, you can think of memcached as sort of a large struct in ram that holds your stores whatever you throw at it (with some exceptions). Access is quick and non-locking (so there's no waiting around to get stuff if you have several clients hitting it at one time). The server is a stand alone server that you can get to with a client library which zips info up and sends it to the server for you. Not only that, but the memcached server can be put up wherever you have spare ram that's sitting around unused. You can have several memcached servers sitting around and based on a specific algorithm, the memcached client will go out and fetch your stored items from it's servers, however many there are. Wait... caching? coldfusion already has that... why bother? True, coldfusion already has caching. it'll cache queries and it'll cache whatever you want in the application and server scopes. in fact you might not get much out of memcached unless you are trying to run a high-page hit site or are trying to cache a ton of data. For example, coldfusion runs on java under a java instance. there are limitations to the amount of memory you can safely use in coldfusion without running into problems. These are underlying java limitations for the most part, because java intances can only have up to 2 gigs (if you are running cf 7) and i think 4 gigs if you are running cf 8 and remember, coldfusion takes up some of that ram for itself (about 100 mb). I had the opportunity of working at a company where their instance of coldfusion was having a hard time staying up because it was stuffed with too much cached information. The more info you have, the more coldfusion has to keep track of it, and the more your garbage collection has to run on that java instance (to clear out new space) and garbage collection running over 500 mb is faster than running across 2-4 gigs. What memcached allows you to do is to offload that garbage collecting to a separate process and possibly into other servers if needed. It also allows you to off-load memory allocation costs to other machines. For example, if you have a large coldfusion machine with 10 gigs of ram and you are only running 1 instance of coldfusion, that's potentially 4-8 more gigs of ram that is sitting around unused. Another nice thing about memcached is that if you have to restart coldfusion, you don't have to reload all those cached items. As long as the memcached server stays up, you can access those items. Sure memcached sounds good, but aren't there some drawbacks? Yup, there are some drawbacks to using memcached, like 1. using memcached takes a little more code to use than to store stuff in coldfusion. In coldfusion you can do this:


	
		.... query here

and you're done.. however, to use memcached, it takes a bit more code:


	if ( variables.memcached.keyExists("mykey")	{
		mytestquery = variables.memcached.get("mykey");
	}  else 	{
		
		.... query here 
			
		variables.memcached.store("mykey",mytestquery,3600);
	}

All in all, it's a little more code, but not a ton. It does get more involved if you are storing the query based off of parameters. Coldfusion automagically saves and updates stored queries based on the query parameters, whereas you have to manage that in memcached. It's not tragic, but its a bit more work. However, one benefit that you gain is that you can access the stored queries and purge the cached items whenever you want. You are able to do that in coldfusion as well, but you have more control over it with memcached. That all sounds nice, where can i find it? You can find the coldfusion memcached client here: cfmemcached.riaforge.org You can get the memcached server here: www.danga.com/memcached

Buzzword Presentation - online document collaboration

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:55:00-0700

Just saw this presentation on that product that does the online word processing in flash. It's called Buzzword and it's make with flex components. I've seen this thing before at different presentations that have been made at various Adobe events. However, there's a presentation out that you can watch that shows the product in action. It has some pretty cool features, among those is the feature to resize and place pictures. One thing that always seems to be a pain is trying to get proper placement of pictures in a document that you're working on (especially with ms word). Maybe you've had better luck at it than i have, but Buzzword makes it look really easy to place the picture anywhere you want. Other than that, the biggest feature is being able to collaborate on your documents in realtime with tracking and change history. try doing that on ms word. You can check out the presentation here: http://adobedev.adobe.acrobat.com/p91904463/

Please help by taking a survey for Flex 360

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:11:00-0700

Hey, my friend Tom Ortega (founder of the Flex 360 conference) is taking a survey on how to make the Flex 360 conference the best you've ever attended. So far they've had two and i know they are working on more. Here's a link to the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yGMLUk_2f4IRYXqoobzijRuQ_3d_3d Your answers to the survey I'm sure will help him make the conference even better and more responsive to your needs.

high scalability - use cases

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:23:00-0700

A friend of mine just pointed me to a website today with a lot of information about scalability. What looks most informative and interesting is that it has use cases from some of the big website names and how they deal with scalability issues. The website is: http://www.highscalability.com probably one of the most interesting reads there is the article on database "sharding", where to achieve maximum scalabiity, you part out your database in smaller chunks on more midrange servers. makes for a good approach. Rather than scaling up, you scale out. you can use midrange or low end hardware and you minimize bottlenecks. definately a good read if you have 5 minutes on your hands. http://highscalability.com/unorthodox-approach-database-design-coming-shard

Flex 3 (Moxie) now out in public beta

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:14:00-0700

Check it out! Flex 3 is now out in public beta. Go download it! now! :) Flex 3 has some pretty awesome improvements that it's seriously worth checking out. Download the new Flexbuilder 3 moxie app here. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder3/ and here's a good overview of what's new with flex builder 3: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex3_whatsnew.html A couple of the neatest things that i'm excited about are the webservice introspection and the code refactoring. The web service introspection is huge. this allows you to point at a webservice, and then flexbuilder goes and creates a whole set of objects for you to use allowing you to keep strong typing over webservices. The best part is that it seamlessly transfers values over to the internal classes. So Nice!

Beginner tip: cfc's and init function

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:00:00-0700

I was thinking about this over the weekend. If you just started with coldfusion or been reading around about coldfusion and cfc's you've probably read that it's a good idea to have an init function in every cfc that you make. This is a good idea to do for a number of reasons, but I haven't read to many explanations on why to call it init. Init seems to be an arbitrary designation with any reason. It's not. However, it's hard to look at a cfc and see why it would need to be called init and why you would even need one in the first place. the simple answer is: that's how coldfusion interacts with java. however, for a more detailed answer, read on for the explanation: [More]

ColdFusion 8 (Scorpio) now in Public Beta

Wed, 30 May 2007 08:09:00-0700

been wondering what the hype about ColdFusion Scorpio is all about? well you don't have to wonder any more. ColdFusion is now out on Adobe labs for a public beta. Go get it! Download ColdFusion Beta here! Coldfusion has some really compelling new features that are really neat.

Server monitoring (now you don't need to go get a third party monitorying app, you can track it all in coldfusion
line debugging! - This is goign to be awesome. now the same functionality you might have gotten used to in Flex builder, you can now do with coldfusion using an eclipse plugin
multi threaded app calls using easily split your calls out into different threads and join them back into the main call, with a simple call
image manipulation. now you have the ability to resize photos and change photos in real time on the server without needing a third party custom tag to do it.
Exchange integration - almost like outlook for your server
included postgressql support
Performance enhancements!
Improved Flex and coldfusion integration. should make it easier to create flex applciations using coldfusion as a back end system
included AJAX implementation with new AJAX widgets that you can use from within your coldfusion code. Just like the cfform elements, you can include these elements in your pages and create some exciting UI's for your users.

I think that these are some fantastic improvements in the coldfusion server line. Looks like Adobe really put in some effort to get these things working right. Download it now and try it out! If you want to read more about the improvements in the coldFusion 8, this blog has a few more enhancements listed.

beware the dash

Mon, 28 May 2007 22:26:00-0700

At christmas (about 4 months ago) my wife got me an awesome present. she got me a new phone. It's not one of those measley phones that just call people. NO, it's one of those wake up in the morning and serve you buttered toast kind of phones. it's a t-mobile dash. The thing functions great and has everything on it but the kitchen sink. Now mind you it's probably not as snazzy as one of those new fangled iPhones, but it does some really nice things. 1. it has a full qwerty keypad on it (which i love.. i have a hard time with those half keyboard things). it has bluetooth, camera (both video and still), it has wifi access, browser, can connect to your email, open attachments, full calendar, scheduling. It runs on windows mobile, the thing is plainly awesome. Except for one thing. It breaks. A lot. In the 4 months that i've had the thing, the screen has broken twice. First time, about 2 months ago, I had no earthly idea how it broke. I looked at it before I got in my car and the screen was in perfect condition. when I got out of my car an hour later.. screen broken, and not a scratch on it! T-mobile however was great they sent a replacement, and I got it in 3 days, it was great.. Now again, this morning.. I turn it on and it has a cracked screen. I'm pretty sure how it happened, it was in my pocket and i bumped up against my desk. I think that was it. This thing is a featherweight. So now i face a conundrum... this thing obviously can't take the stress of actually being a phone so do I replace the phone (or fix it) knowing that it'll probably get broken again or do i bite the bullet and get a completely different phone, one that can handle a bit of roughing up. My advice... stay away from the featherweight and go for something much more sturdy... sheesh...

Update on coldfusion's misappropriated obituary

Fri, 25 May 2007 15:50:00-0700

Apparently the ColdFusion and Cobol communities generated enough feedback to warrant a follow up article. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9021399&pageNumber=1 I can't believe that i'm even reading the drivel (meaning the original article) but there it is.. I did, and i'm even commenting on their followup. It's hard to get really angry about this stuff because it seems like these rumors go around every once in a while. [me at the watering hole] : Hey Joe, did you hear that you're a dinosaur?
[Joe] : What again? The doctor already gave me a cream to clear that up. Why can't people just let me live in peace? [Joe goes stomping off ]
[me] : touchy..... Anyway. It sure would be nice not to have to keep explaining the business decision but results is what matters.... and ColdFusion delivers. I've been able to put apps together faster using ColdFusion than what it has taken to do a similar app in a different language. I really enjoy working in ColdFusion and FLEX (my two favorite languages/environments at the moment). In my experience in the job market, the demand is there and as long as Adobe keeps working the magic and keeping coldfusion relevant, it'll still be there.

This just in: Rumors of ColdFusion's death overblown

Fri, 25 May 2007 08:12:00-0700

well, unbeknownst to me, somebody came in the middle of the night and offed ColdFusion while it was coming home from a charity art auction in downtown san francisco. I woke up this morning and found a b-line mention for it in the police blotter right next to the working stiff (cobol) found dead riding the subway after just knocking off from work and the other homeless guy that they fished out of the water next to a pier. You can see the full article here [More]