Rob Brooks-Bilson

Macromedia continues to push the mobile experience during the day 2 keynote. Main points are:

• mobile is bigger than the web and will grow at a much more rapid rate.
• Mobile companies already understand how to bill for services, something lacking on the internet.
• Kids growing up with mobile technology will soon be entering the workforce. This will represent a fundamental shift in technology expectations and how technology is used by that group.
• Current mobile experience "sucks". This is Macromedia's opportunity. Get Flash onto mobile devices. Flash has more to offer for the experience on mobile devices than Java.
• New mobile developer program, link on macromedia.com. Contest, newsletter, training, etc.
• Verification program for certifying mobile apps
• FlashCast CDK
• Current opportunities are mainly in Japan, but Europe is growing quickly. The rest of Asia is also poised. The US is way way behind (as in not even on the map behind).

Since I was able to jack onto someone's wi-fi again today inside the general session, I'll try to blog it live as it unfolds (connection willing). Stay tuned again...

One of the highlights of last night's CFC Birds of a Feather session was a tool demo by Tom Schreck. His tool, CFC Power Tools, is a code gen tool for creating database tabels, associated CFCs, and CRUD forms that all tie together. It does a whole lot more as well. Tom has some good documentation on the features/functionality on his site.

One of the most impressive parts of the tool, besides the overall feature/functionality is the UI. It's a beauty.

It's about 9:45pm here in New Orleans, and we're smack dab in the middle of Ray Camden's CFC Birds of a Feather. All in all, about 30 people turned up for the informal discussion on all things CFC. Some good discussion going on here from how and why to get started with CFCs to much more advanced topics.

General themes among those who are just starting are generally among the "why should I use them", "what are the benefits", etc.

We were going to Breeze Live the preso, but we didn't get to Ed in time to get the account all set up. So, we broadcast audio only via a Flashcom app that Steve Rittler wrote. Unfortunately, we only had one person on the other line, but it was an interesting hack nonetheless.

Paul Kenny and I had an interesting side discussion on CFCUnit. If you aren't using CFCUnit for unit testing your CFCs, you should be. Check it out!

We're also tlaking about code gen tools for CFCs and who's working on what. Seems people would like to see some tools for this. I mentioned we (we=Adam Crump) has a CFC Bean generator for Dreamweaver, and he's looking to port it for Eclipse. Also looking to extend it to generate tests for CFCUnit. People also want UML to CFC to UML generators. Some good dialogue here.

I commented earlier today on why Fox News sucks so much. Well now I get to slam CNN as well. After the 2000 election fiasco, we don't want projections reported as final results, which CNN did before putting up a breaking news alert to say that the results they were showing were only projections. Blah to you CNN!

So, tomorrow night (Wed), after the MAX special event, a growing group of us are planning a full on take-over of the Cat's Meow over at 701 Bourbon Street on the corner of St. Peter Street (across from Pat O'Briens).

If you haven't been there yet, Cat's Meow is a karaoke bar. Even if you think you don't like karaoke, this place is a blast. We're planning to head over after the special event. Spread the word and hope to see you there!

Ha - I was just on the Fox News web site, and on their interactive map, they had already called 3 states for Bush, even though the results weren't in for those states yet. Checking back 10 minutes later, they had cleared the data from the map. Go Fox News!

I'm about to present Building for Scalability, the presentation I'm giving three times at MAX. If you aren't already signed up to attend, feel free to drop in as it's a general session, and shouldn't be "sold out".

This session is more a discussion of how we as architects and developers need to plan for scalability in our applications. As the session description says, "Throwing hardware at an application does not make it scalable. Indeed, scalability must be part of every aspect of application design and development. In this session you will learn exactly how applications must be built from the ground up for scalability."

My session discusses designing for scalability, and presents strategies as well as techniques that apply to web application development in general, and ColdFusion application development specifically. The discussion focuses more on planning and testing than it does on actual coding. If you have a chance to stop by, I'd love to discuss how to scalability in the context of your ColdFusion applications!

Not sure if anyone noticed or not during the keynote, but ColdFusion "Blackstone" was sporting a totally redesigned Administrator. They didn't show much, just the main page and one of the gateway screens, but it look's much more modern and clean than the previous administrator, which was starting to show its age a bit ;-)

Mike Downey, Flash Technical Product Manager is giving a sneak peek of the next generation Flash player.

• Dramatic performance improvements
• Bitmap caching of vector graphics (cacheAsBitmap)
• cacheAsBitmap works with components to improve performance (like big accordian panes)
• New graphical capabilities. Pixel level control via graphic effects - Bevel, Drop Shadow, Blur (in and out), Convolution, Glow, Color Matrix, etc. All controllable at runtime. Can be applied to any movie clip.
• New text rendering engine (Saffron). Precise control over anti-aliasing.
• New Flash Video codec. Among the best in the industry. Still support old codec as well. Demo images are pretty impressive contrasting old and new. New capabilities made possible including video alpha channel at runtime (very, very impressive). Makes it possible to see through items in video as well.