I'll be presenting ColdFusion and Flex futures in Atlanta, Washington DC, New York, and Minneapolis the week of June 8th. And now I can confirm one more location, I'll be in Toronto on June 25th. I'll post a link as soon as I have one.

I've mentioned SapphireSteel's Amethyst Visual Studio plugin-in previously. SapphireSteel has just announced the availability of Beta 5 which, among other things, adds refactoring support, improved debugging, and more. If you are a Visual Studio developer who also uses (or wants to use) Flex, this one is worth a look at.

Oh, this one is just too cool! Tour de Flex allows users around the globe to experiment with Flex code snippets and examples. And I do mean around the globe. Greg Wilson just posted a link to a Flex dashboard which uses ILOG Elixir controls to show a real time heatmap of current Tour de Flex activity. LiveCycle Data Services are used for the connectivity, and a GeoIP database maps requests to locations. Very slick. So slick, that I'll even forgive them using PHP pages on the backend instead of ColdFusion (just this once). ;-)

I am in Moscow for a couple of days, the last stop on this Eastern European trip (and yes, I know that it's a day off in the U.S., but I seem to manage to always be working out of the country on days off!). I spent the day with customers and journalists in Adobe's Moscow office. I've met hundreds of journalists over the years, but these three impressed me with the range and depth of their questions on everything from Flex and AIR technical details to competitive positioning to the Adobe Macromedia acquisition to Flash Media Server use to Flash Lite and future mobile plans and much more. And the translator seemed to be able to keep up with me, too! Tomorrow I'll get to present at a local Flex Camp event, and with any luck I'll get to see some of the city tomorrow evening.

I spent most of this week in Bucharest and Prague, and the events in both cities were well attended and highly successful.

I am on my way to London for the weekend, and then next week we do it all again in Moscow. Details on FlexCamp Spring 2009 in Moscow are online.

Yesterday's Adobe Developer Day in Bucharest was a success. Over 200 attendees attended multiple sessions, with presentations from Adobe SVP Digby Horner, Adobe Romania Director Alexandru Costin, fellow evangelists, Mihai Corlan, Miti Pricope, and Cornel Creanga, and other speakers. I presented an opening keynote session, and an afternoon session on ColdFusion. I also got to meet with local press, and took part in a live Romanian Business IT TV show (was supposed to be for 30 minutes, but we were cut off at 24 minutes because the TV station broke away for a speech by the Romanian President, oh well, I guess he has seniority!).

I am now in Prague, and tomorrow we do it all again. Once again, I am presenting an opening session, and am also presenting a session on Data Services. The event will take place at the beautiful and historic National House Smichov, and a large crowd is expected here, too.

I guess it's officially MAX season. The MAX 2009 site is now live (and Agents B and F even made it in to the intro video).

I am in Bucharest, and today I took part in a full day Adobe Developer Day. I head to Prague tomorrow for an event there on Thursday. Next week I'll be in Moscow for customer and partner meetings, and to present at a FlexCamp on Tuesday, May 26th. If you're in either location, please drop by!

Sean Corfield has posted a request for feedback and comments on a CFML Advisory Discussion on using <CFSCRIPT> to build CFCs.

A Business Card Generator, a Resignation Letter Generator, and a Resume Padder. All very "useful" apps, and highly irreverent fun. Cheetos Office Tools is powered by AIR.

One position this week:

• Full Sail University (Winter Park, FL) is looking for a Course Director for the Advanced Server Side Languages and Databases course. The description does not specify which languages and databases specifically, but as per the Program Director there, they'd love to have someone who knows ColdFusion. Some details posted online.

Over the past 24 hours or so, word has gotten out that the next major version of Flex Builder, currently codenamed "Gumbo", won't be named Flex Builder, the final product name will be Flash Builder 4. This is a good thing, it'll greatly simplify explaining the Flex/Flash relationship, an obstacle that we still deal with every time we present Flex. So, the Eclipse based tool will be named Flash Builder, emphasizing that it is used to build apps for the Flash Platform. The Flex framework will still use the name Flex, as will the Flex SDK. This greatly clarifies what Flex actually is, Flex is an ActionScript 3 framework for creating apps for the Flash Platform. It's nice and clean, you can use Flash Builder and/or Flash Professional to build apps for the Flash platform, and when doing so you can start from scratch or you can use the Flex framework (which makes you a Flex developer, so you are free to still call yourself one).

For more on the subject, Tim Buntel has posted his thoughts, as has Lee Brimelow (who also posted a FAQ), Serge Jespers, and Duane Nickull.

IBM China software engineers have published a document on Integrating Adobe Flex and IBM WebSphere Portal.

We launched Tour de Flex at MAX last November, and since then users the world over have been using it to browser and learn Flex. Tour de Flex has become more popular than we ever imagined, so popular that it has now served close to 5,000,000 samples. And to celebrate this achievement, fellow Adobe evangelist Greg Wilson has announced a cool prize giveaway for the first three people to send in a screen shot of the counter at exactly 5 million!

Gartner has published a report on ColdFusion entitled Adobe ColdFusion: Past, Present and Future, with a summary of "ColdFusion continues to provide a strong balance of ease of use and advanced features to support next-generation Web application development solutions."

I've made my feelings about IT analysts known before, but I do have to give credit where credit is due. Gartner had previously made some rather erroneous statements about ColdFusion, and when Adobe contacted them about this, Mark Driver took the time to listen and research and learn and become better educated, and thus this report.

You've got to pay for the full report, but Kristen Schofield has posted quotes and excerpts, including the recommendation "that agencies and companies continue their investment in CF, as it has a strong future with Adobe and is continuing to grow its market."

For any of you finding yourself needing a little more ammo to help sell ColdFusion to your higher-ups, this report can help.

I discovered this one while in Seattle this week. Virginia Mason Medical Center is an award-winning, private, not-for-profit organization offering a network of primary and specialty care clinics throughout the Puget Sound region and a hospital in Seattle. And their website, including the staff portal, is all powered by ColdFusion 8.

We're planning a massive usergroup tour next month, and I have been confirmed for the following locations:

• June 8th, 2009: Atlanta, GA
• June 9th, 2009: Washington, DC
• June 10th, 2009: New York, NY
• June 11th, 2009: Minneapolis, MN

It reads like a newspaper. Updates like a Web site. And delivers like The New York Times. The new Times Reader 2.0 delivers the entire day's Times (including an interactive version of the crossword) in seconds, so you can carry it wherever you go. And it's all powered by Adobe AIR. We first sneaked this app at MAX 2008 in San Francisco, and now it's available for you to download. Oh, it's worth noting that Microsoft built the initial WPF based version of the Times Reader application for the Times three years ago, but that version is no longer available for download.

I'll be spending much of next week and the week after in Eastern Europe, starting in Bucharest where I'll get to present at an Adobe Developer Day, and then on to Pargue. Adobe Czech Republic is hosting a full day conference on Rich Internet Application development and the future of the Internet, and I am presenting several sessions. Registration is now open.

I am on the plane, about to fly to Seattle. I am going to be presenting an introduction to Flex at the 2009 Creative Suite Developer Summit. If you are in the area, and are interested in this no cost multi-day event hosted at Adobe's Seattle offices, there are still spaces available.

Three positions this week:

• Unnamed client (Cleveland, OH) is looking for an ActionScript / Flex developer for a 4+ month contract position. Contact Sean Zetts at recruiter Emerald Resource Group.
• HealthcareSource (Winchester, MA) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Requirements include experience with ColdFusion 7 or later, as well as demonstrable proficiency with SQL, JavaScript, and CSS. jQuery is a big plus, as is proficiency with .Net. Background with at least one framework (Fusebox, Coldbox, Mach-ii, ModelGlue) is important. Contact hcs@netcessities.com.
• eCivis (Pasadena, CA) is looking for a ColdFusion developer to work on a ColdFusion-based SaaS web application. Details posted by Sami Hoda.

Simon Horwith has posted a 4 part series on ColdFusion Architecture for RIAs. He covers ColdFusion Components, Ajax, Flex, LiveCycle Data Services, and more. Not a lot of new info here, but a very worthwhile introductory read. Click for Part 1, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

Matt Gifford has posted a great ColdFusion getting started article on Tuts+ entitled Rapid Development with ColdFusion and CFML.

The last Bug Quash was a phenomenal success, and so the community is doing it again, this time in Indianapolis on day zero of the 360|Flex conference, May 17th, 2009. Details posted online (along with a video recap of the last event).

This post by a new convert to ColdFusion is well worth the read!