Macromedia will be hosting a MX Conference in Taiwan on November 9-10, and it looks like I'll be attending. I have no details yet, but will post them as soon as they are available.

We are finalizing details of my Blackstone trips to Europe and Japan, and I'll post more details as soon as I have them. For now, these dates are planned:

Tokyo, Japan: August 23rd-25th

Amsterdam, Netherlands: September 6th

Milan, Italy: September 7th

Cologne, Germany: September 8th

I'll be visiting the U.K. too, but don't have cities or dates yet.

This seems to be coming up more and more frequently, ColdFusion developers being asked to defend ColdFusion against a planned move to Java and J2EE. I now have three such messages in my inbox, and so I thought it worthwhile to share my response to this one.

For starters, any suggestion of "we need to stop using ColdFusion because we are going to use Java" demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what exactly ColdFusion is. So, let's start with a brief explanation of the ColdFusion Java relationship.

Applications written in ColdFusion (as of ColdFusion MX) are pure Java. Or, expressed slightly different, ColdFusion runs on a J2EE server (either embedded, or one of your choosing) running a Sun verified Java application (the ColdFusion engine), executing Java bytecode (compiled from your CFML source code). In other words, CFML (the code you write) is a developer-time consideration, not a run-time consideration. There is no CFML at run-time, at run-time you are executing pure Java, no more or less so than had you have written the application in straight Java. Your ColdFusion application IS a Java application, if you deploy a ColdFusion application what you have deployed is Java, it is as simple as that.

Which means that the assertion that ColdFusion and Java are somehow mutually exclusive is just flat out incorrect.

But what about the CFML code you write? Isn't that ColdFusion specific and not pure Java? And isn't that an issue? I don't think so. There is an entire industry of Java add-ons out there, tools, tags, language extensions, and more, and Java shops use these (as they should, after all, why reinvent the wheel?). If your Java code leverages 3rd party add-ons for reporting, or back-end integration, or charting, or ... does that make your code any less Java? Nope, not at all. Experienced developers know that starting from step one is expensive and seldom makes sense, regardless of the language and platform. Experienced developers have toolboxes at their disposal, stuff they can leverage and reuse to be as productive as possible. Experienced developers write modular applications, separating logic and processing and presentation into tiers, allowing these to evolve independent of each other, even allowing them to be inserted or removed independently. And for Java developers, one of these tools should be ColdFusion. After all, why write dozens of lines of Java code to connect to a database when a single tag can accomplish the exact same thing (likely using the same code internally)? And why write lots of code to send an SMTP message using JavaMail APIs when a single tag can do it for you (again, using those same APIs)? You can think of ColdFusion as a bunch of pre-written Java code, stuff you can use so as to hit the ground running. And that makes your app no less Java than had you had done all the work manually.

However, some may counter that CFML is proprietary, and that the fact that you need to pay for an engine to execute your code somehow makes it non-Java. I have actually heard this from customers. So, is this a valid issue? Again, I don't think so. For starters, paid does not equal proprietary, after all, these same customers do not balk at spending big bucks on their J2EE servers (and management tools and professional services and more). Furthermore, there are indeed 3rd party CFML engines out there. I am not going to comment on how good they are and how viable an alternative they are, that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they exist, and that means that CFML is not a single-vendor or proprietary.

Great, so, ColdFusion simplifies Java development, and ColdFusion applications are no less Java than applications written in low-level Java directly. But simplicity and abstractions require sacrificing power, right? Wrong! ColdFusion applications can (and should) leverage Java; Java APIs, Java classes, Java beans, JSP tags, you name it, ColdFusion can leverage it because ColdFusion itself is Java. It's that simple.

So, ColdFusion or Java? The answer should be YES, ColdFusion is Java, and Java development can benefit from ColdFusion. This is not an either/or proposition, it is a "you can have it all so why the heck would you want to do it any other way?" proposition.

You can have your cake and eat it too.

A user e-mailed me to ask how to define JRun server instances as Windows services (so that they autostart). In case others need this same information, JRun comes with a utility named jrunsvc that is used for just this purpose. Documentation for jrunsvc can be found at http://livedocs.macromedia.com/jrun/4/Installing_JRun/install5.htm.

Christian Cantrell blogged this one (http://www.markme.com/cantrell/archives/005679.cfm), America's Most Wanted has a new site up, powered by ColdFusion MX (on Windows, looks like they migrated away from Linux). Site is at http://amw.com/.

It is always good to know of high profile public facing ColdFusion sites, and this one fits the bill. E*Trade Financial is running ColdFusion (it appears to be CF5) at https://investor.etrade.com/investors.cfm. Thanks to James Simpson for alerting me to this one.

Australians Robin Hilliard, Andrew Muller, and Matt Voermanhave launched their new Macromedia Professional Services company, RocketBoots. And they are blogging at http://www.rocketboots.com.au/blog/.

Microsoft using ColdFusion MX? Is it possible? Actually, yes, it is! The Microsoft Office Live Meeting / PlaceWare site at http://main.placeware.com/ is powered by ColdFusion (the homepage is even named index.cfm). Some of the external links are to asp pages, but the core site seems to be ColdFusion (and lots of Flash too). Now we just need to get them to abandon Live Meeting for Breeze. :-) Thanks to Thom Theriault for bringing this one to my attention.

ColdFusion developer Tom Kitta wrote to me to tell me about his freely available XML based ColdFusion powered guest book application. If you want a guest book for your site, go to http://www.tomkitta.com/coldfusion/gb/. Thanks Tom.

Several months ago I blogged the worst customer experience I ever had while trying to get information from AT&T. Well, once again I am blogging about AT&T customer support, but this experience was the exact opposite.

I had a simple technical question (pertaining to GSM network frequencies), and I knew that calling the toll-free number would be a waste of time. I was browsing the AT&T forums to see if anyone else had asked a similar question, and noticed a Tech Support Chat live forum. The chat window is a Java applet, and customers (it prompts for your AT&T wireless number to ensure that you are in fact a customer) can post messages which are queued and responded to. I posted my question, received a response less than a minute later, posted a follow-up question, and again received an almost immediate response. I am more than impressed. If you need AT&T Wireless tech support, try the live forum at http://support.attwireless.com/awswls/support/index.jsp (and if you see an AT&T rep with the nick "Spalding" you'll be in good hands).

We're not yet officially accepting Blackstone beta applications, but Tim Buntel blogged the application URL last week (http://buntel.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=ED6B51CA-4E22-1671-588F1BE8B0B89CAD), so what the heck ...

To apply for the Blackstone beta ahead of the rush, go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=1282566342.

"T-Mobile International and Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced a strategic partnership to bring more expressive multimedia and interactivity to handsets. As a result of the partnership, Macromedia Flash Lite 1.1 will power News Express, T-Mobile’s new mobile multimedia news service initially being launched in the UK, Germany and Austria today. Flash Lite is a version of Macromedia Flash Player specifically developed for mobile phones so that mass market phones can benefit from the power of multimedia Flash experiences. For more information on Flash Lite, visit www.macromedia.com/go/flashlite." Full press release at http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2004/t-mobile.html.

As previously discussed, ColdFusion Blackstone is expected to feature an event gateway that will allow ColdFusion to respond to requests from sources other than HTTP. Sean Corfield has been playing with this feature extensively, and has blogged some details of his IRC gateway which allows Blackstone to log on to an IRC server as a bot and respond to IRC messages. See http://www.corfield.org/blog/past/2004_07.html#000525.

The following is an excerpt from an e-mail I received from Jeff Guillaume ...

Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator (HPANA), http://www.hpana.com. HPANA has become one of the most visited fan sites online with 3 million+ page views monthly, a community of over 14,000 Muggles, and it's all custom built with ColdFusion. The heart of it is a proprietary content aggregation system that culls news headlines from a variety of sources using XML, HTML and text parsing. I make extensive use of CFCs, and have a content administration system for the volunteer staff to post news to the site. Content is syndicated to Google News, NewsNow.co.uk, LiveJournal and many others, by way of our RSS feeds. We've been featured nationally and internationally (see http://www.hpana.com/about/press.cfm) ... If you want to follow book 6 news, subscribe to the RSS feed at our brand new mini-site, http://www.halfbloodprince.info - the first site dedicated solely to book six.

Thanks, Jeff!

I meant to blog this yesterday, but forgot. So, in case you are one of the few who did not hear this yet, FlashPaper is now available as a standalone product. See http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashpaper/.

Government Computers News (GCN) is running a story about an application "which operates within the [Navy's] budget office, uses business intelligence software to make sense of everything from supply chain data to aircraft maintenance costs." The system "draws from 133 Navy and DOD data sources, some dating back to the mid-1980s", and allows over 1350 users to extract data and run reports. And of course, the Web interface is written in ColdFusion. Story at http://www.gcn.com/23_19/news/26624-1.html.

I don't check bags when I fly, but if I did ... Bluebird is a Bluetooth luggage tag. Once paired, Bluebird will communicate with your phone as soon as it is in range (within 30 feet), sending a signal to the phone, and flashing brightly to get your attention. So, no standing at the carousel, instead you sit and wait (probably online via a Bluetooth connection) and when your luggage eventually rolls into range you'll be notified. This type of thinking just warms the heart (and may even justify checking luggage!). See story at http://www.esato.com/news/article.php/id=138.

If you travel across time zones, or simply need to chat with folks in other continents, countries, or states, Time Ticker (http://www.timeticker.com/) is the most useful world time site I have found. The Flash interface allows for time zone selection, as each time zone is selected a list of countries within the time zone are displayed, and countries may be selected off of a master list too. The really annoying thing about this site is the sound effects, there is an option to mute the ticking (I expected ticking, after all, the app is called Time Ticker), but not the arcade game inspired boings, zaps, whooshes, and worse (click on GMT, if you dare). Audio atrocities aside, this one is well worth bookmarking.

Macromedia has announced Contribute 3 (http://www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/) and the new Web Publishing System (http://www.macromedia.com/software/webpublishingsystem/), and several of you have already written to ask about the relationship between the Web Publishing System (WPS for short) and ColdFusion. So ...

WPS is made up of several technologies and features. On the tool side, WPS includes Macromedia Studio and Contribute 3. For those of you who have never seen Contribute, it is a simple Web site editing tool, one that empowers users to quickly create, edit, and publish Web pages (ok, it is a lot more than that, but that is beyond the scope of this post).

New to Contribute 3 is a brilliantly simple review and approval system. If any of you have had to deal with content management systems, you'll know that they typically employ rigid approval rules and systems which stifle flexibility and introduce horrendous bureaucracy into what should be a painless experience. I have lost count of the stories I have heard of organizations deploying content management systems only to find that these make life more complicated than it was previously. In fact, I'd venture to suggest that most content management systems emphasize management over content, and that is part of what Contribute 3 is designed to address. Contribute boasts a remarkably simple review and approval process, one that does not require complex rules to be defined, and one that does not even require anything to be installed on the server (well, nothing more than what would already be used for file deployment, like FTP). Contribute users simply create or edit files, and when done the changes are posted live if allowed, or routed for approval if needed. It is lightweight, non-intrusive, and just works. But it works for static content, and is not really intended for dynamic content. Application pages, like .cfm files, can indeed be edited, but only the static portions of those pages (headers, footers, any HTML). This may work for some ColdFusion applications, it depends on how those are built. It will not work at all for 100% data-driven dynamic sites (where a page contains a series of CFML tags making calls to back-end stuff, and nothing more), but may work for sites that are data-driven but have client-side code (presentation) right inside of the page.

In addition, the WPS includes Contribute Publishing Services (CPS for short). CPS is a Java application that is deployed on top of any J2EE servers (just like ColdFusion). CPS can be used for more sophisticated user directory control (which may or may not be of interest to ColdFusion developers) and to track publishing activity. The latter allows developers (like ColdFusion developers) to write server-side code that is triggered when changes are made within Contribute (a file is edited, a change is routed for approval, approval is given, and so on). The ability to track publishing activities allows ColdFusion Developers to write CFC code to send alerts via e-mail, write changes to databases, move files across servers, and more, all using familiar CFML code.

Or in other words ... Contribute itself may be used to edit the static portions of ColdFusion files, Contribute and the WPS will be of use in managing and editing static content within your applications, the CPS may be deployed on the same server as ColdFusion, and ColdFusion is ideally suited for back-end tracking code.

Lots to think about, and I'm sure lots will be written on the subject in the coming months.

Several months ago I blogged a particularly bad customer service experience, and subsequently mentioned a book on the subject by Adam Bailine. Adam recently sent me a copy of the book, and I had the chance to peruse it this weekend. The book is "Service This! Winning the war against Customer Disservice", and is published by Last Chapter First (http://www.lastchapterfirst.com/). The basic message of this book is that there is a lot of bad customer service out here, and by being calm, persistent, relentless, consistent, and rocking the boat, you can make things better. This is not rocket science, and honestly, while I did find the book somewhat entertaining, I also found the content to be rather obvious and even simplistic. The books core message is sound, and I can see the sample letters being useful to those who need to write complaints. But recommendations like contacting the Better Business Bureau, well, frankly, I know of few companies or consumers who really care what the BBB thinks. So, my opinion of this book is somewhat neutral. This is a small book (under 100 pages), and costs just under $12 (so it is not a major investment), so there is little to lose here. But at the same time, don't expect earth shattering revelations either.

Whois has long been the brute force way to learn about host and domain name registrations, and Network Solutions has long been one of the frequently hit online whois tools. Now Network Solutions has added lots more information to returned data, including IP location, server software, traffic ranking, site thumbnail, and more. Not all data is available for all domains and hosts, but this is still a useful tool. Try it for yourself at http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index.jhtml.

This one is old news, but I was just reminded of it while catching up with e-mail. Jakob Neilson has an article on useit.com on a competition to identify the world's ten best government intranets. The Winning sites (in the U.S., Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Canada) are listed in the article, along with a rundown of the winners' five most used technologies. And the only language / scripting technology listed is ColdFusion. Full story is at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040621.html.

Nokia has announced a Bluetooth keyboard (see http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,58982,00.html). Aside from the conflicting release dates (Q3/2004 on product page, Q4/2004 on FAQ page), reading between the lines gives one the sneaking suspicion that Nokia wants this keyboard only used with Nokia phones (and not as a HID for any Bluetooth device). I hope that that is not the case.

I finally got some time to look at Jeff Peters' "ColdFusion Lists, Arrays, and Structures". Jeff has been an active member of the ColdFusion community for quite some time, and has been a strong advocate for Fusebox (the subject of a book he published a couple of years back). This new title checks in at a svelte 150 pages dedicated entirely to the three data types enumerated in its title. This is an important subject, for many ColdFusion users the only experience they have with them are when using form fields that come back as lists, or accessing default structures (like FORM and URL, without even realizing that these are structures). The book has three primary sections, one for each of lists, arrays, and structures. Jeff's explanations are clear and concise, the examples understandable (if somewhat snippet-ish), and the language is highly readable. Some of the function by function descriptions feel unnecessarily repetitive (more like language docs than in-depth coverage), but these are clearly grouped and I found myself skimming over them easily. My only real complaint is that I'd have loved to see some practical advice (in the "Loose Ends" section, perhaps), things like performance implications, maybe the same simple example presented using different data types so as to better explain their differences and the impact thereof; while the type by type coverage is great, I'd have liked to see Jeff close with taking a step back and putting it all in context (hey, next edition maybe?). Having said that, this book is highly recommended, and if you are serious about CFML development then the less-than-$20 cover price is easily justified. Book details are at http://www.protonarts.com/.

I have no patience for analysts. I have little respect for them, and even less for those who pay them big bucks for their "expertise". Not all analysts mind you, I have not had to deal with them in lots of industries, and maybe some in some industries have some opinions of some value. The ones I have had to deal with extensively (in numerous capacities with several different companies) are the IT analysts.

You'd be hard pressed to find an article in a prominent IT publication that does not quote one of the major analyst firms spouting forth on .NET versus J2EE or WiFi or security or open source or standards or whatever else is the issue of the day. Similarly, you'd be hard pressed to find a CIO of a major organization who does not in some way rely on reports, conclusions, and recommendations provided by these analysts. After all, the IT press and CIO's can hardly be expected to be experts in everything IT related, and so a hefty check and nicely printed whitepaper or briefing is exactly what is needed. Right?

Well, at the risk of generalizing, maybe not. I have read lots of analysts reports, I have spent way too much time with analysts briefing them on various topics, and I have had too many conversations with decision makers who approve all sorts of spending based on analysts reports and recommendations. And I have yet to meet a single analyst who actually knew, or had experience with, what he or she was talking about. Few have ever held IT jobs, and yet they make all sorts of predictions about the IT job market, decisions that actually impact that same market. Few have ever written a line of code, and yet they have no problem discussing languages, coding practices, and methodologies. Few have ever actually touched a server, and yet making infrastructure recommendations is the norm. Few even know what the acronyms they use really mean, but they use them anyway.

How do I know this? Analysts in the IT sector are not unlike analysts in the financial sector. I always find it amusing when publicly traded companies post numbers (good, bad, whatever) only to be followed the next day by analysts changing ratings to buy or sell. Does anyone actually need an analyst for after-the-fact ratings changes? Now, if the financial analyst changed ratings based on research and market analysis, before financials were disclosed, yep, that would be of value to investors, but that is not the way it usually works. And IT analysts are no different. Most seem to just go with the flow, spouting conventional wisdom, getting paid to regurgitate opinions they were just briefed on. I know, because I have done this. I know because I have spent time with analysts, I have briefed them, and have seen the subsequent published data. I have been presented with findings that were my own comments prettied up. Lots of spending and decision making is affected by analyst data, and so the major players make sure to feed the analysts with all the right information so as to ensure that the reports say exactly what they want. Some analyst reports are even funded by the vary companies whose products and technologies are being analyzed. Companies have to do this, because their competitors are doing the same. And as soon as one analyst makes an insightful comment, others are quick to agree. Opposing analysis is not the norm, regurgitation and lemming-like behavior is. And the scary thing is that billions of dollars are influenced by analysts, the futures of products and even companies has been impacted by analysts pontifications.

As a rule, I avoid referring to charts and stats provided by, well, you know who the major players are. I have no faith in them, and have a hard time accepting the fact that these do indeed impact decision making, and a harder time respecting those who rely so heavily on analyst data. When analyst data is presented in a meeting, regardless of whether it is proving may point or otherwise, I cringe. As I said, no faith, at all.

The problem is that I don't know of a better option. The fact of the matter is that IT is complicated and grows increasingly so. Decision making has gotten complex and will continue to do so. Relying on outside experts make sense I guess, so long as they are actually experts, and in my experience few (if any) analysts actually are.

There has to be an alternative, but there does not seem to be one yet. It's a tough one, and it is only going to get worse.