I do read each and every message, eventually. And I do reply to every message that needs a reply, even if it does take some time to do so (the rate at which I work through my inbox is directly proportional to the number and length of flights in my schedule).

And I don't mind doing so. Really. It's a lot of work, and very time consuming, but it's an important part of what I do. I could not do what I do without e-mail.

But what I do mind is being forced to jump through hoops to reply to e-mails. I am talking about Spam Arrest and similar mail verification schemes. I used to run into these infrequently, but not anymore. I received 8 yesterday and 2 today (and only 2 were from the same person)! Those are annoying, especially when you reply to lots of mail offline (as I do) and end up getting the verification requests long after the message was written.

I understand wanting to control spam, I really do, but this is just a hassle. If I initiate a thread, ok, then I can see perhaps having to go to a registration page and doing whatever is requested. But if you use one of these systems, and are going to send e-mail messages to others (messages that expect a response), the least you can do is to pre-add the recipients to your filter. Really.

As for me, I just did something I have never done before. I deleted those verification requests instead of registering. Enough is enough.

The next morning (Wednesday) I had to get up at 5ish to grab the first flight to Brussels for customer meetings and a usergroup / seminar event. The latter took place in a movie theatre (a first for me), definitely the largest screen I can recall presenting on (with the notable exception of MAX keynote stages). The only down side to the room was that it was big and dark, and the auditorium style layout does not lend itself to attendee interaction. Still, after a short coffee break, the crowd got going and asked lots of really good questions about Flex, ColdFusion, life at Adobe, and more.

Last night I took the train into Amsterdam, and am about to head over to my final event here in Europe, a usergroup / seminar at a local hotel. Gotta run!

The FDS installation contains a file named flex-enterprise-services.xml which (among other things) defines the channels used for player to FDS communication. The default RTMP channel has a URI defined as rtmp://{server.name}:2038/{context.root}/rtmp, and context.root could not be resolved. Removing {context.root}/ fixed the problem.

Thanks to Pete Farland for figuring this one out for me (long distance via a Breeze shared desktop).

Last night's event in London went very well, a full house and a very lively and interactive crowd. The only problem was that my demos involving Flex Data Services (formerly Flex Enterprise Services) refused to work. (That's, actually, what I am working on right now).

Tonight's presentation will be right here, in the Adobe office. Details on the user group page.

While I don't manage any of the listings, I do manually approve them. Every once in awhile someone will add a bogus listing, and while I do not perform any due diligence to check out the listed companies, I do kill any listings that are obviously not authentic. The same applies to comments and reviews. These are not automatically posted, rather I approve each one, killing those with e-mail addresses like "test@test.com" or with comments like "you suck", and so on. The only other time I get involved is to remove listing of companies no longer in business when I am made aware of them.

And as a rule I do not delete comments. Yes, I am sure that there are some that are fake or flat out wrong, but there is no way I can really verify that, and so unless a comment is obscene or obviously someone messing around, they stay listed. If a hosting company does not like a comment they are more than welcome to post a follow-up, and many have indeed done so.

Over the years I have occasionally received requests from hosting companies to remove comments and negative feedback. I do look at each of these requests, and generally apply the previously stated positioning. I have deleted a few that I never should have approved in the first place, but generally I leave what is listed online.

There is a precedent here. eBay, for example, generally never removes feedback, but they allow recipients to post responses. Amazon.com generally does the same, not removing reviews unless there is a very compelling reason to do so.

But is this the right position to take? What is my responsibility here, if any? The reason I ask now is that a particular hosting company has been asking me to remove comments that they consider to be slanderous and libelous for a couple of years now, and they just sent me an e-mail asking me to do so again. Amongst the complaints are assertions that the comments were posted by individuals whom they claim were never even customers. Of course, I have no way to know that one way or the other. So, if you were in my shoes, what would you do? Should I remove negative feedback any time a hosting company asks me to? Wouldn't that defeat the entire purpose of allowing feedback?

I'd love your comments on this one.

I've been running a Flex Builder 2 hands-on session, giving folks the chance to experience building ColdFusion powered Flex apps for themselves. Some of the attendees were clearly out of their depth, when the instruction "right-click on the project name" is met by a puzzled glassy eyed expression, well, you know you're in trouble. But that aside, most of the participants thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Several said that it was the most fun session they had ever attended, and almost all were visibly impressed and excited at what they could create in so little time.

Fun stuff indeed; fun to use, and fun to demo and teach, too.

For computer geeks interested in how it's all put together, the interface Crossdogs.com members use to create their online press material is a combination of HTML and Flash 8. The loading script used to transfer information into EDT, and then stream any audio or video is XML. And the database is ColdFusion sequel. All audio and video is converted via XML in order to stream through Flash.

Wow, good to know. Glad that description is just for the computer geeks.