BoardFusion (the project formerly known as CfOpenBB) is a "project is to create a world-class open-source web-based message board application written in ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML). BoardFusion will be extremely full-featured, easily skinnable, and fully i18n ready."

Matt Woodward is asking ColdFusion developers to take a look at the user interface preview for the to-be-released BoardFusion.

I'll be in Southern California next week, and will use the opportunity to present Flex 2 to the San Diego ColdFusion User Group on May 1st, 2006. Details will be on the site shortly.

I'll be presenting Flex 2 to the Swiss ColdFusion User Group in Zurich on May 15th, 2006. Details on the group site.

Every once in a while I run into customers running 64bit servers. This is far from a daily occurrence, but the frequency is increasing. And so, here's a question for you:

Are you running 64bit servers yet? Do you plan to in the near future? If so, why, and what OS? And if not, why not?

Carsten Pedersen is MySQL Certification Manager, and he recently reviewed my MySQL Crash Course. He says that "book certainly lives up to it's name and does not waste the reader's time with any gentle introductions or long explanations" and concludes:

Thanks, Carsten!

Flash Player 8.5 is a big deal - a new virtual machine, a new scripting language, dramatically improved performance ... and so Flash Player 8.5 is going to get the version number change it deserves, Flash Player 9.

Katsuyuki Sakai has created JSON Serializer, a ColdFusion Component that serializes ColdFusion objects (struct, query, array, etc.) into JSON format objects.

CFDJ's Simon Horwith weighs in on ColdFusion, Flex, CF in the Adobe era, and more, stating that "this acquisition is the best thing that could have ever happened to ColdFusion". A worthwhile read.

The Flex Developer Derby is your chance to write cool Flex code and win sweet prizes (six chances to win a Xbox 360 and a 42" plasma TV to use it with). The deadline for the contest has been extended to May 31st - more time for you to create one of the winning entries!

Sho Kuwamoto has posted links to Adobe job openings on the Flex team (6 in the U.S. and 3 in India). We're looking for developers, QA engineers, architects, and more. Interested?

It's been a while since I posted any of these, so no complaints please! ;-)

San Diego, CA: Three ColdFusion contractors needed, ColdFusion MX, Fusebox, MySQL. Contact Curtis Kaffer at RT Consulting & Development.

Brighton, MI: Mid-level ColdFusion developer needed. Contact Michael Ewles at CleanTech.

Howell, MI: Full team senior ColdFusion developer, 3+ years of experience with MS SQL 7/2000, strong knowledge of T-SQL, 3+ years of HTML, CSS, JavaScript knowledge. Contact Brett Snellgrove at Dickson Allan IT.

The Active Content Developer Center contains information and links pertaining to the changes in Internet Explorer and how this affects active content (including Flash) used in web pages.

But what about ColdFusion generated Flash, as in Flash Forms where ColdFusion generates the Flash and embeds it in client pages? The good news is that the ColdFusion team is working on a workaround to address this issue specifically for ColdFusion generated Flash. The bad news is that it's still a few weeks away. Stay tuned, we'll post specifics as soon as we have them.

ASP Free.com is running a beginners tutorial on using Web Services in VB6, demonstrating how to invoke ColdFusion Web Services from Visual Basic code.

Sho Kuwamoto has posted a Flex component he calls Sliding Drawer, a panel that slides into view with mouseover (think auto-hide in Windows taskbar). Source code and demo included.

Tumi is a leading brand of high-end travel and business products (including luggage popular with frequent travellers). And the Tumi web site is powered by ColdFusion (and Fusebox).

Eric Lai of Computerworld for his story entitled "More Oracle users plumping for Linux". (I was unable to find the original story on Computerworld, but it has been echoed on Techworld.com and elsewhere).

The story is about Oracle users wanting to consolidate servers and move to Linux. It also briefly mentions tooling, explaining that use of Oracle Application Express and Microsoft Visual Studio are growing, and then Eric makes the following profound statement:

IBM WebSphere and the open-source Eclipse toolkit are also picking up in popularity, while older toolkits such as PowerBuilder, ColdFusion, Borland and NetBeans are losing steam.

And yes, I know the point he is trying to make, But ... a J2EE server, a visual tool, a server/language that has no specific tooling, a company, and a Java IDE ... yeah, right, top notch reporting, Eric!

My laptop is still out for repair, and Adobe IT sent me a temporary one so that I could at least connect to VPN and get some work done. Rather than configure Outlook on this temporary machine, I'm just using Outlook Web Access (the Exchange web interface). But here's the ironic part of all this, Outlook Web Access won't run properly in the default browser, Internet Explorer. It throws JavaScript errors, the little blue e spinning endlessly, and never actually loading any data. So, I installed Firefox on this maching, and bingo, Microsoft Outlook Web Access works in that browser. Too funny.

My primary laptop is dead. Well, not actually dead, but useless at this point. I had installed laptop encryption software, and everything seemed to be fine, but then it started blue-screening on startup. Hey, I guess that's one way to secure laptop contents! The Adobe IT folks are looking at it for me, but for now I am behind on mail and blogging and more, bummer! I am just thankful that this did not happen a week earlier (as I've been on the road relying on that box for months now).