I mentioned MAX BOFs a few weeks ago, and linked a form to post BOF topics. We've been looking through the list, and have identified several that we think are truly worthy of hosting at MAX U.S. this year. But we still have room for a few more. So, if interested, quickly, use this form!

David Tucker has been publishing a weekly roundup of all of the RIA news for O'Reilly Inside RIA, and now presents the content in a weekly podcast that covers all major RIA technologies and platforms.

Three ColdFusion positions this week:

• Wharton Computing of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) is looking for a ColdFusion developer to create and maintain administrative applications for the school. Details posted online at Jobs@Penn, search for reference number 080825360.
• ImageTrend, Inc. (Lakeville, MN) is looking for an experienced ColdFusion developer to grow their collaborative teams. Experience with SQL database required and working knowledge of .NET and/or Flash desirable. Details posted online.
• Unnamed company (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is looking for a junior ColdFusion developer. ColdFusion 8 experience preferred, but 7 is acceptable. Must also have strong Oracle skills. JavaScript and CSS experience preferred. Contact Virginia Davidson at recruiter Manpower Professional.

FedEx has released an AIR Desktop that lets you track packages, receive shipment notifications, and more.

HostMySite (who actually do host my site) has announced that they are offering hosting on ColdFusion 8 Enterprise licenses for $149 per month.

The Ajax Experience is a Web 2.0 centric conference now in its third year. Adobe is a sponsor of this year's event in Boston, and fellow evangelist Kevin Hoyt will be speaking about AIR and more.

No, I am not going to get into any presidential political discussions here. But, I mentioned PolitiFact to a few people lately who had never head of it, and so am sharing it here, too.

PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to help you find the truth in the presidential campaign. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ analyze the candidates' speeches, TV ads and interviews, and determine whether the claims are accurate or not using a Truth-O-Meter (which measures True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and Pants On Fire). Results are unbiased, non-partisan, succinct, informative, and fun, too!

Is Microsoft using Flash embedded in their Silverlight Windows ads? Fellow evangelist Raghu seems to have found evidence that makes his post a most intriguing read.

If you are running Cold Fusion on J2SE 1.4, please read this tech note regarding Sun's End-of-Life announcement. This primarily affects ColdFusion 7 and JRun 4, and should not be an issue at all if you are running ColdFusion 8.

French partner Kap Lab has released some very impressive Flex / AS3 components. Trees, data visualization, component inspection, and more. And they are all free for the download!

[Via Michael Chaize].

We've had to make some minor MAX scheduling changes. My 3 hour hands-on MAX session Getting Started with Real-Time Flex and AIR via LiveCycle Data Services has been moved to Wednesday, November 19th, 9:00am-12:30pm. That's the bad news. The good news is that the room we're in accommodates over 200 people, and there are still some open slots left. I hope to see you there, and don't forget to bring your laptop!

I previously mentioned that Adobe and Zend were partnering to make Flex and PHP play better together, and today InfoWorld published some more information on the partnership.

ColdFusion Product Marketing Manager Kristen Schofield has created the ColdFusion Evangelism Kit, an 8 page PDF document that helps explain the how's and why's of ColdFusion. This will be posted to Adobe.com at some point, but for now you can grab it from Kristen's blog.

Brazilian Claudio Dias wants to attend MAX in San Francisco, and needs some help covering costs. So he's offering a PDF paper model of Park Wars Darth Vader (yep, a South Park type Darth Vader character) to anyone who helps him attend.

ColdFusion 8 added .NET integration, making it possible for CFML code to invoke .NET classes locally or remotely. The feature obviously won't appeal to all users, but for those in organizations using both ColdFusion and .NET it does open up some very interesting doors. I've posted examples of how to use .NET integration, and others have, too. But beyond snippets and examples, I'd love to hear from any of you using this functionality in production applications. Specifically I'd like to hear about how you are using this feature, I'd like for you to share your thoughts on what works and what does not, and I'd like any suggestions on where you'd like to see us take this integration as we plan and build CF9. Thanks!

Jared Rypka-Hauer IM'd me a while back with some questions on modifying ColdFusion Administrator to use LDAP authentication. The truth is that this is something I wanted for CF8 when we added support for multiple logins with different levels of access, but that feature never made it in for that release. I still want ColdFusion to support this (using LDAP, a database of your choice, and more) - maybe CF9? But Jared needed this functionality for a client right now. Over the IM thread Jared came up with a workable solution to the problem, and I suggested that he blog it for others to take advantage of. And, he's just done so. Thanks, Jared!

We're hosting eSeminars on both ColdFusion and Flex, with the first session (ColdFusion-powered Rich Internet Applications) tomorrow at 2:00pm US East Coast time. Details are posted online for the Adobe ColdFusion 8 eSeminar Series and the Adobe Flex eSeminar Series for Developers.

The beta of AIR Linux 1.1 is now available on Adobe Labs.

Four ColdFusion positions to post this week:

• Indiana University (Bloomington, IN) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Requirements include bachelor's degree in computer science (or closely related field) and three years programming experience, as well as demonstrable database experience. Experience with ASP, .NET, C/C++, Java, XML, JavaScript and revision control systems a plus. Details posted online.
• Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (Atlanta, GA) is looking for a senior ColdFusion developer. Requirements include 3+ years of ColdFusion experience, 2+ years of Java experience, and 1+ year of Flex experience. BA/BS degree and ColdFusion and Java certifications preferred. Contact Brian Smith.
• Ohio State University (Columbus, OH) is looking for a web application developer (with experience using ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, or .NET) and dynamic multimedia development methodologies (Flex, Flash, ActionScript, or Ajax). Requirements also include relational SQL database design skills. Details posted online.
• Altus Learning Systems (Los Gatos, CA) is looking for a ColdFusion developer to immediately fill a position. Contact Ted Cocheu, CEO, at Altus.

Dave McAllister has posted that as part of the Open Screen Project, Adobe has published the spec for Mobile Content Delivery Protocol (Formerly Flash Cast).

Day 2 of the Adobe RIA Developer Summit here in Bangalore is about to start. Yesterday was pretty incredible. A crowd of close to 400 packed the hall from 9am until after 6pm, and listened to keynotes and sessions in two tracks. Michele Turner and I presented the opening keynote, and I presented an afternoon session on Flex data connectivity, talking about HTTP, Web Services, Flash Remoting, Messaging, and Data Services. Other sessions have covered everything from getting started with Flex to best practices to the Flex event model to creating components to working with video and more. The audience here is highly technical, and the questions and feedback have been constant and relevant and somewhat intense. Silicon India posted a story yesterday.

Piotr Walczyszyn is the newest member of the Adobe Platform Evangelism team. Piotr lives in Poland, and has started blogging.

I am in Bangalore, India, for the rest of the week.

The primary reason for the visit is to present at the Adobe RIA Developer Summit, a two day paid event that starts tomorrow (and all attendees get a full copy of Flex Builder which costs more than the event registration fee, nice deal). There is still some room left, so if you're in the area, sigh up quickly.

And while I am here I am also spending time with the ColdFusion team going over "Centaur" features. But, sorry, can't tell you what they are yet. ;-)

I am in Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, waiting for my connection to Bangalore, India, where I'll be presenting at the Adobe RIA Developer Summit.

Sea apple is the popular name for large round sea cucumbers, and this sea apple (which has a diameter of about 12 inches) was introduced to my fish tank this weekend. What a beauty!