Last year ColdFusion won an award at the Great Indian Developer Summit. This year ColdFusion has won again for Best Web Development Platform (against ASP.NET and more). Other Adobe winners were Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro in the Best Collaboration Solution category (nominated along with WebEx, and more), and Flex for Best Framework.

Our pals at Fig Leaf have posted a Captivate tutorial on how to create PDF forms powered by ColdFusion CFCs.

Sean Corfield has announced that the CFML Advisory Committee will be hosting a BOF at CFUnited to discuss the progress made since the committee was announced at CFUnited just one year ago.

Next week we'll be presenting an e-seminar highlighting ColdFusion 8 and the differences between CF Standard and CF Enterprise. The Right Fit: Adobe ColdFusion 8 Enterprise or Standard will take place on Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at 11:00 A.M. West Coast time.

At MAX we showed an AIR based application used by South African citizens to file their taxes. And now Polish citizens can do the same. e-Deklaracje Desktop is an AIR application offered by the Polish Ministry of Finance. The app was deployed on April 8th, 2009, and was used over 25,000 times in the first three weeks it was online.

I am back stateside. The past few days were insanely intense, but were actually fun. It's been too long since I did one of these country-per-day tours. European ColdFusion Specialist Claude Englebert and I met with about 400 developers, talking about ColdFusion 9 plans, Flex, AIR, Data Services, and more. And the response was incredibly positive (although I was somewhat dismayed by how few people had taken a look at LCDS and BlazeDS, many seem to still not understand what these are).

For those of you looking for the LCDS examples I was referring to, here is what you need.

And as a reminder, for any and all ColdFusion related questions in EMEA, Claude Englebert in your man.

Just in case you absolutely need Twitter at work and happen to have a boss who would not look kindly upon you doing so, meet Spreadtweet, the Twitter client that looks like a boring corporate spreadsheet. Ah, seeing AIR used for the betterment of mankind truly warms the heart. ;-)

[Via Mihai Corlan]

I just got back from presenting to the UK CFUG tonight. 140 developers showed up for 2 hours of LCDS, Flex, and a sneak peek at Centaur and Bolt. The crowd was great, highly interactive, and full of questions (a few of which I even answered).

And tomorrow I have to be up ridiculously early, leaving the hotel at 5:00am to catch a train to Brussels. Pictures coming soon.

ColdFusion hosting partner HostMySite (they do indeed host my site, actually) is now offering an Enterprise Elastic Computing service. Among other things, it gives you the ability to deploy ColdFusion Enterprise onto a Windows or Linux virtual machine through an automated remote deployment tool.

I am in London, and will be spending today and tomorrow meeting with customers, partners, and presenting to a usergroup tomorrow. Later this week I head to Brussels and Amsterdam for more of the same.

Two positions this week:

• Revolutions, Inc. (Columbus, OH) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Requirements include experience with Apache and IIS, JavaScript, CSS, and SQL Server. Details on Monster.
• IMN (Boston, MA) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Requirements include a B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent experience, as well as experience with C#, SQL, Ajax, and a proven history of developing large scale, high performance, data-driven web-based applications. Details posted on LinkedIn.

Integral has released the beta of FusionDebug 3.0, adding support for run to line functionality and setting breaks on runtime custom exceptions, as well as support for Railo 3.1. A press release was posted earlier today.

I'm heading back to Bucharest, Romania! Adobe Romania is hosting a full day developer day on May 19th, 2009, with sessions covering Flex, AIR, LCDS, and more. I am scheduled to present several sessions including an opening session. Fellow evangelist Mihai Corlan has posted more details on his blog, along with a registration link. Mihai will be there, as will evangelists Miti Pricope, Cornel Creanga, Adobe SVP Digby Horner, and more. Registration is open, and some sessions are already sold out!

Haven't submitted your MAX 2009 session and lab proposals yet? Hurry, the Call for papers and topics closes tomorrow.

It's always good to see a hosting company report an increase in demand for ColdFusion hosting services, as in this story about UK hosing company Hostway.

CFWebDay is a 5 hour online event covering all things ColdFusion, and featuring the best known names in the Brazilian ColdFusion community. The free event is scheduled for April 11th, 2009 at 1:30pm local time. Details posted online.

At MAX 2008 in San Francisco, Kevin Lynch announced that Major League Baseball was going to be using Flash for broadcast video. What he did not say at the time is that MLB had been using Silverlight, which they were abandoning for Flash. Greg Sandoval has posted a story on CNET explaining what he's learned about why Silverlight is out, and Flash is in.

The Adobe Affiliate Program lets owners of web sites and blogs recommend Adobe software, and make up to 8% on referrals. Lots more details in the program FAQ.

Yep, the name is a bit of a mouthful, but the "magnifica" part is quite appropriate. This little guy is a sea slug, a member of the nudibranch species, and he joined my fish tank on Friday. This Chromodoris Magnifica is about 2 inches long, with bright vibrant colors, and with bright orange gills and rhinophores. He's (ok, we don't know that he's a he, but "it" seems so impersonal) also surprisingly agile, and can slither around, but also just kind of lets go and allows the current drop him down somewhere else.

Four this week:

• WellPoint (Indianapolis, IN) is looking for a ColdFusion developer with Flex experience. Requirements include proficiency in ColdFusion 8, as well as experience in object oriented development, Ajax, and more. Details posted online.
• Unnamed company (Rochester, NY) is looking for an advanced ColdFusion developer. Requirements include a background that includes OOP, frameworks, and version control, etc. Contact Tracy Logan.
• US Senate Sergeant at Arms (Washington, DC) is looking for a User Experience Architect. Details and links posted by Matt Woodward on his blog.
• Unnamed client (North Hertfordshire, UK) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Requirements include at least 2 years experience with ColdFusion 7 and/or 8, as well as experience with SQL Server, and XML. Experience with Fusebox preferred. Contact Andy Romero at Proveer Consulting Ltd.

Over the past couple of months, the Platform Evangelism team have been handing out free copies of Flex Builder 3 to developers who are out of work, the idea being that they could use their new free time to learn a new skill. We did not launch a full program for this, just a grassroots initiative thought up and delivered by your friendly Adobe Platform Evangelists. We were inundated with requests, and gave away hundreds of copies in the first few days. And it worked, fellow evangelist Duane Nickull gave a copy to a developer who recently told us that it helped him get a new job! But, the incredible response was also overwhelming, we literally could not keep up with all of the inbound requests. So, we brought in the platform marketing team to help, and now <drumroll> ...

We've just launched the official version of the Adobe Flex Builder 3 Professional for unemployed developers program. Accept the terms, fill in the form, and you'll be on your way to learning a new, and much in demand, skill. The program even includes an offer from Safari Books Online. They are providing developers with free 60 day access to an online version of the Adobe Developer Library, which includes some of the most popular books for learning Flex.

As much as I wish that no one would need this help or even be eligible, I'm also really pleased that we've been able to help our fellow developers already, and that we're now ramped up to help even more.

Please, spread the word!

Ted Patrick, aka Mr. MAX, has posted an entry explaining how sessions and content selections are going to work this year, building on a new process introduced for MAX 2008.

I am scheduled to be in Europe at the end of this month for customer and partner meetings. And while I am on the other side of the pond, I plan to use the opportunity to talk about ColdFusion and more (including "Centaur" and "Bolt") at public events in both London and Brussels. Here are the dates and links:

• London, England - April 21st, 2009
• Brussels, Belgium - April 22nd, 2009

I generally avoid political discussions and debates on this blog. I have strong opinions about the economy, bailouts, executive bonuses, congressional hypocrisy, taxation, government intrusion, partisanship, and more. (I know, you are shocked that I have strong opinions!). And I am more than happy to discuss these in person, but, as I just said, I generally avoid doing so here.

But, an anonymous paid ad ran in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (page A4), and the author has managed to clearly and effectively articulate what so many find frustrating. The ad text has really resonated with me, so much so that I have been feeling compelled to share copies of it far and wide. And so, possibly against my better judgment, I am providing a link to the ad text here. Regardless of your political orientation, this one is well worth the read.