David McGraw wrote to tell me about Propertyqube, a real estate social network site that he built. It features a property listing service that uses ColdFusion 8 to parse Google Base data.

The Alpha School System (TASS) is an Australian browser-based administration and portal application for K-12 schools. It includes modules for enrollment; student, parent, and teacher records; timetables; fundraising information, and financial accounts. It also offers online community portals for students, parents, and teachers, as well as web-based student grading tools. The application was built using ColdFusion 8 and Flash CS3, and uses ColdFusion 8 PDF generation and integration features extensively. A case-study has been posted on Adobe.com.

A case-study on how voeveo is using ColdFusion 8 has been posted to the Adobe site. This one is worth a read.

On January 1st 2008, the US Senate's lobbyist reform bill (S.1, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007) went into effect. The bill is designed to provide greater transparency in the legislative process, and requires full disclosure pertaining to lobbying activities.

So what does this have to do with ColdFusion? The bill requires that lobbying information be accessible and searchable online, and a new site has been created to do just that. The Lobbying Disclosure Electronic Filing System is built using ColdFusion 8 and Mach-II, and even uses Flex 3 (for example, the advanced data grid used to display search results). Among the ColdFusion 8 features used in this application are PDF generation and PDF form integration.

So there you have it - much needed lobbyist transparency, powered by ColdFusion!

I just received a great message from a ColdFusion developer at The Economist, and just had to share it:

Hi Ben,

I thought I'd let you know that Economist.com has finished it's port to ColdFusion 8 across the whole live cluster and we have seen a reduction in page generation time of around 20% which is amazing and totally unexpected. Additionally we used to get several restarts a day on each server which have vanished. ColdFusion 8 on Windows 2003 with IIS quite simply doesn't crash anymore for us. We had to set-up the right monitoring thread kills e.t.c. but the whole thing is ridiculously stable.

I am amazed.

I love messages like this! ColdFusion 8 rocks, and if you yet to try it for yourself, you owe it to yourself to do so immediately!

Ok, so the title may be a bit of a stretch. ;-) But ... without venturing into political specifics, it is cool to see that GOP front runner Mike Huckabee is using ColdFusion (and Fusebox) to power his website! Thanks to Prayank Swaroop for pointing this one out.

The official National Telecommunications and Information Administration Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program web site is powered by ColdFusion.

Luis Majano notes that NASA JPL has committed to ColdBox. NASA JPL is a long time ColdFusion customer, on one visit there I saw code written in DBML!

Web Host Industry Review has posted a page entitled Choosing a ColdFusion Host, which provides a basic overview of ColdFusion, and then some pointers on what to look for when choosing a hosting company. The article explains that customers may not need to buy a license if they use a hosted ColdFusion, points out that some features may be disabled on shared boxes, and notes that users may want to consider dedicated hosting. It also lists some important questions to ask, and they are less about ColdFusion features, and more about the business and support.

Oh, and the page (and indeed the entire site) is running on ColdFusion MX 7!

My local bank, LaSalle Bank Midwest, has merged with Bank of America. As many of you know, BofA uses lots of public facing ColdFusion, so this was no surprise, but it's still good to see - the official LaSalle Bank-Bank of America Merger page is powered by ColdFusion. Hey, if you need to get a page up in a hurry, would you seriously consider using anything else?

Rachel Unck of Rick Steves' Europe wrote to tell me about this really nice example of <CFDOCUMENT> at work.

Mark Lynch e-mailed me to let me know that he has blogged about a project his company has been working on. The application delivers mobile phone and IM based learning solutions, uses VoiceXML and Jabber/XMPP, and is powered by ColdFusion. Cool stuff!

Since 1998, finalsite has been bringing cutting-edge web design and web software to leading independent schools and organizations around the world. finalsite currently serves nearly 200 independent schools and a total of nearly 500 schools and educational organizations of all types. finalsite offers portals and modules as add-ons to the CMS, including modules for admissions, alumni, board, trustee & friends, faculty & Staff, parents, students, major donor, alerts, athletic, blogs, calendar, commerce, forms, intranet, multimedia, news, and registration. finalsite runs on ColdFusion MX7, and also utilizes Flash.

Simon and Schuster was founded back in 1924, originally as a publisher of crosswords and games, but over the years as the home of many important imprints and significant authors and publications. Simon and Schuster is now owned by CBS, and the Simon and Schuster website, SimonSays.com, is powered by ColdFusion MX 7. This one sent to me by Will Tomlinson.

Terapad is blogging on steroids, an incredibly impressive hosted application that starts with blogging but also includes content management, job boards, image galleries, event calendars, forums, integration with third party services (PayPal, Google Analytics, Flickr, and more), complete CSS based customization, and much more. It's also really inexpensive - free with embedded ads, or $5/month ad-free. And best of all, the entire system is powered by ColdFusion and JRun.

Hot Banana's Web CMS is a ColdFusion powered content management system that is used on corporate web sites, intranets and extranets, landing pages and micro sites for more than 200 companies worldwide in more than a dozen languages. Designed for non-technical users, Hot Banana is an SEO friendly CMS that manages content creation, publishing, and optimization processes. This week Hot Banana announced that they had created and deployed a massive new intranet for Ingersoll Rand in Europe. The site contains thousands of pages, integration with Active Directory, and the ability to save static dumps of the content to Flash drives so they can be used offline. The implementation is the work of Connexion Corporate Communications, a Belgian integrator (who I met briefly in Brussels yesterday).

IMified is an IM based productivity tool that works across all the major networks and offers access to a number of popular web applications, as well as tools like notes, reminders, and to-do's all in your favorite IM client. The service just launched on February 5th, and has been adding lots and lots of users, and getting lots of positive feedback.

The service is powered by ColdFusion MX7, and relies on the built in event gateways to provide the IM integration (the public site is also running ColdFusion) and ColdFusion and the gateways have handled the high load they've been under extremely well. In the words of partners Anthony Webb and Dave Hoff, "we've brought to market a really slick and useful service and couldn't have done it, or at least as fast, without CF."

Troy Pullis noted that TiVo Investor Relations page is powered by ColdFusion. Actually, it looks like TiVo (like many other companies) uses shareholder.com to publish investor information, and shareholder.com is powered by ColdFusion MX7. Still, good to see .cfm pages on the TiVo site, thanks Troy!

The Epilepsy Foundation is the national voluntary agency solely dedicated to the welfare of the over 3 million people with epilepsy in the U.S. and their families. The organization works to ensure that people with seizures are able to participate in all life experiences; and to prevent, control and cure epilepsy through research, education, advocacy and services. And the extensive Epilepsy Foundation web site is powered by ColdFusion MX 7. Thanks to John Farrar for this link.

This one sent to me by Goran ?udina. The official site of the International Monetary Fund is powered by ColdFusion (among several other technologies). As an example, see the IMF Publications page.

Joe's Goals is an online application used to track goals, and sister site Joe's Logbook does the same for journaling thoughts. Both sites leverage Ajax UI and have been covered extensively by the press. And of course, they are powered by ColdFusion. Thanks to Rey Bango for sending these to me (quite a while back actually, I am trying to clean out my inbox and was reminded of them).

Charity Navigator, America's premier independent charity evaluator, works to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace by evaluating the financial health of America's largest charities. They help charitable givers make intelligent giving decisions by providing information on over five thousand charities and by evaluating the financial health of each of these charities. And the entire site is powered by ColdFusion MX. This one sent to me by David Herman, thanks.

Ultimate Fighting Championship is the world's leading mixed martial arts sports association, and the Official UFC web site is powered by ColdFusion. The site seems to have been created by Getfused (also a ColdFusion site) in partnership with EZ Tech Group (yes, also powered by ColdFusion) who also built ColdFusion powered sites for the New England Patriots, Legal Sea Foods, and more. And no, sorry, I am not a UFC fan, I have to thank Will Tomlinson for brining this one to my attention.

The United Kingdom's Healthcare Commission is the independent inspection body for both the NHS and independent healthcare. The Healthcare Commission's web site is powered by ColdFusion MX 7. This one sent to me by Anthony Cooper, thanks.

No, I am not advocating migration up North. But, CanadianAlternative, a site that apparently wants to help "conscientious, forward-thinking Americans" to do just that, is powered by ColdFusion. This one sent to me by Jim Collins, thanks (I think)!