That’s right, as of 12:01 EDT am Monday July 13^th ColdFusion 9 (Centaur) and ColdFusion Builder (Bolt) are available for public beta testing.

Please check them out at Adobe Labs.

Also Terry is doing a presentation for the Online ColdFusion Meetup today. Come with questions, and an eye to see as much as I can fit into two hours.

At the last Flex Discovery meeting the group decided to establish a monthly Flex Discovery meeting schedule (4th Tuesday of every month) instead of bi-weekly. Here is the schedule going forward:

Note: To accommodate free parking for all, future meetings have been moved to Michie North Bldg (directions: http://www.virginia.edu/webmap/popPages/33-918emmet.html )

(map: http://www.virginia.edu/webmap/DRoute29North.html )

1. Tuesday, May 26th – Michie North Bldg , Room 223 (possible presentation on Flash/Flex and the nokia phone…Nic, please weigh in on this J )
2. Tuesday, June 23th – Michie North Bldg , Room 223
3. Tuesday, July 28th – scheduling location: stand by for update
4. Tuesday, Aug 25th – scheduling location: stand by for update
5. Tuesday, Sept 22nd – scheduling location: stand by for update
6. Tuesday, Oct 27th – scheduling location: stand by for update
7. Tuesday, Nov 24th – scheduling location: stand by for update
8. Tuesday, Dec  - TBD

   At the last meeting:

   Glenn Reuther lead a discussion on the CareerPaths project he is working on for HR. It utilizes an extremely intuitive interface based on the SpringGraph component (original inspiration can be found at taggraph.com ). He was soliciting for assistance with the project. This is one of the two projects he brought forward at the beginning of the group.

   Also agreed upon by the attending members was keeping those projects alive. As the scope of the second project (a Google and/or MS Virtual Earth UVA portal based on Flex ) is quite large, it allows group members to contribute whenever and wherever their interest lies (webcams, web services, 3D, connection to existing departmental resources), and it can certainly act as a function of the whole.

   Lightning demo : Glenn Reuther also gave a short demonstration and explanation of a Flex application he is working on. The design is based on a hardware interface for musical performance purposes.

   RJ Bruneel (flex@rjbruneel.com) discussed a Flex project he is working on. He is getting ready for release of a project using the Google Finance API, and we want to support his ingenuity and determination by giving him a channel, first to open his tool to comment and criticism by the Flash/Flex Discovery group, and then to the greater financial community at UVA. Be on the lookout for that Lightning demo !

The February Meetings were a hit. Thank you all for the participation. A special thanks to:

1.  JD Fiscus whom presented Cocomo and Ribit to the group on February 3rd.
2. Matthias Hild whom presented on “leveraging the Flex Framework to add power and integrity to custom Actionscript Classes”

Due to the school closings and ice. We will not have a Flex Discovery meeting today.

Stay warm!

The Best,
David

Michael Pritchard, expert Flex application developer, demonstrated to us all before the holidays that any FLEX developer who wants to be marketable will need to develop using the Adobe standard Cairngorm Framework. Michael has offered to conduct a crash course for us beginning on Wednesday, January 14th at 12:00pm – 1:00pm. Thank you Michael for this opportunity! Over a series of a few meetings Michael will build a FLEX application using Cairngorm before your very eyes…!POOF!

In the meantime, here is some homework 
HOMEWORK
David Tucker’s Cairngorm videos located here: http://tinyurl.com/cairngorm

MEETING DETAILS:
What: “FLEX- THE CAIRNGORM SERIES”: Presentation by Michael Pritchard (Willow Tree Consulting)
When: Wed, Jan 14th, 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Where: Brown Science and Engineering Library (digital classroom), http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/brown/, [location see map: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/map.html ]
Who: Everyone with interest in developing web applications using Adobe Flex.

HOMEWORK: http://tinyurl.com/cairngorm

I’m looking forward to seeing you all on Jan 14th:
David

NOTE: future flex discovery meetings will occur every two weeks. I am working with Brown Science & Eng Library to secure our classroom now. You will get the full schedule soon.

Hello Flex’ers:

ANNOUNCEMENT
The Flex Discovery Group meeting will not take place today. The holidays are pressing on us and we are in the midst of planning some great stuff for the group.

EXCITING STUFF

1. Stand By For The Cairngorm Series!
Michael Pritchard, Willow Tree Consulting, has kindly offered to do a short series of Flex sessions with us stepping us through how to use the standard Flex development framework, Cairngorm, from the ground up! These sessions will begin on January 8th.
- many thanks Michael.

2. Jack Kelly has setup a LAMP server for us all to use. Installed on the LAMP server is PHP, MySQL and WebOrb. Jack or I will send out connection credentials soon for anyone who wants to use the server for Flex discovery purposes.

We will be taking a break from our meeting through the holidays. Flex Discovery meetings will start again on January 8th. Have a great holiday.

Cheers,
David

As mentioned earlier this week on the listserv, there will be a CS4 review the release party today at lunch. Come join us:

Adobe Creative Suite 4,CS4, was released this week and will soon ship to the public! For interested Adobe Creative Suite users, there will be a Creative Suite 4 review/party this Friday at lunch (12 – 1pm) in the Brown Science & Engineering Library Electronic Classroom ( http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/brown/ ). At the gathering there will be:

• Information about new CS4 features
• CS4 licensing information
• Commercial and Educational pricing
• AND COOKIES.

GATHERING: Adobe CS4 Brief Review/Party
WHEN: Friday, Sept 26th, 12:00pm – 1:00pm
WHERE: Brown Science and Engineering Library ,electronic classroom, http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/brown/
WHO: Interested Adobe Creative Suite Folks

Stop by to grab a t-shirt and cookie while they last.

Next Tuesday, September 30th, at lunch time the first Adobe Flex Discover Group application building meeting will take place and anyone interested in learning Adobe Flex is invited to attend! The meeting was originally scheduled for today, but has been moved do to scheduling conflicts and we need a bigger room due to the increased interest. Future meetings are scheduled as follows, so mark your calendars!

• Tuesday, Sept 30th, 12pm – 1pm : Brown Science & Engineering Library Electronic Classroom [location see map]
• Tuesday, Oct 14th, 12pm – 1pm : Brown Science & Engineering Library Electronic Classroom [location see map]
• Tuesday, Oct 28th , 12pm – 1pm : Brown Science & Engineering Library Electronic Classroom [location see map]
• Tuesday, Nov 11th, 12pm – 1pm : Brown Science & Engineering Library Electronic Classroom [location see map]
• Tuesday, Nov 25th, 12pm – 1pm : Brown Science & Engineering Library Electronic Classroom [location see map]
• Tuesday, Dec 9th, 12pm – 1pm : Brown Science & Engineering Library Electronic Classroom [location see map]

Here is the status of the Flex Discovery Group:
Our initial project specs are as follows: build a Flex application that includes

• Video (possible animation of the player)
• Video cue point management
• database connectivity using PHP/MySQL
• Web Cam inputs
• Multi-page/form layout
• WYSIWYG editor (eg. Ability to cut and paste from MS Word)
• File management( upload/manipulation)
• Data validation
• Login
• Good architecture!

This is how it will work:

1. A lunch meeting will take place every two weeks (next meeting sept 30th: at UVa, specific location to be determined).
2. We will start the meetings with ~30 minutes of showing and demoing on the build topics for the week (first one will be on Architecting Flex Apps and Flex Best Practices). Anyone can/should demo.
3. We will build for 30 minutes.
4. We may break off into groups and then come back together to show and tell.

We are trying something new and cool here at AUG’ville:“An Adobe Flex Discovery Group“.

If you can’t join us in person, meet with us online today at 12:00pm here: http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/flexdiscovery!

1. What is that you say? Simply a gathering of Adobe Flex developers or want to be’s sharing and discussing Adobe Flex development techniques over lunch.
2. Who should attend? Adobe Flex developers at any level or developers with no Flex experience who are interested in learning Flex by doing.
3. Who should not attend? People looking for yet another presentation. This is not a presentation, this is a round table of show, tell, and discuss Flex practices, techniques, and actionscript 3.0 programming.

*Bring your lunch and come hungry for Adobe Flex/Flash. Great stuff!*

MEETING DETAILS:
What: Adobe Flex Discovery Group Meeting
When: Tues, Sept 9th , 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Where: UVa Scholars Lab [directions]
Who: Everyone is Invited!

NOTE: for more details contact [the AUG Manager]

The Adobe user group endorses the following public presentation tomorrow at the University of Virginia. You are welcome to attend. The presentation is titled “RDF, and OWL, the Semantic Web, and Linked Data” by Bob DuCharme.

Come learn about RDF OWL and XML/XSLT. Here are the details:

MEETING DETAILS

When: Wednesday, July 30th: 1:00pm – 2:30pm

Where: Newcomb Hall, Room 168 [click for location information]

Title: RDF, and OWL, the Semantic Web, and Linked Data

Description: While some may roll their eyes when they hear about the
Semantic Web, usually because of unfair associations with the
pie-in-the-sky failed promises of Artificial Intelligence, many
developers are already building some very cool applications. In this
presentation, we’ll look at technologies that build on the simplicity of
the RDF data model to enable these applications. We’ll also see how
RDF/OWL enables the coding of useful semantics, and how the Linked Data
movement is building on many Semantic Web principles to make increasing
amounts of valuable data available to your applications.

Bio: Bob DuCharme (www.snee.com/bobdc.blog) is a Solutions Architect at
Innodata Isogen. In a recent XML.com newsletter, editor Kendall Clark
wrote “Does anyone write tech prose as clear as Bob?” Bob is the author
of Manning Publications’ “XSLT Quickly,” Prentice Hall’s “XML: The
Annotated Specification” and “SGML CD,” and McGraw Hill’s “Operating
Systems Handbook.” He’s written over seventy pieces for XML.com and has
contributed to Dr. Dobb’s Journal, IBM developerWorks, perl.com, XML
Magazine, XML Journal, XML Developer, O’Reilly Books’ “XML Hacks,” and
Prentice Hall’s “XML Handbook.” Bob received his BA in Religion from
Columbia University and his Masters in Computer Science from New York
University.