I recently interviewed John Wilker. We talked about a variety of topics, his long ColdFusion career. His migration to Flex, His migration to Conference Co-Superstar... Snoop Dogg even gets a mention somewhere in there. We even go behind the scenes at the 360Conferences series and hear some of the funnier things that go on in producing a top-notch technical conference. Even though he is busy preparing for the 360|Flex conference in San Jose, CA (August 18 - 20). John made time to talk with us.

While on a recent trip to NYC, I ran across a very large TV screen in Times Square. This thing was enormous, easily 40 foot square, if memory serves me right.

I've been asked to make a feature that works with one of the popular map APIs. This feature would take a Start Point, End Point and a distance value and would generate a map showing the progress from the Start Point to the End Point. For example, if the Start Point was Seattle, the End Point was Chicago and the distance value was 1000 miles, the map API would be used to create a map showing both Seattle and Chicago, with a line about 1/3rd of the way there.

Michal Glowacki, I wrote a review of a preso on Cairngorm he did at NYFlex, contacted me to let me know his group released a new Flex based application that manages expenses. This has got to be one of the hottest looking Flex applications I have seen. Have a look at http://www.iexpenseonline.com/. Using this free application, you can manage your budget, track expenses, check out your personal financial position and also work towards self-established goals.

The first installment of the ColdFusion Round Table was released today. A ColdFusion Round Table is a collection of Motley ColdFusion geeks talking about the relevant issues of the day. I was a participant along with Sean Corfield, Peter J. Farrell, Brian Meloche, Terrence Ryan, Brian Swartzfager, Matt Woodward. This round table focused mostly on the recent release of Flex and AIR and we covered quite a bit in an hour and fifteen minutes. Being on a podcast is pretty cool.

I interviewed Aaron West for DZone.com recently. Aaron is a long time ColdFusion, Flash and Flex developer. Aaron is the author of twitterAIR, the first Twitter/RIA integration based on the Adobe Integrated Runtime platform and he has a host of community contributions and accolades to his credit. In this interview, we get to know Aaron, find out how and why he built twitterAIR and hear his thoughts on the direction of Rich Internet Applications.

On the first day of 360|Flex Atlanta 2008, I presented my hands on session titled "Building an XML Reader in Flex" to a packed room. During the 4.5 hour session, we built a working application that pulled remote data and displayed it using charts and tables. The session was geared towards walking newcomers through building their first Flex application. I really had a lot of fun during the session.

I've just released an article at the RIA Zone titled CSS3: A solution for applications, or are we the boiling frogs?. The article is about CSS and HTML for applications and begins like this: I've made countless web pages using HTML + CSS and have no complaints about the technological combination for Internet documents and pages. The rub comes when trying to make an application. Note the distinguishing factors. HTML + CSS is a horrid combination for making applications.

Thanks to Adobe and Ben Forta, I am the proud owner of a fancy Flip video camera. I've been tasked with recording 10 segments from the community answering the questions: Why Flex? Why ColdFusion? Why AIR? Why Flash? Since I'll be at 360|Flex next week, finding 10 people to share will be easy. Come on over and let's hear your answers to these questions. Support your favorite platform! 360|Flex, be there or be square!

On Feb. 5th, 2008 I'll be giving a Hands On Flex Training session to members of the Triangle User Experience (Flex User Group). This will be the first time I've had a run through of the Surfing Stats course I'll be presenting at 360|Flex Atlanta. The training will last about 2.5 hours. We've capped the audience at 40, a number which is about what I expect at the 360|Flex Atlanta conference. Of course I'll have to trim a little off the course to account for a shorter time period.