I think I am a little behind here on the technology curve, but someone at Adobe showed me this the other day.  I heard that this project was in work, but I never actually took the time to go check it out myself.  So here it is, SearchMe.com a visual way to search the web.  Enjoy!  I am sure this technology will be bought by one of the big hitters eventually.  I love how they used Flex and repurposed the cover flow UI that Apple has so generously introduced in their products.

Reminds me of this statement:

The greatest revolutions come not by the discovery of something that was not known before.
They happen when someone radically changes something that was always there

In this example SearchMe took something like a search engine (already known) and totally redesigned its use, giving users a new experience to a common task such as searching for something on the web.  I like it, cant wait to see more experiences like this across the web. 

Anyone wondered why the iPhone doesnt have the flash player on it?  Something so simple, small and that has so many wide spread users?  It's simple... Apple doesnt want to have competing software on it's products.

Read this for yourself and please feel free to comment your thoughts/opinions.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/14/cocoa-for-windows-flash-killer-sproutcore/
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/06/16/apple-adopting-sproutcore-for-web-applications/

PS: The first link talks about the Flash player being Proprietary... does this guy know about the openflash that was announced? I guess not...

I wanted to start playing with the new LiveCycle DS 2.6 functionality and I wanted to integrate 2.6 with Coldfusion 8.  What I found on Adobe labs wasnt really what I would call straight forward on how to install 2.6 into CF 8.01, maybe it was just me but I like things explained and I cant stand it when the instructions leave out a very important step.  I found some good resources after googling last night and decided I would just combine what I found on my blog for others as a reference.  So grab a beer, sit back and relax, because its really easy to do if you know "exactly" what to do.

Read more...

I offered to talk about my experience at WebManiacs for the guys at the Flex Show (Jeff & John).  I actually haven't had time to listen to the cast, but I hope it was useful.  It's my first time on a podcast, even though Jeff and John are very laid back I was a bit nervous ;)

WebManiacs overall was good, I had a couple small suggestions on the food and length of the conference, but overall the sessions that I attended were very informative.  You can listen to the cast for all the details.

I recall that I said I would upload my notes from the conference, unfortunately two things occured.  I procastinated a little bit and didnt get them up before I left for business travel and my notes are on my macbook which is at home. So I will have my notes from the conference uploaded by the weekend (if nothing crazy happens). I will update this post and include the file here, so stay tuned in a couple days.

I fly out this Friday to prepare for the webmaniacs conference next week.  My wife and I are doing a little site seeing prior to the conference over the weekend.  Should be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to getting away from work for a little bit and spending some QT with my wife. 

I took some time and put my "current" agenda on my google calendar.  They have a useful print option that saves the calendar to a PDF.  I have uploaded my schedule if anyone is interested in seeing what type of sessions I signed up for (see below), I may modify it a little.  I am not thrilled on some of the topics I signed up for the first two days of the conference and may make some adjustments.

I plan on posting my notes daily next week on either the days summary or a particular session.  I haven't decided, it really depends on how much time I have and how much time I want to invest in blogging all the cool stuff I hear about in the sessions and talking with other developers.  So stay tuned.

Download my WebManiacs Session Agenda