Unless you live under a rock, then you probably heard that Apple Inc. announced the details of it’s next iPhone product, the iPhone 3Gs. Those details and others were announced today at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address. In addition to the iPhone news, Apple also talked about the new features in it’s next operating system release, dubbed “Snow Leopard,” the details of the new iPhone operating system and the benefits to iPhone application developers, and finally some new news of laptop upgrades and price cuts.

While I sadly wasn’t at the event live in person, like many people I watched several live streaming feds on popular sites like MacRumors.com. I posted the highlights of the keynote speeches to my Twitter account. Below is a list of those highlights, dubbed the Keynote Key Notes:

• Apple updates MacBook Air and drops price. MacBook Air is available in two models starting with the new entry price of $1,499 for a 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system with a 120GB hard drive and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, and a 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system with a 128GB solid state drive and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics for $1,799. The $1499 entry level price represents a $300 drop from before, while the $1799 model represents a $700 drop in price for the high end model. Meanwhile, the clock speeds have increased from 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz to 1.86GHz and 2.13GHz respectively.
• Apple updated the 13″ Aluminum MacBook and rebrands it a MacBook Pro. the new model specs are: 13″ MacBook Pro. 2.26GHz. 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400. 160GB HD. Firewire for $1199 and 13″ MacBook Pro. 2.53GHz. 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400. 250GB HD. Firewire for $1499
• Safari is 7.8X faster at JavaScript than IE8 (Chrome is only 5X faster). Passes Acid3 test
• Built Expose into the Dock
• Stacks handle lots of content better
• Quicktime X player has a brand new interface (although a scary new Icon)
• Snow Leopard adds full Exchange support to Mail, iCal, etc.
• Snow Leopard will be a $29 upgrade for Leopard users
• Snow Leopard FAMILY PACK will be a $49 upgrade for Leopard users
• iPhone OS 3.0 is a major update with over 100 new features
• Phone OS 3 has integrated copy paste between applications, undo support
• Phone OS 3 has Cocoa Touch support for Text
• Phone OS 3 adds MMS support from all carriers and soon from AT&T (personally I bet they are trying to negotiate it to be included in the plan)
• iPhone OS 3 offers landscape mode in Mail/Notes/Messages
• the new iPhone OS will include full Spotlight search across applications
• iPhone applications now offer full parental controls. Application developers are encouraged to push out application updates with these controls enabled as needed.
• iTunes users can now purchase movies, video, and iTunes U materials from the iPhone directly
• The new iPhone will offer seamless tethering although it is not yet super clear how AT&T will implement / charge for those services
• The iPhone’s version of Safari has better and faster Javascript support and HTML 5 support
• The iPhone OS 3 offers tons of new languages support (Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Korean, Thai, etc)
• MobileMe users can find their lost iPhone on a Google Map if they need to
• If your iphone is lost or stolen, you can send it a remote wipe command that will delete all of your data w/ MobileMe
• in-app purchases can now be made directly from the iPhone. An example app shown was a book store where you could order books all from the application
• Peer to Peer connectivity via Bluetooth will enable things like head to head game play and many other new application ideas
• The new iPhone OS opens up support for external hardware accessories. This was demonstrated with an application that allowed school students to scan images into the phone.
• iPhone application developers can now include Google Maps technology directly within their applications
• Apple Push messages will allow you to push alerts out to your users via their installed applications. You know how your mail app tells you how many messages it has with the little red dot? With the push messaging you will be able to add that to your own iPhone developed applications.
• The iPhone OS 3.0 will be free to all iPhone users (3G and original). $9.99 for iTouch users. Available worldwide on June 17th.
• The new iPhone has been branded iPhone 3Gs, the “s” being for Speed. It has a lot of speed enhancements for activities like downloading email, etc.
• The new iPhone has entirely new insides; it sadly does not yet include a front facing camera
• iPhone3G[s] supports OpenGL|ES 2.0 and 7.2Mbps HSPDA
• iPhone3G[s] now has a 3 MP camera and can capture video as well as images
• The new camera offers touch to focus technology so you can touch an area to have it focus better
• The video captured can be edited right on the phone, with simple cut and paste and timeline controls (think a mini iMovie light. I emphasize “mini” and “light”)
• Video captured by the iPhone can be uploaded to YouTube, Viemo, and many other video sites; images can be sent directly to Flickr, and other popular photo sites
• Application developers will have access to a new video API so their applications will be able to use captured video (and I assume actually capture it using the camera)
• The iPhone3G[s] adds voice controls – just hold down the home button for 2 secs and speak something like “Call Scott Jones” or “what song is playing”.
• The voice controls will be available to application developers via an SDK from YAP, makes of this technology for all sorts of smart phone devices: http://is.gd/T75C
• The new iPhone finally offers data encryption
• The new iPhone will include the Nike+ software out of the box
• The new iPhone has better battery life, offering a 9hr surfing time or 5hr talk time
• Apple has made the new iPhone GREEN. By that I mean it sports GREEN an arsenic-free glass, is BRF-free, and a mercury-free LCD
• The ne iPhone 3Gs will be offered in White or Black at a price of $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB and will be on sale JUNE 19
• The existing 8GB iPhone 3G will remain on sale for $99 starting June 19

Adobe just launched a cool new Flex based product called BrowserLab (formerly meer meer). BrowserLab (http://browserlab.adobe.com) is a Flex application that allows you to load a web page in a variety of popular Web browsers. You can load them in a side by side view, but my favorite is the onion skin mode which overlays one browser version on top of another. Another sweet feature is that this tool is FREE! It only requires you to have an Adobe user account.

I did notice, while on my Mac, that IE 7 WinXP took a lot longer to generate than the others. I assume this is just an early issue that will be addressed soon. There is also an area to load other browser definitions. I haven’t looked into that much, but I hope that means that Adobe will publish some spec on how to load non-standard browser definitions into the application.

This is an amazing tool and I can’t believe it took this long to have this resource available to the mass populous (again for FREE!!). Thank you Adobe!

PS – I love the logo too! Very clever. I’ll be on the look out for a sticker and/or T-shirt with this one!

If you’re into developing for Flash, Flex or AIR you have to check out this magazine. The Flash & Flex Developer’s magazine is chocked full of technical articles and tutorials that will get your mind cooking on some new F/F development.

The latest issue has some great stuff inside including an article for developers new to Flex and some really neat tutorials with using Yahoo! Maps in Flex

I have been picking up issues for a bit now, and I have yet to be disappointed. Check it out for yourself at: http://www.ffdmag.com/

Not sure when this was announced, but following a tweet from Rich Tretola (@richtretola), I found Adobe INSPIRE, described as “a publication from the Adobe Experience Design team.” It’s a pretty neat Flex based e-zine deal that talks about all sorts of next step RIA work Adobe is working on.  The topics are similar to the RIA Buzz newsletter that they send out. One article to check out is the on on multitouch interface technology mashed up with Flex. Very cool stuff.

https://xd.adobe.com

It seems that a lot of people ask the question that my boss asked me recently: “What is Twitter’s business model?” It seems for now they don’t have one for public consumption. They pay for their servers with venture capital money which means that somebody with money thinks they can succeed and be profitable. From their own About pages, Twitter says:

“…we are holding off on implementation for now because we don’t want to distract ourselves from the more important work at hand which is to create a compelling service and great user experience for millions of people around the world.

…we are also very much guided by our philosophy of keeping things simple and intuitive so we like to restrain ourselves with regard to features.

We plan to build Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company…”

But for now it’s all free. Below are a list of blog posts about this topic. I read threw these, and they all make some good points.

I have to say from my point of view, Twitter should never charge. They can’t. Once they start charging users people will stop using. I think they know that and that’s why they don’t. Look at Google. I remember in the 90s when Google was this really simple vanilla search engine that was better than Yahoo!, Alta Vista, HotBot and all the others that were popular then. Today, Google’s core is still that awesome plain vanilla search page and it’s still free and ad free. How are they making money? They have learned how to take their core tech and apply it to other areas that big business will pay for (ex: Google Analytics).

If you ask me, Twitter has this same potential. They collect mini conversations and thoughts of millions users. Looking at individual posts, who cares. Stepping back away from the trees to see the forest, you start to see your customers giving their unbiased feedback about your products and services. You find patches of people talking about the new big technology and how they can use it. You see entertainment venues running contests and surveys, thus driving customers to their sites and store fronts to spend money. This information can be melded into real time political polls. The best part is all this information is free. We the users are already funneling it in as I type.

I suspect the venture capitalists see this same potential. My old boss always said, “he who owns the information, drives the business, and makes the money.” At this point Twitter is stock piling that information. If they can now produce or acquire technologies that allow people to mine that information, to look at it in different ways, and to pipe it into their own products and services then they can charge for that. Then they can make money.

What does all this mean for us? Well for now not much. The big concern is if Twitter is truly stable enough to build off of today? Can we depend on it being around 5 years from now. Probably. It has a huge following, it’s simple, and it has money behind it. All aspects that Google had in 90s. For the time being, it’s free. Our only investment into Twitter is any time we put into it. I see it as a free, fast, and popular way for a company to drum up excitement about it’s products and services, its public events and social good deeds. I see it as a way to gather peoples opinions about my company’s goods via mini-surveys. I see it as a means to distribute deals and run contests. That is how I see myself and my company using Twitter today. It will be up to Twitter as to how we can use them tomorrow and at what cost.

Here’s what others are saying about Twitter future revenue stream:

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/01/02/twittersBusinessModel.html

http://www.centernetworks.com/twitter-business-model

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/01/twitters-busine.html

http://calacanis.com/2008/01/02/the-three-business-models-that-make-twitter-a-billion-dollar-bus/

I use Twitter a lot and have for a while now. I get asked all the time “So what’s this Twitter thing? Why do people find it so interesting?” Over time, I’ve been keeping a text document of the different things I end up telling people in an effort to condense it down to a simple explanation that still gives them enough information to really sink their teeth into Twitter. Here is what I have come up with so far. If you have additional suggestions, I would love to hear about them.

• It’s like chat, but the entire world sees what you say. Sort of like mini-blogging (messages have a 140 character limit).
• On Twitter.com, you can set up your cell phone so you can text in a twitter update (I do that).
• You can reply to somebody’s post by doing the ampersand sign and their handle (like “@molaro that was funny!”).
• You can send them a direct message which is seen only by you and them by starting with a “d” in front (so like “d @molaro thx for your reply”).
• For me, the easiest thing is to use the free version of Twitterrific, a Mac only desktop application. Otherwise, if I had to go to the web page I would never update my status.
• For Windows people, I know that “Spaz” and “Twirl” are good. I think Twirl is better. They are both Adobe AIR apps that allow you to twitter from the desktop. In all these apps, you’ll see the messages sent to you and that you send.
• You can “follow” other people to see their messages as well. As for following, you get odd people following you. Now a lot of spammers. I usually only follow people I know or people from the area, or people who follow other people in my “cloud” (group of friends).
• It’s a good way to meet people in my work field. Take a look at Wayne Sutton or Ginny from the Blog. Watch what they do and check out who they follow. That’ll get you going.
• Other sites, like BrightKite.com let you update where you’re at by passing in an address or location name. (there are tons of little sites like these)
• Lastly, there are “service” twitter accounts. I set one up for my local Adobe Users group (http://twitter.com/rdaug). Those basically just broadcast updates. Ours posts whenever our RSS updates. I have seen weather accounts, traffic accounts, bars, and political candidates.
• • I also follow &STS124 which is the NASA feed to the current space station mission. They tweet live info about the space walks and stuff.
  • On a similar vein, I follow &MarsPhoenix which is info from the Mars rover. Play-by-plays of what it’s doing.
  • @BarackObama will get you updates of what he’s up to
  • @Timer lets you pass in a message and minutes, and then it will send you that message back in those about of minutes (a reminder tool)
  • @MYNC_WX_Durham is durham local weather
  • Follow @Twitter for updates on the system and outage/service notices

Personally, I also follow lots of industry gurus. People’s who’s books I own or Adobe big shots and stuff like that. Also, follow former co-workers. Stuff that’s interesting to me.

So that’s my soapbox on Twitter.

It seems like this is a big year at Adobe MAX. There are a lot of new and exciting packages, tools, and frameworks being announced. Here’s the quick list:

Bolt, Adobe’s new Eclipse based development tool for ColdFusion developers
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Bolt

Durango, a framework that allows developers to build customizable Adobe AIR applications
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/durango/

Flash Catalyst, formerly codenamed Thermo, is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/

Adobe Wave, an Adobe AIR application and Adobe hosted service that work together to enable desktop notifications (like Growl)
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Adobe_Wave

PatchPanel, a Flex library and set of services that make it possible for SWF files to work as Adobe Creative Suite CS3 and CS4 plug-ins
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/PatchPanel

Configurator, a utility that enables the easy creation of panels (palettes) for use in Adobe Photoshop CS4
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/configurator/

More on Centuar (CF 9)
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Centaur

Alchemy, that allows users to compile C and C++ code into ActionScript libraries (AVM2)
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/alchemy/

Genesis is the code-name for a new product initiative at Adobe with the objective of joining business applications, documents and the web on every knowledge workers desktop with integrated collaboration capabilities
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Genesis

Codename “Cocomo” is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cocomo/

Stratus is a hosted rendezvous service that aids establishing communications between Flash Player endpoints. Unlike Flash Media Server, Stratus does not support media relay, shared objects, scripting, etc
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Stratus

PROBLEM
Using Coldfusion, you have run a query or procedure that returns a CLOB (Character Large Object) data type. You need to display this content in your web page or write it to a file. If you wrap your returned CLOB variable in a <cfoutput> you get an odd output like “[C@183eeb0". If you try to <cfdump> the returned CLOB you get a giant array of objects. So how do you get your data?

SOLUTION

EXPLANATION
First, I can't take full credit for this. One of the Java guys I work with helped me figure this out. A CLOB is a "collection of character data." In my case, I am using Oracle, and it has its own "construct" for the CLOB. In other words it's an object of sorts. When you put this object in the <cfoutput> tags, you get the string's identifier, just like you would if you output a Java object. When you dump it, again just as with a Java object, you see an array of nested objects, one object per character.

While doing a <cfset> is creating a Java String under the hood, Coldfusion gets to decide how to create the string. To get our CLOB to display, you need to create an instance of a Java String using the CreateObject() method, and then call the init() function. The init() constructor function can take a variety of arguments and knows how to translate each into a string. Passing in the CLOB as an argument, the init() function treats it as a char[] (character array) and “allocates a new String so that it represents the sequence of characters currently contained in the character array argument.” So, in other words, it knows what the array is and loops through it, putting each character back together as a giant string.

In an Adobe AIR app I am working on, I need to programmatically disable / enable a items in a menuBar component, based on Internet connection status. I already have a function that listens for changes in the online status and updates a global variable when it changes, so I know when I loose an Internet connection. Now, I just need to change the disable / enable properties in my menuBar. After several tries, I figured out what I needed to do.

First here is my setup:

In my main MXML file, I have the actual Flex MenuBar component with properties. That line of code looks lke:
<mx:MenuBar x=”0″ y=”0″ id=”cbMainMenu” labelField=”@label” showRoot=”false” width=”100%” buttonMode=”true” dataProvider=”/assets/menu.xml” />

The dataProvider is an XML file that looks like:

In my project, anytime I detect a change in Internet status, I want to set the “Contact Support” option to disabled/enabled.

So to get access to that here is the dot syntax:
cbMainMenu.dataprovider.source[0].menuitem[1].submenuitem[1].@enabled = false;

To break that down it’s:
+ cbMainMenu is my MenuBar component’s ID (change this to match yours)
+ dataProvider is the XML file I have pasted above
+ source[0] is a reference to the actual data in the dataProvider
+ now I just walk the XML tree, skipping the root node, with menuitem[1].submenuitem[1]. That gets the 2nd sub-menu item of the 2nd menu item (remember the count starts at zero)
+ Last is “@enabled” which is the enabled attribute (@). It could have just as easily been @label to change the text.

Adobe ColdFusion makes writing web services a very simple task. In general you write a standard Coldfusion component (CFC), set it’s access type to “remote” and set output to “false”:

<cfcomponent>
    <cffunction name="getMonthAbbreviation" access="remote" output="false" returntype="string" hint="Returns the month abbreviation for a given month.">
       <cfargument name="mymonth" type="string" required="yes" hint="A full month name">

       <cfset var monthAbb = DateFormat(ARGUMENTS.mymonth & " 1, 2008","mmm")>

       <cfreturn monthAbb>
    </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

That’s it. You have a web service. You can view it’s defintion (WSDL) by pointing your Web browser to: http://www.yoursite.com/youwebservice.cfc?wsdl. Depending on your browser you will see either the WSDL definition as XML or a blank page (do a view source). It should look something like (partial code below):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<wsdl:definitions targetNamespace="http://web services" xmlns:apachesoap="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap"
xmlns:impl="http://web services" xmlns:intf="http://web services" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:tns1="http://rpc.xml.coldfusion" xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" xmlns:wsdlsoap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<!--WSDL created by ColdFusion version 8,0,1,195765-->
<wsdl:types>
<schema targetNamespace="http://rpc.xml.coldfusion" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<import namespace="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"/>
<complexType name="CFCInvocationException">
<sequence/>
</complexType>
</schema>
</wsdl:types>
<wsdl:message name="getMonthAbbreviationResponse">
<wsdl:part name="getMonthAbbreviationReturn" type="xsd:string"/>
</wsdl:message>
<wsdl:message name="getMonthAbbreviationRequest">
<wsdl:part name="mymonth" type="xsd:string"/>
</wsdl:message>
<wsdl:message name="CFCInvocationException">
<wsdl:part name="fault" type="tns1:CFCInvocationException"/>
</wsdl:message>
<wsdl:portType name="example">
<wsdl:operation name="getMonthAbbreviation" parameterOrder="mymonth">
....

Now, if you want to call your web service in Coldfusion, start a new CFM page and add the following code:

<cfinvoke web service="http://www.yoursite.com/youweb service.cfc?wsdl" method="getMonthAbbreviation" returnVariable="myMonthAbb">
    <cfinvokeargument name="mymonth" value="December">
</cfinvoke>

<cfoutput>My abbreviated month is: #myMonthAbb#</cfoutput>

Something to mention here is that when you invoke a web service for the first time, Coldfusion will cache it behind the scenes. While this will make the initial call a little slower than normal (you probably will not notice), the purpose is to make all additional calls to that service faster. You can see cached web services listed in the Coldfusion Administrator.

While this is a nice feature, when you are developing the service, it can be a big pain. If you change the service, Coldfusion doesn’t always do a great job of refreshing the cached definition. Sometimes it will update the service, which is great. However, more often than not, you will need to open the CF Administrator tool and delete the service from the list, forcing CF to re-cache the updated version when you browse to it again. Even then, this technique doesn’t always work, leaving a CF restart as the only option to clear your web service definition.

Returning Complex Types Using CF Web Services

While Coldfusion makes it simple to return basic values like strings, numbers, or arrays via a web service, your end users may need more complex data returned. In Coldfusion, complex data is often passed around in CF structures. These are great “associative array” type data objects. Using a CFC as a standard component you can return a structure of data with no issue. This method also works via a web service, however the resulting XML looks more like a hash map than the nice structure design you may want.

In this example, I have added a new function to my web service called getMonthStruct (and yes I had to clear the web service cache in the CFAdmin to see the changes!). This method simply returns a struct of month names with their associated numeric value. As you can see the XML data returned in the soap envelope has key and value nodes nested in item nodes. While this works, it is not as clean as it could be.

For our example, what we really want is a list of nodes named the month name with the numeric value nested inside. To get this result we need to create a custom Coldfusion component and return that custom “object”.

To build a custom component, start a new CFC file. The CFC should have an opening component tag, and nested cfproperty tags for each piece of data you plan to return. That’s it. Following our months example, you would write a “Calendar.cfc” file and add properties like:

<cfcomponent>
    <cfproperty name="January" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="February" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="March" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="April" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="May" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="June" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="July" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="August" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="September" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="October" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="November" type="numeric" required="false">
    <cfproperty name="December" type="numeric" required="false">
</cfcomponent>

Keep in mind this isn’t the best example. Building a “person” CFC might make more sense, where the properties are things like Name, Address, City, State, Zip, Phone, etc. The properties can be of any standard type (Date, Array, Boolean, String, etc) as long as your main CFC web service can set them correctly. Keep in mind that this is just a component definition. This is not the CFC your end user will call. They will still call the original service from above, after we modify it like so:

<cfcomponent>
    <cffunction name="getMonthAbbreviation" access="remote" output="false" returntype="string" hint="Returns the month abbreviation for a given month.">
       <cfargument name="mymonth" type="string" required="yes" hint="A full month name">

       <cfset var monthAbb = DateFormat(ARGUMENTS.mymonth & " 1, 2008","mmm")>

       <cfreturn monthAbb>
    </cffunction>

    <cffunction name="getMonthStruct" access="remote" output="false" returntype="struct" hint="Returns a struct of months">
       <cfset var myCal = "">
       <cfset var monthName = "">

       <cfloop from="1" to="12" index="m">
          <cfset monthName = DateFormat(m & "/1/2008","mmmm")>
          <cfset StructInsert(myStruct,monthname,m)>
       </cfloop>

       <cfreturn myStruct>
    </cffunction>

    <cffunction name="getMonthObject" access="remote" output="false" returntype="Calendar" hint="Returns a object of months">
       <cfset var myCal = "">

       <cfobject component="Calendar" name="myCal">
         <cfset myCal.January = 1>
         <cfset myCal.February = 2>
         <cfset myCal.March = 3>
         <cfset myCal.April = 4>
         <cfset myCal.May = 5>
         <cfset myCal.June = 6>
         <cfset myCal.July = 7>
         <cfset myCal.August = 8>
         <cfset myCal.September = 9>
         <cfset myCal.October = 10>
         <cfset myCal.November = 11>
         <cfset myCal.December = 12>

       <cfreturn myCal>
    </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

I left in the first “months” method, getMonthStruct(), so you could see how I generated the initial structure. However, we want to focus on the last method, getMonthObject(). It’s not as dynamic as the original method, but the point is to show the basics of the process. In getMonthObject() I made the following changes:

• I set the returntype value to “Calendar” which is the name of my custom CFC. If you leave this as struct, you’ll still get the hash map XML code that you don’t really want.
• I created a new var named myCal. While this is good form, if this were a normal CFC, you could skip that part and CF would still return a result. However, when using the CFC as a web service, skipping this step can cause errors generating the WSDL properly. EVERY variable needs to be declared at the top of your method, including loop indexes.
• Next I create an object based off my Calendar.cfc definition and name it that var we just created (myCal).
• Finally, just populate the values and return the custom object

Now when you invoke your web service using Coldfusion, you will get an object definition returned. The values are there, but you would need to then call the “get” methods from this object to get the values. However, our XML generated in the Soap envelope is much simpler and in the format that we want:

Your main web service code can of course be a lot more complicated than what I have here. As long as you have the basic parts you should get similar results. Some other tweaks you can make include:

• If the data you are loading into your custom component contains any “null” values, you will see a closed XML node and it will have a “nill” attribute. If you prefer not to see the “nill” part, you can have your CF code check the value and if it is null you can set the value to empty string (“”). That will result in a simple closed XML node.
• If you wanted to return multiple “Calendar” objects, set your method’s return type to “array”. Then run a loop that creates a Calendar object, loads its data, then pushes it into your array. Again, be sure to set a var at the top of your method for your array index () to avoid any issues.
• There may be times when you want to nest a collection of one custom object type inside another. For example, say you return a restaurant “Menu” object. Inside that object is an attribute called “soups” and you want “soups” to be a collection of “Soup” objects. First defined custom Soup.cfc and Menu.cfc objects just like we did above with Calendar. In the Menu.cfc file, when you set the property for soups, you will set it like:

     <cfproperty name="soups" type="Soup[]" required="true">

:The property’s type is set to your custom component and a left and right square bracket. That is telling Coldfusion to expect to get an array of “Soup” objects for this value. To populate this value, you will follow the steps in the previous bullet to create an array of custom objects, then assign that array as the value:

    <!--- Assume we have an array of Soup objects called mySoupsArray --->

    <cfobject component="Menu" name="myMenu">
    <cfset myMenu.soups = mySoupsArray >

Using the SoapUI Tool to Test Your Web Services

While you can invoke a web service with Coldfusion, it’s more for consuming other people’s services into your code. It doesn’t really provide a good picture of what your end user’s will recieve from your service, especially if they are using another language or technology. Enter the SoapUI tool by Eviware. The features of this tool include:

• It’s FREE (my favorite feature)
• Comes as a standalone Java application or as an Eclipse plug-in
• Allows you to create multiple projects, each having one or more web services
• SoapUI consumes your service(s) and automatically loads all the methods and a default request for each
• If the service has arguments, it automatically generates the XML syntax for you to populate with values
• Includes several logs (soapui log, http log, jetty log, and an error log) that can help you if there is an error
• Provides “Request Properties” to pass things like basic authentication information, timeout settings, and much more

For a while now I have been using a little tool / service called Instapaper. It’s a free web site that lets you store Web links for reading later. I use it a lot as I am constantly inundated during the day with new stuff to check out online. A new application, a tech resource, that new funny YouTube or Break movie, a book I want to buy and so on. If I spent the time during the day to check these things out in detail, I wouldn’t get any work done. With Instapaper, I had a Javascript bookmarklet in my browser. If I saw something online I needed to look into later, I just press the little bookmarklet and a link to that page is automagically saved to my account. Then at night, or while I waiting at the dentist office or whenever I had time, I could go back and read up on all those interesting tidbits. While Instapaper is nice, it is very simple. Bookmarklet, and a white web page with links. Nothing wrong with that, just simple.

Yesterday I found a new site, Evernote. It’s like InstaPaper on steroids. Evernote offers the functionality of a bookmarklet that saves web links to a free online account, just like InstaPaper. But EverNote doesn’t stop there. First, it doesn’t just store the web page link, it stores the page itself. So you can actually just read that page right in Evernote. You can also store pictures and audio. When you save pictures, Evernote scans them for words and stores those as keyword with the picture, making searching more effective. You can also assign tags to anything you save for categorizing items and again better searching. Evernote also has tons of ways to store the things you need to remember. I already mentioned the bookmarklet, which they call the “Web clipper.” In addition to the clipper, Evernote also offers desktop applications for Windows and Mac with super simple and clean interfaces. They also offer an iPhone application, and an application Windows Mobile devices. With all these options, it’s incredibly easy to save almost anything from anywhere.

The best thing about Evernote is that all of this, 40Mb/month of storage, and the applications to access your information is all free. They do offer a Premium account for $45/year ($5/mo). The premium plan gets you 500Mb/month of storage, SSL encryption, priority image text recognition, better tech support, and removes the ads (which I haven’t seen any of so far). Oh yeah, and a free t-shirt comes with the premium plan.

So you’re probably thinking that Evernote sounds nice, but you’re not sure you would find it useful. Here’s a few idea of ways I used it and ways I’ve seen or read about other people using it:

• Save Web pages that you want to read later
• To-Do list
• Save white board notes
• Snap and save pictures of business cards, wine labels
• Wish list tool – save items from online stores or pictures of products from real stores that you want to buy / receive as a gift (music, books, tools, etc)
• Save Code snippets or commonly used math formulas
• Save digital receipts for online purchases / bill payments
• Store software serial numbers (although for security, you may want to go premium for this use)
• Save important instant message conversations (you know the ones where your boss promises you a promotion!)
• PDFs of documents to read or review

So, do you use Evernote now? Could you use Evernote? I’d be interested in hearing how you do or think you could use this service. Also, if you have better suggestion, I’d be open to hearing about it. Just keep in mind that in addition to being better than Evernote, it would have to also have a better icon (I love the elephant!)

I just saw that Polaroid announced that they will be discontinuing almost all of their analog products. That’s big words for no more cameras that use film. That means no more film. Not that I’m surprised by the move, but it is the end of an era. We’ll no longer be able to “shake it like a Polaroid picture!” So for any of you out there who still have the once popular instant cameras (yes Appy, I’m talking to you!) stock up now. Looks like we’ll have until early ‘09 to take pictures retro style.

Well, almost famous, and only to a specific community, and … duh! Well, you’ll get the idea.

As many of you know, today is the release of Apple’s iPhone 2.0 as it were. As I write this, I am reading posts from my Twitter buddies who are eagerly standing in line at various Apple stores all around the area waiting to get their hands on this latest model. One of the big deals with the new iPhone is that Apple finally opened up the code to allow outside developers to write their own applications and sell them to iPhone users via the iTunes online store front. This is BIG for Apple and iPhone (and sadly AT&T). Yesterday, many of us discovered that Apple went ahead and opened up the iTunes App Store that has all the cool new applications that you can buy for this phone.

The genius boys over at the Iconfactory already had an incredible little desktop application called Twitterrific that connects to your Twitter account (if you don’t know I’ll have to explain that one in another post) and allows you to send updates. It’s awesome and as far as I know the preferred desktop Twitterrific app for Mac users. Being the bright guys that they are, the Iconfactory team jumped on Apple’s band wagon and made their awesome little program run on the iPhone. A few weeks ago, as they were preparing to launch the software they sent out a tweet asking for people to say something clever on Twitter so they could include it in the screenshot that appears with the product. To skip to the chase here, my tweet made the shot and since my icon is a posterized version of a picture of me, my face is now in the product shot. This is the first shot you see when you go into the app store to purchase and download the app. I have received a slew of Tweets yesterday about it and I’m sort of excited about it. Thx Iconfactory! .

Not that I was planning to rush out to see it anyway, but for any who are, it seems Mike Meyer’s latest film, “The Love Guru“, is no Shrek! According to AintItCool.com :

“…Myers puts a shotgun in the mouth of comedy and kills it. This isn’t merely a bad film, but a painful experience that you keep telling yourself to leave. … It is a pregnant woman smoking a cigarette and drinking a Coors Light.”

I have to say, I’m actually not that surprised. When I saw Meyers on American Idol and the 2008 MTV Movies Awards, each time dressed as the “Guru,” I totally didn’t get the joke. I was hoping that the scripting for those spots was just rushed and that the film might actually have some merit. Guess not. Read the review for yourself, but as for me, I think I’ll pass. Oh yeah, and if you were thinking of seeing “The Happening“, seems like it isn’t much better (also panned in this review).

On a related note, to see an awesome super hero movie, go see “Iron Man” (and hopefully “The Dark Night”). To pretty good super hero movie, go see “The Incredible Hulk.”

Looks like Adobe is feeling generous. For a $159 upgrade price, you can upgrade your existing Adobe Design Premium collection to version 3.3. Why should you do this? Well, the upgrade will now include:

“New Adobe Acrobat® 9 Pro plus a special offering of Adobe Fireworks® CS3 complete your essential toolkit for producing professional page layouts, engaging websites, dynamic PDF documents, and rich interactive experiences — all in a unified, intuitive environment.“

With CS4 I’m sure on the horizon, Adobe seems to be pushing this upgrade with the inclusion of Fireworks and Acrobat 9. The price is good, so I’ll probably make this purchase.

OFFER: Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 Design Premium

For those who might have known him, Clive Sweeney, a local Flash Developer and friend of Heather and I, died in a bicycling accident this week. The accident happened just before 8am on Tuesday near the Ebenezer Church Road intersection.

I met Clive through his wife, Brenda who worked with Heather at Watts Elementary School in Durham. Clive was a teacher, an educator in energy conservation, an actor, a graphic designer, a website designer, and a Flash developer. I knew he was into cycling, but we hadn’t seen Clive and Brenda in a while, so I didn’t realize that he had gotten as serious about riding as he had.

His funeral will be at 11am Saturday June 7 at the Chapel of Hall-Wynne Funeral Service. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that people donate to the Animal Protection Society of Durham, 2117 E. Club Blvd. Durham 27704.

I know we will all miss Clive.

Video of the News Story: http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=6183036

Follow up, driver charged: http://www.wral.com/news/news_briefs/story/2992175/

John talks a bit about the UI of the upcoming Photoshop CS4, including a screen shot:

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/06/future_photoshop_ui.html

I just saw the http://280slides.com/ site and thought it was pretty cool. It’s an online presentation maker that has been crafted to function and feel like Apple’s Keynote application. It works pretty well. I only had a few small things not work for me in Safari on Mac (Ben, start using Safari on the PC already! :) )

I was really blown away when, after posting the question on their support site, I found out that this app is NOT built in Flex or Silverlight or anything like that, but that it’s all JAVASCRIPT!! That’s right javascript! It seems that it wa sbuilt using a Javascript UI framework called Objective-J. There is a little more detail about that in Alex Le’s blog entry.

Also, if you want to compare this to an impressive Flex based presentation editor, check out SlideRocket.

I recently responded to a forum post that asked for ColdFusion hosting recommendations, specifically for CF8. After finishing the post I thought that this might be information that other could benefit from. Here is my response:

GEARHOST
I currently use and love GearHost.com. They were one of the first to host CF8. They are a small group so when you email or call for support you get a seriously quick response. My server has never gone down that I have noticed. Also, they have a good rep for handling CFBlog installs (other hosts may not make the necessary settings for you).

I have also used:

HostMySite (http://www.hostmysite.com/) – not bad service at all, but GearHost was cheaper. Plus these guys will hound you to enroll and then, when I dropped them, they hounded me to re-enroll

CFDYnamics (http://www.cfdynamics.com/) – I used them for my work. We had a dedicated box. It was nice in that I could remote desktop to the box, I had full access to my CFAdmin and could install other software as I wanted. I could bounce the box when I needed to. It was pretty neat. However, their support was a little slow, and they were not very helpful. They seemed to feel that if you had a dedicated box, that you knew everything you needed to about a Web server and they didn;t need to help you. Oh, yeah, and the bill was like $600 / mo!

Dash Systems (http://www.dashsystems.com/) – Dash is a local (Raleigh) hosting service. I used them for several years while at PStrat. They are really good. We had 2 dedicated boxes (dev and production). We did have a few issues with server reboots (like 2) in 2 years, but overall they were fast. What I liked is that Craig, my server guy over there was almost always available. He would not only support or servers, but he would make recommendations, hooked us up with cheap third party services like SSL certs and the like. If you want something local they are pretty damn good!

I am setting up TwitterFeed and need to test it out. Sorry for the otherwise useless post.

Anybody who knows me knows that I love my Apple® iPod. I use it to listen to all types of music at work, in the car, working around the house, at the beach, or where ever I go. I tend to load up entire albums because I like to listen to the artist’s entire “project.” I usually load several gigs of tunes on every month or two, and then listen to that playlist for a while. When that track list starts to get stale, I clear everything off and pick music again. Some of the albums I pick will be ones that were in the last batch (like Muse’s “Black Holes and Revelations“) and others will be of songs I haven’t listened to in a while (say something like “Coil” by Toad the Wet Sprocket). Either way, I usually try to give myself a good mix of music. I have a very eclectic taste in music and I like finding new artists that I have never heard before.

It’s time for me to re-load my pod and I thought it would be fun to get more input into what I will listen to. So here’s the game. Over the course of the next week, I would like you to reply to this post with music that you would like for me to listen to for the next month. It can be one song, a whole album or just an artist. You can make as many requests as you like. If I have the track(s) already, then I’ll add them to my iPod. If I don’t then I’ll try to find them. At worst case I may need to “borrow” them from you!

I’m up for anything so bring it on! Remember I will be listening to this for at least a month, so you can send me something new and good, or just send me something that you think will drive me crazy. Whatever you like, its up to you. At then end of the month, I’ll let you know how things went and what I thought about the different tracks.

So now I offically give you the power to “Control my iPod!”

Today, Apple Computer has released Safari 3.1 for Mac OS X and Windows. According to Apple:

“… this new version is the fastest web browser on any platform; Safari loads pages up to 3 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 5.5 times faster than Opera 9. Safari 3.1 also executes JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 5 times faster than Opera 9.”

What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them.

The Safari update is an automatic download option from the Mac’s Software Update program, and I assume the same for Windows. Or, if you’re new to Safari, check it out at the link above.

UPDATE : NBC STICKS WITH ITS FRESHMEN CLASS
It seems that NBC has decided NOT to cancel several of the shows I mention below. Namely “Bionic Woman,” “Life,” and “Journeyman.” Also not being canceled is “Chuck” (maybe they should re-think that last one!). You can see the official statement here. Now set your DVRs people, and let’s support some good television!

So if you’re like me, you’ve probably been draining your DVR / TIVO trying to find something to watch over the past six months. Between Hollywood’s many attempts to recreate the past with revitalizations of old success shows and the seemingly never-ending writers’ strike, this television season has been less than stellar. I think I’ve spent more TV time watching reality shows than anything. When shows like “Scott Baio is 46 and Pregnant” and “American Gladiators” are the best things on, then people, we have a problem. I actually turned to buying old shows I like on DVD, namely USA’s “La Femme Nikita” and Sci-Fi Channel’s/NBC’s “Battlestar Galactica,” just to have something decent to watch.

When the writers’ strike ended, I felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, many of the shows I liked would be able to end their seasons in full (Lost, Life, BSG, etc.). While some are returning, my light just became a little less bright when my wife sent me the link to CancelledTV.com. I can’t believe I never tried to find a site like this in the past because I found it very interesting. The site lists current television shows that have been renewed, those that are in jeopardy of being cancelled and those that have been cancelled. Well, I have to say that I was a bit surprised by several of the shows that have made the cancelled list. Here are a few that I enjoyed watching, but alas, which will not be returning to my DVR (unless they receive a Nikita-style fan uproar so loud that their networks must bring them back). And now, without further ado:

Bionic Woman (NBC)
This is or was NBC’s resurrection of the famous 1970s-80s Bionic Woman series. In this version the Jaime Sommers character (Michelle Ryan, “EastEnders“) is a younger, edgy ex-bartender, who acted as a single parent for her teenage sister. In this version, Jamie becomes bionic after a car accident that nearly kills her and her boy friend. As the show went on, we found out that her boyfriend was a scientist who worked on the technology that made her bionic, and that she was somehow targeted to become bionic. In this version, Jaime had little love for her boss, Jonas Bledsoe (Miguel Ferrer, “Crossing Jordan“), and was stalked by a prototype bionic woman, played by Katee Sackhof (“Battlestar Galactica“). While the show has some weaker episodes, it was starting to go somewhere. The characters were starting to gel, and there was much anticipation for the coming episodes. I didn’t love this one, but it was growing on me. Alas, NBC has decided not to continue the series.

Journeyman (NBC)
By the second episode I was hooked on this show. The show’s basic premise had Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, “Rome“), a San Francisco newspaper reporter and family man, who inexplicably begins to travel through time and change people’s lives. It is sort of like an updated “Quantum Leap”, but a lot less candy-coated. As the show goes on, he is reunited with his long-lost fiancée, Livia (Moon Bloodgood, “Day Break“). This complicates his present-day life with wife, Katie (Gretchen Egolf, “Martial Law“), and their son. Without going into to many details, Dan starts to discover that there may be other travelers, and that a scientist who knew his father may know more about their “condition.” Journeyman has a good cast, with a good chemistry, and a creative concept. However, I guess nobody else was watching because according to CancelledTV.com, it too will not be returning for a new season.

Life (NBC)
Life is the tale of a cop who is framed for murder then exonerated and given a huge settlement and his old detective job back. “Life is what they took. Life is what he got back” is the premise. Damian Lewis (“Band of Brothers“) stars as a complex, offbeat detective named Charlie Crews, who uses his second chance to find out who framed him and why. Of course, along the way he suspects almost everybody else in the show, but the detail in which the story was written was magnetic. The show also had a nice feature of telling Charlie’s back story by way of clips from a documentary being made about his life. Each week, you would see different or extended parts that would clue you in to to more of the case that landed Charlie in jail. However, it seems that NBC didn’t believe in Crews’ case as much as I did, as it has been shelved. I will really miss this one, as it was my favorite new show.

Las Vegas (NBC)
Even though it has survived many seasons, it seems that NBC’s racy “dramady” about the fictional Monticedo hotel and casino will also not be returning next season. The show started off strong, pulling together a cast of previous soap stars including “All My Children’s” Josh Duhamel as star Danny McCoy, Vanessa Marcil from General Hospital, and Molly Sims, host of MTV’s “Beauty and the Beat.” The cast was originally led by James Caan (later replaced with Tom Selleck), and featured a relatively serious story line with a dash of humor about casino robberies, card cheaters, and other casino-related storylines. As the show went on, however, the writers decided to add more humor and less serious story lines. The end result yielded shows with hyperbolized character traits, ridiculous bad guys, and very scantily-clad hot women. So, I’m not surprised that they decided to pull the plug, but in a sea of television fodder, this was one of the better shows.

the 4400 (USA)
This eerie story about 4400 individuals who were abducted over time by people from the future and then returned all at once with supernatural powers designed to help save humanity has itself disappeared. The series had a very “Lost”-like appeal, with sprinkles of magic dust covering what seems like a very densely woven underlying plot. The show makes the small mistake of often swapping out key characters each season and answering a few too many questions too early. It was a summer series for USA so it was never on for more than 12 episodes at a time, which makes following the intricate story line and large cast a bit tough, especially to entice new viewers. Either way, it looks like the 4400 have again been abducted, and this time, I don’t think they will be returning. But hey, according to USA’s site, they will be showing old episodes at 3AM once a month! Set the DVR!!

The Dead Zone (USA)
USA’s retelling of the famous Stephen King movie, features Anthony Michael Hall as a former school teacher who suffers a terrible car crash and ends up in a coma for several years. He wakes up to find the love of his life married to another man and raising their son and a difficult-to-control psychic power that allows him to see into the past and future through visions triggered by touch. After coming to terms with his new life, Johnny is compelled to help others as a sort of psychic crime fighter. Again, this was a summer series for USA and in my opinion never on long enough to move the story along. The last two seasons followed a bad recipe of moving the main story line along in the season opener then dropping it only to fill in the gap with “fluff” episodes that you could miss and be ok. Then, the last three episodes brought back the story line and left you hanging in a season finale. While Hall was very interesting, he often had to carry the rest of the cast, and to be honest, while I DVR’ed the show, I often started them then fast-forwarded to the end. I guess that is why I’m not surprised this show is cancelled!

BLADE: The Series (Spike)
This is a bit of old news, but Spike has cancelled its series adapted from the Marvel comic “Blade”. The show tells the dark, bloody tale of a half-human, half-vampire named Blade (rapper Kirk “Sticky” Jones), whose mission in life is to hunt down and kill all vampires. The show expanded the vampire empire to include many different “houses” of vampires who all had different agendas but one common enemy, Blade. In addition to Blade’s trusty hacker sidekick, Shen (Nelson Lee), he also finds assistance in a female ex-solider, Krista (Jill Wagner from Winston Salem NC), who is accidentally turned into a vampire herself. After saving Krista with his vampire serum, Blade enlists her to help him take down the vampire houses one at a time. While the show wasn’t the most intellectual thing on television, it was based off a good storyline, and the characters made it work. The season left viewers in a cliff-hanger where the vampires discover Krista hasn’t fully turned and attack her. Well, I guess I’ll never know how that one ends. Series cancelled!

While it is disappointing to see these series go, I do take solace in the fact that a few good shows like BSG, LOST, Burn Notice, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (although it’s up for review)and the “Office” will be returning. Of course there are also the Ghost Whisperer, The Hills, and Flavor of Love if I get bored (WTF!!). Happy viewing!