November 01, 2005

MM User Groups + Google Maps Mashup

Gus recently whipped up an HTML-based mashup of US-based Macromedia User Group locations with Google Maps to get familiar with the Maps API, which should prove quite handy indeed if you're looking for a local UG meeting in the continental US. If you've got a UG that's not represented, drop a comment in his weblog post, as he's been really responsive to feedback of the sort. Enjoy!

Posted by sfegette at 10:37 AM | Comments (4)

September 27, 2005

Mint: yes, it IS fresh and tasty.

I must admit- the hype a few weeks back appears quite justified- Shaun Inman's new site analytical tool Mint is one of my favorite new toys- I've been using it to monitor a personal site for a few weeks now and am impressed well beyond my initial expectations. I haven't seen a more usable (not to mention aesthetically-pleasing) way to scan my current referrers, visits, page views and search terms to date. I really resisted the urge to post right after the release (as the Mint beta squad did a pretty thorough job of getting the message out on their own), but can't hold back any longer.

This yummy, minty morsel of site-statistical joy is implemented in Ajaxian PHP, MySQL and Javascript, and a compatibility test is also available for download to quickly verify if your server config will support Mint. Pepper (i.e. Mint plug-ins...) can also be written relatively easily to extend the system beyond it's core modules. Two extra Peppers are already available with Mint; User Agent 007 - which breaks down browser types, versions, platforms and Flash plug-in versions, and Local Search - which allows you to scope how users navigate via search terms once they reach your site. An RSS feed of the newest unique referrers is also available, which allows for a handy drop-down menu via Firefox's 'Live Bookmarks' of the last visitors who've wandered thru. Nice touch.

Even cooler- for Mac users like myself, there's an OS X Dashboard widget (appropriately named 'Junior Mint') which allows you to scan hit totals for the last hour, day and month without firing up a browser- and links right to the main Mint web app for more details. Sweet.

Now to be fair- Mint isn't really a replacement for long-term traffic analysis (or an iterative rev of Shaun's other site analytical tool, ShortStat), Mint's more geared towards a current view of what people are doing on your site *right now*, and is incredibly handy in this respect. For example, you may want to base tactical shifts on Mint data- like AdSense settings based on what your incoming search terms have been over the last day or two- or drop Flash 5 support for a page or two based on your current metrics. At $30 per domain, the price (although contested by some others) ain't too bad either, in my opinion. I spend more than $30 just taking my wife out to dinner, so have gotten more ROI out of Mint already than the last high-brow French dinner I ate, come to think of it.

If you're interested in writing Peppers to extend Mint, make sure to also check out Marc Garrett's tutorial here. You should also bookmark "Peppermint Tea" - an index of third-party Peppers maintained by Peter Parkes.

Your mileage may vary of course, but in my opinion- Mint's definitely worth a taste.

Posted by sfegette at 10:44 AM | Comments (5)

August 16, 2005

Upcoming Macrochats - CF/Verity and Flash Video

If you've got some free time to sharpen your skillsets a bit, there are two free public Macrochats on Verity in ColdFusion MX 7 (tomorrow) and Flash Video bandwidth detection and scaling (next Tuesday) coming up you might want to catch. Note: pre-registration is required for both, links to follow.

If you'd like to browse the archive of previously-recorded Macrochats, make sure to bookmark this URL for future reference, too:
http://www.macromedia.com/community/macrochats.html

Posted by sfegette at 02:52 PM | Comments (1)

June 21, 2005

Looking for a job?

Then try out these little 'codelets' available from SimplyHired - lightweight, customizable JS code that puts a customizable job search form on your site (visit SimplyHired's beta website here to build your own). I've embedded a few on this post that let you search thru available job opportunities for Flash, Dreamweaver and ColdFusion developers. Click the 'More' link and enjoy!

Dreamweaver Jobs:

ColdFusion Jobs:

Flash Jobs:

Posted by sfegette at 05:36 PM | Comments (1)

Intro PHP OOP articles

A nice series of articles just wrapped up at DevShed- Object Interaction in PHP, a good intro to object aggregation. Author Alejandro Gervasi lays it out nicely for novice/intermediate PHP developers- a good read, particularly if you've been hacking at procedural code 'til now. While you're at it, if this subject interests, you you'll likely want to learn a little bit about unit testing in this article by Saleh Jamal at DevPapers while you're at it- a skill that can save you a lot of debugging headaches down the road.

Posted by sfegette at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2005

Macrochat - Captivate/Breeze

Macromedia's own David Mozealous will be hosting a Macrochat tomorrow (June 9th) from 1-2pm EST on integrating Captivate output with Breeze- focusing on creation, publishing to Breeze Live, and synching of a Captivate-based quiz for use within Breeze Live sessions. As with all the Macrochats- registration is required for entry (click here to visit the registration page) but the session won't cost you a thing outside an hour of your day- drop in over a late lunch tomorrow, and learn some new Captivate tricks!

Posted by sfegette at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2005

Big News Monday

Happy Monday- Flash is a platform, open source IDEs are cool, and we've all got some reading to do. The Flash Platform was announced earlier this morning (actually late last evening), putting larger context around the ecosystem surrounding the Flash Player and it's assorted technologies. Make sure to read Kevin Lynch's Flash Platform white paper (pdf, 1.55mb) for the straight story, as well as two press releases on how the mobile ecosystem and broadband telecom providers will leverage the Flash Platform.

To follow up, Macromedia also announced joining the Eclipse Foundation- while announcing a new RIA/Flex application development environment (code-named 'Zorn') built on the popular Eclipse IDE's architecture. Make sure to check out the Zorn FAQ points hidden down in the Flex FAQ on Macromedia.com, too. I see this as a very positive move for Macromedia developers in general, many of whom have already adopted the platform due to it's robust support, most notably CFEclipse. For the scores of enterprise RIA developers out there, Eclipse support spells a far more standard development environment across the technology they support. Good stuff.

And all this on a day where everyone seems to be talking about what chip the Mac OS will end up running on. Don't worry, the WWDC keynote is coming soon enough with the definitive answer to that question.

Posted by sfegette at 08:13 AM | Comments (13)

June 03, 2005

BileBlog interviewed by TSS

A great read for server-side folks who prefer a little humor with their tech -BileBlog's Hani Suleiman gets interviewed by The Server Side. I must admit, Hani's 'blog is one of my favorite haunts- half tech pundit, half human flamethrower, he's like the Andrew Dice Clay of the Java world. Great read for a Friday afternoon (although I'm 2 days behind on catching it in my feedreader)! I had no clue that Hani was so accomodating and friendly in person. ;-)

Posted by sfegette at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2005

MXNA 2.0 - Flash Remix

Tmeister has a slick Flash client for the recently-launched MXNA 2 news aggregator. Using a beta version of AMFPHP 1.0 and the MXNA 2 Web service API to drive the data, it's a rather impressive remix of a new favorite... ;)

Posted by sfegette at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2005

CMX hits 1000

A bit of publishing history was made today- Community MX released their 1000th article. Kudos! That's a lot of ASCII.... :)

Posted by sfegette at 08:56 PM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2004

4-day Server promotion

Should a client, colleague our yourself be in either the evaluation or procurement process right now, I just got word that there's an online-only promotion for some of the Macromedia server products (JRun 4, Flash Communication Server Personal & Professional editions, and Flash Remoting) running from today - 8/30/04 - through 5pm on 9/2/04. The deal: $200 off new purchases and $100 off upgrades (excluding the Flash Communications Server Personal Edition). You can get more details at the Macromedia Online Store if interested.

Posted by sfegette at 06:09 PM | Comments (3)

August 17, 2004

Blackstone at SD Times

The extensible gateway architecture is the lead feature in this article on Blackstone (i.e. the next version of ColdFusion) in Software Development Times, followed closely by the Flash forms and reporting features. I've personally heard more rumblings about Flash forms in general discussions than the gateway architecture, but am personally more interested in the latter.

Posted by sfegette at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2004

Blackstone article on C/Net

More press coverage at C/Net yesterday on Blackstone (i.e. the next major version of ColdFusion, for the uninitiated). Lots of great new features on tap, give it a read and post comments here if you're new to the topic!

Posted by sfegette at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

August 06, 2004

Blackstone Revealed

Courtesy of Tim Buntel's blog, more public information on what the next ColdFusion release (code named 'Blackstone') will entail has just been released on Macromedia.com. If you haven't been exposed to this info through either Ben Forta's road tour or general bloggings of late, definitely worth a read- Blackstone is shaping up to be one hard-core release!

Posted by sfegette at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2004

ASP Date/Time Extension

Fresh out of Paul Davis' bit farms, the ASP Date and Time extension for Dreamweaver, mirroring his previous PHP Date and Time extension. Good stuff, and the price is even better... free!

Posted by sfegette at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2004

New ColdFusion Macrochat

Hot off the presses, a last-minute Macrochat has been added to the lineup for tomorrow- and it should be a good one:

12:00pm PST/3:00 pm EST tomorrow (5/19)
Ben Forta, Tim Buntel and Dave Gruber talk CF Shop.
Bring your ColdFusion questions to this Macrochat:
http://macromedia.breezecentral.com/r36158305/

Posted by sfegette at 09:23 PM | Comments (1)