In the absence of a printable schedule - sorry, Joe Rinehart says it's a problem with the Media3 hosting and he's been trying to get them to fix it for months! - here is my schedule for cf.Objective() 2009:

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You've all heard the huge buzz about applications on the iPhone. Maybe you've been curious about how to get started? Andy Matthews, Dan Vega and Joshua Cyr are heading down that path and they want to share what they've learned so far and answer your questions on how to approach this new opportunity! Come and join their BOF at 7pm on Friday night!

If you're already developing iPhone apps, come along and share your experiences. If you want to learn how to get started, what books to buy and so on, come along and ask your questions!

As "usual", I start the year with a round-up of the highlights of last year, based on things that I blogged. It's been a strange year for me. After (seven) years with Macromedia / Adobe and most of 2007 spent freelancing, I took a full-time job with a startup and hired some amazing CFers to be part of my team. I (finally) learned Flex (and AIR). I learned a new language (Groovy) and did a lot less CFML programming than I've done in years while at the same time joining first the Open BlueDragon Steering Committee and then the CFML Advisory Committee, as well as attending more ColdFusion-related conferences than usual (cf.Objective(), Scotch on the Rocks, CFUNITED, Wee Dram of Scotch, MAX).

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I've been experimenting with a variety of "todo" managers over the last year, trying to find one that fits my needs. I have been a fan of 43actions for most of 2008 because it offered a nice iPhone-compatible web application that was fairly intuitive and, with Fluid allowing me to have a "desktop" version of 43actions, I had synchronized access from both my iPhone and my desktop. The problem was that it was a web app so it didn't have any integration with either the iPhone or, more importantly, the desktop.

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Liz has announced the first round of topics for CFUNITED 2009. It's an interesting mix of speakers - some old, some new - and a broad spectrum of subject matter.

After CFUNITED 2008, Liz has promised lots of changes and improvements and we already know that the venue is something special and an all-in-one location (addressing a bit complaint about the last few years' conferences). One of the new changes for 2009 is that a quarter of the content will be Flex/AIR related, acknowledging the growth and increasing relevance of these technologies to ColdFusion developers at large.

Some of the highlights (from my point of view) of the topics announced so far:

• Flex development with the Swiz framework - Chris Scott
• Railo Open Source - Gert Franz
• Groovy for ColdFusion Developers - Joe Rinehart
• iPhone Apps + Adobe ColdFusion - Josh Adams
• ColdFusion, Model-Glue, Hibernate, Spring, and Groovy - Ray Camden
• AIR: Building Desktop Applications with Flex 3 - Rob Rusher
• Hack Proofing ColdFusion - Shlomy Gantz

Definitely not your father's CFUNITED!

I was just reading a couple of blog posts about deploying Open BlueDragon in the cloud (I started with Matt Woodward's extended blog post on cloud computing) and they've gone as far as integrating OpenBD into Elastic Server - a service that lets you easily configure a server instance based on a number of resources. Very impressive.

Broadchoice Workspace is deployed on the cloud and whilst most of the machinery is Java/Groovy behind the Flex/AIR application, we also have the iPhone-compatible web version which is powered by CFML. It's a Model-Glue 3 / ColdSpring application that reuses the core Groovy services (via a Spring adapter that Joe Rinehart wrote).

So we've been running CFML in the cloud in production for nearly two months now and it's working out really well for us. We're using Railo 3.0, another option for cloud computing.

Adobe have said that cloud deployment is something they want to make possible with ColdFusion so at some point we'll have an embarrassment of riches in terms of choices for CFML in the cloud.

Who else is using CFML in the cloud today? Who is thinking about doing so?

Today was our official launch, just in time for MAX! Now anyone can download the Broadchoice Workspace AIR application and create a 30-day trial account.

Commercial use will be just $99/user per year with educational licenses at $49/user per year. Registered non-profit organizations can get free licenses.

If you're also a Salesforce user, you'll love the integration between groups in Workspace and your company's Salesforce account, allowing you to see open opportunities directly in the Workspace and create collaborative spaces based on opportunities so that you can work with your non-Salesforce peers on closing deals!

Working with Brian Kotek, Joe Rinehart and Ray Camden on this application has been a wonderful experience. We've all learned a lot from each other as we've learned a lot about Flex, AIR, Groovy, BlazeDS, Spring, Hibernate and integration with CFML via Model-Glue 3 (Gesture) and ColdSpring!

Also, for Workspace users on-the-go, there is an iPhone-compatible web application (with plans for full Blackberry support by year end).

Things have been a bit quiet on my blog because I was in England for two weeks. Things have been a bit quiet on the Broadchoice blog too because the team has been busy with the Broadchoice Workspace, preparing for the upcoming beta program!

Here's a screenshot of the latest internal build, running on my laptop (with real content!) - the navigation and layout has changed a bit since our earlier screenshots - but we're all using the Workspace in-house to collaborate on projects as we draw closer to launch:

(click for larger image)

In addition to the AIR application, we're also working on an iPhone web application - built with CFML - that exposes all the Workspace content as well as providing the ability to send messages to spaces.

Folks who sign up for the beta program will get to experience both of those!

The beta will start next week on a first come, first served basis (so those who have already signed up will get their login credentials and access instructions around the 15th - thank you for your patience!).

After using several applications for a while and spending more time in the AppStore, I figured I'd do another quick blog post covering the apps I've tried...

• AIM - I'm not using this as much as I expected but it definitely is useful occasionally (when I'm away from my laptop and need to ask someone a quick question).
• WeatherBug - This has dropped down my list and I may delete it fairly soon.
• AirMe - As suspected, I am taking more photos and using Flickr because of this app!
• Evernote - This has become core to the way I organize my life and work, as has the desktop version!
• People - An occasional app but still useful.
• Dobot Todos - Unused after a week so it was deleted.

And here are the new apps I've added recently:

• Units - A useful little conversion calculator. It was 99c - cheap enough that it doesn't much matter if I end up not using it.
• Urbanspoon - A free, fun restaurant picker. It uses the accelerometer built into the iPhone to operate a "slot machine" style UI which is a great novelty but the restaurant reviews are actually useful. Recommended if you travel and you like food!
• Shazam - Recommended by lots of people and it will hopefully solve a recurring problem I have of hearing music I like and not knowing what it is! More on this when I've actually used it a few times.
• Sudoku Unlimited - $2.99 - The first app I actually paid for. I'm a sucker for Sudoku and this is a really nice looking app that plays pretty well. Great for keeping boredom at bay in the unlikely event I actually get some free time...

Just a quick post about everyone's favorite blog topic: the updated firmware for the iPhone and the new AppStore.

I was away in Vegas (more later!) so I missed all the trauma/drama that some people suffered. I updated my iPhone yesterday with absolutely no problems and my wife updated hers with no problems either. Yay! So it reset my home page layouts (boo!) and reset my default ringtone (grr!) but otherwise it was very smooth.

So then I went off to the AppStore to see what was useful / interesting:

• AIM - 'nuff said! I'm seancorfield on AIM (just in case you're not on my list of 200+ buddies). It works except for a repeatable crash whenever I try to view my "coldfusion" group. Not a big deal since I mostly go through the "All Online" view. Hope that gets fixed.
• WeatherBug - weird but interesting. I wish the radar would automatically zoom in on the selected station.
• AirMe - I think Flickr is really dumb but this app will have me using it a lot. It lets you take a photo and it will automatically tag it with the current location and weather and upload it to your Flickr account. Easy enough that I'll actually take more photos on my iPhone and publicize my photostream!
• Twitterific - I tried this and didn't like it (or had some issue with it?). Anyway, it did not stay installed for long. Twitter via the web is fine on the iPhone.
• Evernote - I'm just starting to use Evernote but haven't really figure out what I'm going to do with it yet. Having the application on the phone is easier than working via the website. We'll see.
• People - This is Yahoo!'s White Pages and I like being able to look people up by name or phone number and then add them to my contacts / address book.
• Dobot Todos - I don't know whether I'll actually use this. I've gotten used to 43actions via my iPhone (I'd love to see a real application version of that!). Dobot Todos is a nice, simple to-do list.

You may have noticed but those are all free. I didn't see anything that I'd actually pay for (although if I ever get into Omnifocus - great outliner / ideas tool - I might pay the $20 for the iPhone native application).

What applications are you loving? (or hating?)

Just discovered that my iPhone had stopped syncing calendars. It turns out that Tiger and Leopard store their calendars in different places and if you do a simple "upgrade" to Leopard (as I did), then iTunes gets confused and uses your old Tiger calendars, even after the upgrade.

The workaround is horribly painful and it took me a while to find it on various discussion forums. In essence, backup iCal, export each calendar, delete all your subscriptions (after recording the URLs!), delete ~/Library/Application Support/ical and ~/Library/Calendars (and maybe any iCal-related preferences), reset your sync history (in iSync), import the calendars back into iCal and re-subscribe to everything. Ta-da!

Mind you, while doing this, my mail accounts disappeared from iTunes for syncing. The fix for that is to modify a mail account configuration in Mail. That forces the mail accounts back into the iTunes sync list.

It won't recognize my iPhone. Google turns up lots of similar complaints. Solution? Download iTunes and re-install it. Weird but it works.

Some people were not very excited about Apple's keynote yesterday but the 1.1.3 firmware update for the iPhone is plenty enough for me, along with Google's updated mobile apps.

I use Gmail a lot on my iPhone and one of my clients has standardized on Google Mail/Docs for their communications so I'm constantly reading mail and documents on my iPhone. Gmail was OK on the iPhone and Google Docs was bearable but Google Reader was a nightmare. At the weekend, I noticed Gmail suddenly got a lot nicer with a very iPhone-style UI, sliding panels between labels and mail. Great... now what about the other apps?

Tuesday night, I got home from said client's site and eagerly updated my iPhone firmware. The new "location" feature in the Maps application is very sweet (and seems sufficiently accurate for my needs). Then I started reorganizing my home screen. Screens. That's when I noticed that Google had updated most of its apps to be iPhone-friendly. Google Docs makes a great reader now, even for fairly large spreadsheets. Google Reader is a huge improvement!

So now my iPhone has:

• 43actions - a great little GTD (Getting Things Done) task manager
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Clock - with 10 cities
• Maps
• Notes
• Stocks
• Weather

Followed by:

• Google Docs
• Google Mail
• Google Reader
• Belfry Scientific Calculator
• My client's Google Docs
• My client's Google Mail
• ColdFusion 8 QuickDocs
• IMDB - I'm always looking up movies and actors so I need that accessible!

Then my menu bar is:

• Mail
• Phone
• Safari
• Settings

On screen two, I have a row of games:

• Bejeweled
• Code Breader - a simple take on "Mastermind", a childhood favorite
• InARow touch - aka "Connect 4", another childhood favorite
• Mahjong

Then my multimedia tools:

• Camera
• iTunes
• iPod
• Photos
• Text
• YouTube

And, yes, they are in alphabetical groups. Call me anal retentive and see if I care!

Anyway, a big thank you to Apple and Google (and those games companies) for making my iPhone an even more lovable and addictive little toy!

A Leopard is in my future. I've been holding off upgrading to Leopard until Adobe (and others) have updates available to ensure compatibility. My financial controller (Jay) pointed out that it's year end and if I need any "last minute" software or hardware I should buy it a.s.a.p.

Smart woman, my wife!

So I just ordered Leopard, a car charger for my iPhone and a 750Gb USB 2.0 HD that I can stick on my Apple BaseStation as a network drive. 750Gb for just $230... amazing... and scary how cheap storage has become...

The question is: can I resist upgrading until all the software I use has been updated?

Today Jay & I went to the AT&T store and bought his and hers iPhones. I have to say that I'm even more impressed with the phone than I ever could have imagined. The virtual keyboard is good enough to type blog entries and the overall integration with email, calendar, contacts and browser is stunning!

Here's a neat trick via note19 describing how you can use Skype on your desktop to initiate a call via your iPhone (or any browser).

If you're one of those lucky iPhone owners, you might find this hint about PDF optimization very useful (from my former colleague Shahram Javey's blog).