Like many of you, I never tire of seeing .cfm URLs when not looking for them. Today I visited Tripp Lite, a leading provider of UPSs, KVM switches, and more. I found exactly what I was looking for, and also found a site powered by ColdFusion.

BestWebDesignAgencies.com has posted its Rankings of Best ColdFusion Development Firms. Odd thing is how few of the listed companies are ones I've heard of. Does anyone know anything about how these ratings and reviews work?

Oh, I know I should steer clear of politics, but this one really ticks me off!

Democratic U.S. Representative Parker Griffith has announced that he plans on switching to the Republican party. And it works both ways. Earlier this year, United States Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania, switched to the Democratic party after five terms in the GOP.

Party switching is nothing new, and hundreds of politicians have switched parties since the mid 1800s (although it's only happened 21 times in the U.S. Senate). But the fact that it's been going on for such a long time does not make it right. Actually, it feels really wrong, almost fraudulent. Citizens don't just vote for individuals to represent them, they also often vote based on party affiliation. Running for office as a member of a specific party, and then switching once in office, is deceitful, and is essentially depriving voters of their right to elect their own representatives in government.

Put it this way. If you hired an employee for a multi-year contract based on promises and commitments that employee made, and then found out that the employee arbitrarily changed course and directions and plans without your consent, what would you do?

Politicians have every right to switch allegiances, but they should not be allowed to do so mid-term. And if they want to do just that, then they should be forced to run a mid-term election, essentially allowing citizens to decide if they find the change acceptable and if they feel like they are still being appropriately represented.

Is is time for a 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

At MAX 2009, producer Jon Landau talked about the creation of the new hit movie Avatar. In this Adove TV segment he explains how Photoshop, InDesign, Lightroom, After Effects, Premier, and Connect, were all used in the creation of the movie.

The Adobe Community Help application is Adobe's next-generation AIR based help experience (now available in a preview form). It was initially configured to work with Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst content, but now also supports ColdFusion help as of ColdFusion Builder Beta 3 (as noted by Adobe Technical Writer Mallika Yelandur).

I previously mentioned that the public beta of ColdFusion Builder Beta 3 was available. Well, if you have not upgraded yet, here's another reason to do so, the ColdFusion Builder team has noted that Beta 2 will expire on January 1st, 2010.

Beta 3 of ColdFusion Builder has been posted to Adobe Labs. Go grab it!

I have no idea who's responsible for this one, really! This was brought to my attention by fellow Adobe Platform Evangelist Greg Wilson.

This one just sent to me by a very excited Ali Daniali. Registration is now open for Google I/O 2010, and the registration site is powered by ColdFusion and Fusebox. Google, we're glad you've discovered online productivity! ;-)

The Boeing Dreamliner is an astonishing piece of technology, and promises to significantly impact the future of commercial aviation. 50% of the primary structure is made from composite materials, the interior is wide and open and spacious, humidity can be maintained allowing for more comfortable flight, assembly required less than 10,000 holes in the fuselage (contrasted to over 1,000,000,000 in the 7474), it's 20% more fuel efficient than similar sized planes, and the list goes on and on.

It's been a long time since this plane, also called the 787, was announced (back on 7/8/7), and so today's planned maiden flight is an important milestone.

I do intend to fly this plane as soon as I can! My local carrier, Northwest Airlines, had announced that they would be the first US carrier to fly the Dreamliner 787. Northwest is now part of Delta, and I'm hoping that the original 787 plans are kept, although I've not found any comment on the subject to date.

Regardless, to the good people at Boeing (many of whom are loyal ColdFusion customers), congratulations on achieving this truly momentous milestone (And I'll reiterate my offer, you need beta fliers, feel free to ping me!).

Fellow Adobe Platform Evangelist Terry Ryan has written an ADC article entitled Displaying Flash video files in ColdFusion 9 which explains how to use new ColdFusion 9 functionality to serve Flash Video.

Open Mind Commerce is a UK based e-commerce solution powered by ColdFusion. The product was just highlighted and reviewed by Practical eCommerce in a Cart of the Week post.

Fellow Adobe Platform Evangelist Kevin Hoyt has recorded two useful videos for Adobe Developer Connection. In RIA Problems You Never Expected: Too Many Screens he explains how multiple screens in a rich internet application can exceed the abilities of the client machine, and shows how to achieve swift and seamless response time with creation queuing techniques. In RIA Problems You Never Expected: Wasted Resources he explains how virtual lists improve application performance by reducing rendering time. You can watch both videos in under 10 minutes, and in doing so I think you'll find the time well spent.

ColdFusion on Wheels is an open source CFML framework inspired by Ruby on Rails, and the ColdFusion on Wheels team has just released version 1.0.

Title says it all, Adobe AIR 1.5.3 has been released. See the release notes for details.

The December 2009 issue of Adobe Edge is out, and it includes an excellent article by Brian Rinaldi on Data-centric development in Adobe Flash Builder 4 using ColdFusion.

SapphireSteel has released beta 7 of their Visual Studio plug-in for Flex development. New features include improvements to the design view, property editors, as well as a new debugger.

I don't like moderated comments on blogs. Moderation hurts immediacy and creates the illusion of censorship. But, despite my best efforts at blocking spammers, too much comment spam is getting through, and that's not fair to commenters. And so, I have activated comment moderation on my blog. Sorry, but hopefully this will kill blog comment spam for good.

You should be running ColdFusion 9. But, if for some reason you're still on ColdFusion 8, then you'll want to know that ColdFusion 8.0.1 Cumulative Hot Fix 4 has been released.

The first book on ColdBox has been released. The Definitive Guide To The ColdBox Platform is written by Luis Majano, the creator of ColdBox.

XM Radio Canada is powered by ColdFusion. Last week XM Radio Canada upgraded to ColdFusion 9, and also rolled out a new Flash based online player and an iPhone app called XMRO, both of which are powered by ColdFusion 9 on the back-end.

I know, we're barely recuperated from MAX 2009, and MAX 2010 is still 10 months away. But, it's not too early to sign up so you'll be in the loop. Subscribe to the Adobe MAX 2010 mailing list and you'll be the first to know when registration opens, when sessions are posted, and more.

A few weeks ago I chatted with DZone's Nitin Bharti about ColdFusion 9 and beyond. The interview is now online.

There is a problem with ColdFusion 9 Standard serial numbers on Linux. As per this tech note, the solution is to install without a serial number, and then enter the serial number through the System Information page of the ColdFusion Administrator.

When I was in Australia last month I had the opportunity to sit down with Chris Duckett to chat about ColdFusion, Flash, MAX announcements, and more, and the video is now online on the ZDNet Australia site. And it actually turned out pretty well (yes, I am somewhat surprised, this was basically moments after landing after flying in from the U.S., talk about hitting the ground running!).