Brandon Hansen's blog is called "We make Good Websites Great", and he has just posted an interesting entry entitled ColdFusion vs PHP.

I guess the title of this post pretty much sums up my impressions of Mango Blog, but, let me add some details and context ...

I use Ray Camden's BlogCFC for this blog, and have for many years. BlogCFC has served me well, and continues to do so. I have thousands of entries, many thousands of comments, and many more thousands of page views. As I said, BlogCFC has served me well, and while I do have some suggestions/criticisms of it (which I do share with Ray who is very receptive to the feedback), I have no plans on switching away from it. BlogCFC works for me and does what I need.

I also run another blog, an Adobe internal blog that is used by all of the Platform Evangelists. We use it for trip reports, pointing out news stories, and more. It's been running on BlogCFC for a while, and I actually hacked Ray's code to make it use the Adobe LDAP server for authentication, as well as to build a mail server bot that the team uses to send blog posts from their e-mail, great for those of us who need to file trip reports but who live on the road. But some members of the evangelism team were a little less than enamored with BlogCFC, they wanted something that looked much better and which could be skinned easily, they wanted richer editing capabilities, and more.

So I downloaded Laura Arguello's Mango Blog and installed it on a test server. The setup was quick and painless; it just worked flawlessly the first time. And I was pleased (and surprised) to see that it even includes an option to import an existing BlogCFC blog (it can import from Wordpress, too), and that worked quite well (I had to tweak the database tables to fix a few things, but nothing too painful or time consuming). The blog is fast, looks good (by default, and can be made to look even better quite easily by using other skins, some of which are included and others can be easily downloaded and activated), and the Administrator tool is superb.

But what about the code and the ability to make modifications if needed? I started working through Laura's code, and honestly, this is some of the best ColdFusion code I have ever seen. It is well organized, consistent, documented, highly understandable ... but it's also pretty sophisticated, so casual hacks would not be recommended at all. So I pinged Laura for pointers. As it so happens she was working on a custom authentication feature for her next update (which she released this week), pass it the name of a custom CFC to do your authentication and everything else just falls into place. Clean, easy, problem solved. My mail bot was a little trickier, but actually very doable via Mango Blog's plug-in mechanism. I now have a plug-in CFC that was able to reuse much of the raw processing of my prior mail bot code, but which now invokes Mango Blog APIs to add posts. And the end result is actually much cleaner and safer than the casual hacks I was using previously. I still have a few bugs to work out with this one, but I am more than impressed with the code and how extensibility and flexibility were thought of and built in from the very beginning.

The bottom line is that while I am sticking with BlogCFC for my own blog, I really like Mango Blog, and am very pleased that the ColdFusion community has another great blogging option available.

Great Indian Developer Summit is one of the premier India tech conferences and events. Each year the conference hosts awards, and last year ColdFusion 8 won for Best Web Development Platform. This year, ColdFusion is nominated again for that same category, and Flex, Flex Builder, Connect, LiveCycle Rights Management ES, Flash Platform, and Device Central are all up for awards, too.

Next week Miami plays host to a Flex Camp. The event is on March 6th, 2009, at Hurricane 100 Room at the BankUnited Center on the campus of the University of Miami. Fellow Adobe Platform Evangelist, Greg Wilson, is presenting the opening session.

Nothing to add, this strip speaks for itself:

Lee's done it again, a new dead drop, this time in London. And the first clue is a doozy!

ColdFusion users in Europe have long been bemoaning the shortage of local hosting options. So it is worth noting that U.K. based Hostway was recently added to the Adobe ColdFusion Hosting Partners list. Hostway offers CF8 Enterprise Edition, Server Monitoring, Sandbox Security and VMware support. They can also provide 24/7 enterprise support.

It's good to see additional ColdFusion hosting options in Europe. If you have any personal experiences with Hostway, please share. Thanks!

The Adobe AIR team has announced the release of AIR 1.5.1 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This release fixes bugs and adds minimal new functionality. You do not need to recompile your application to take advantage of the 1.5.1 improvements. However, if you want to take advantage of the 2 new API changes introduced in this release you will need to update your application descriptor to 1.5.1.

The Flash Lite Developer Challenge is the leading competition for developers working with Flash Lite. The competition challenges three groups of developers: 1. those currently working with Flash Lite, 2. Flash developers interested in developing applications for mobile devices, 3. mobile application developers interested in using Flash Lite. If you belong to one of these groups and you are a company or an individual, a professional or a researcher, you can enter the competition in one of the five categories, get access to great tools from Adobe and stand a chance of winning one of the great cash prizes and promotional packages from the sponsors (including Adobe). The competition is open to developers worldwide (with just a few exceptions, see the rules). The deadline for entries is May 31st, 2009, and winners will be announced June 17th, 2009.

I'll be in Tampa next week, and will use the opportunity to speak to the Tampa ColdFusion User Group and the Tampa Flash, Flex and AIR Developers Group. Fellow Platform Evangelists Greg Wilson and Kevin Hoyt will be there too, and will also be presenting. The event is scheduled for Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 6pm in the Atrium of the Art Institutes of Tampa.

I've mentioned Lee Brimelow's dead-drops previously, but his Amsterdam game is the best thus far. And be sure to read Lee's explanation now that this dead drop has been found.

Three ColdFusion positions this week, including two in London, England:

• NOAA Fisheries (St. Petersburg, FL) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Flex 3 experience is a plus. Contact Elaine Harrell.
• Icewhole.com (London, England) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Requirements include experience with experience with ColdFusion 7 or 8, SQL Server, CSS, Ajax, Flash, and ActionScript. Contact recruitment@icewhole.com.
• AGI Solutions (London, England) is looking for a highly experienced ColdFusion developer for a one month contract (possibly up to 3 months). Contact AGI Recruitment.

The Creative Suite Developer Summit is a live event tailored to the needs of Adobe developers and partners. In its third year, it is an excellent chance to renew your relationship with Adobe, and provide us with guidance on products we should be producing. I'll be presenting a session on getting started with Flex. Registration is now open.

Details about the first BugQuash have been posted, as has a signup form. What is it? "Join with others in the community to eliminate the bugs in the Flex SDK at the first ever BugQuash". The event will be held Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at Adobe's Seattle office.

Fast and Furious is due in theaters April 3rd, 2009, and promises lots more of the high speed car scenes that made the original such fun, this time across Los Angeles and through the Mexican desert. But, you don't have to wait, you can download the Fast & Furious GPS Widget, powered by Adobe AIR, right now, to view trailers, connect with fans, obtain film news, and more.

Here we go again, one more example of how courts and juries seem to believe that individuals should not be responsible for their own actions.

As reported in this story (on CNN), "Dustin Dibble, 25, landed in the [New York City] subway tracks after a late night watching a hockey game at a bar with friends April 23, 2006. A downtown N train ran over him, severing his right leg.". Yep, he was drunk, more than twice the legal limit had he been driving. And he mistakenly stumbled onto the train tracks.

He's lucky to be alive. But, no, that's not good enough. He sued the Metropolitan Transport Authority. And he won! "The jury ruled Tuesday that Dibble was 35 percent responsible for the accident, so his monetary compensation was also reduced by 35 percent -- from $3,594,943 to $2,336,713."

35% responsible?!? He drank, and did so by choice! He impaired his own judgment, and then tempted natural selection. Had he have been killed he'd have been a nominee for The Darwin Awards.

So, how did the jury reach such a ridiculous decision? The only explanation I can find is that perhaps they truly were a jury of his peers, people as stupid as Dustin himself.

Ok, I'll confess, I don't use Twitter. Really. I just don't get the whole Twitter thing. But, many do. Very many. And fellow Adobe platform evangelist, Serge Jespers, has compiled an impressive list of Adobe folks on Twitter.

SitePen has announced Queued, a Dojo based AIR app for managing your Netflix queue. The app is pretty cool, there is a YouTube screencast posted, and source code is available, too. Pretty cool!

JavaWorld has published Part 1 of a two part article by Chet Haase on ActionScript for Java developers.

I've discussed SQL injection attacks several times on this blog. But, judging by how many sites fall victim to these attacks, it's one of those topics that we can never discuss enough. Which is why I want to point out a new Adobe Developer Center article by Adobe Enterprise Developer Support Consultant Ryan Wagener entitled Secure your ColdFusion application against SQL injection attacks.

PC World is running a story entitled Flash Headed to Mobile Devices Say Manufacturers on the Flash (and AIR) related announcements coming out of Mobile World Congress this week.

Among the announcements was one about Flash on the Palm Pre, which is fast becoming the phone I want next (assuming they release a GSM version in the U.S., which unfortunately is not at all clear right now).

Randy Nielsen has announced that the ColdFusion LiveDocs now has a new and improved commenting system.

A couple of months ago I mentioned that there were changes taking place in the ColdFusion team, and I promised an update (which I am late on posting) ...

• ColdFusion has a new Product Manager. Adam Lehman joined Adobe a couple of years ago, first in a sales support role helping the dedicated ColdFusion reps, and then as an evangelist on the Platform Evangelism team. Adam has displayed a passion and a commitment to ColdFusion and the CF community, and he's become a visible and respected member of the ColdFusion team. And now, as ColdFusion Product Manager, Adam gets to help shepherd "Centaur" and "Bolt" to reality, while working on plans for what comes next.
• So, what about ColdFusion evangelism? Terry Ryan has been an active member of the ColdFusion community for years. He played a key role in the development of ColdFusion powered projects at The Wharton School, has presented at MAX, cfObjective and other events, has written on ColdFusion, and more. And now Terry has joined our Platform Evangelism with a dual role, evangelizing ColdFusion, as well as taking the lead on evangelism efforts around higher education for all of the platform products.
• Tim Buntel has been part of the ColdFusion team for years. And even though he is now officially part of the Flex Builder team, ColdFusion is near and dear to his heart, and he can't resist staying involved. As such, Tim is spending a considerable amount of time working with Adam on ColdFusion planning, and investing considerable time and energy on ColdFusion Flex integration.

2009 is going to be an exciting year for ColdFusion, and it's great to have Adam, Terry, and Tim supporting our efforts!

ColdFusion has been the ideal back-end for Flex applications for about as long as Flex has been around (ok, since Flex 2). And at MAX, Tim Buntel and I demoed some of what we are working on for the next versions of both ColdFusion and Flex that will make these applications even more powerful and their creation even more productive. Tim is looking for ColdFusion users, especially those with little or no Flex experience, to fill in a survey and possibly help test some new features.

In a blog post provocatively titled ColdFusion Is Dead!!!, Pablo Varando, explains how he had teams of students create identical projects in ColdFusion, PHP, .NET, and JSP. And not only did the CF team finish far quicker than the others, they also managed to squeeze in a Flex front end for extra credits. This one is worth the read.