It reads like a newspaper. Updates like a Web site. And delivers like The New York Times. The new Times Reader 2.0 delivers the entire day's Times (including an interactive version of the crossword) in seconds, so you can carry it wherever you go. And it's all powered by Adobe AIR. We first sneaked this app at MAX 2008 in San Francisco, and now it's available for you to download. Oh, it's worth noting that Microsoft built the initial WPF based version of the Times Reader application for the Times three years ago, but that version is no longer available for download.

At MAX 2008 in San Francisco, Kevin Lynch announced that Major League Baseball was going to be using Flash for broadcast video. What he did not say at the time is that MLB had been using Silverlight, which they were abandoning for Flash. Greg Sandoval has posted a story on CNET explaining what he's learned about why Silverlight is out, and Flash is in.

I presented a MegaLab hands-on session in San Francisco and Milan, and introduced lots of developers to data-services powered Flex and AIR apps. The session walked Windows and Mac developers through a dozen hands-on apps that started with basic data integration and worked all the way up to data synchronization and offline support and more. Unfortunately, due to a corrupt ZIP file, Mac users were unable to follow along in San Francisco.

If you'd like to try the session yourself, here is what you need:

• RealTimeDS.zip [400MB] is the complete server containing TomCat, LCDS, ColdFusion, a database, and more.
• RealTimeDS.pdf [200KB] is the student hand-out.

All of the instructions are in the ZIP file. Enjoy!

During the MAX Japan keynote we announced that Adobe AIR has been installed 100 million times since it's release less than a year ago! We also announced that Flash Player 10 had been installed on 55% of computers in its first two months! TechCrunch also just reported the story.

EcoDrive is an AIR based application that uses data collected by your Fiat car to help drivers adjust their driving style so as to improve fuel efficiency. The app was shown during the keynote in MAX Milan. Andrew Shorten and Serge Jespers recently spent some time with Fiat and with AKQA who built the app, and have posted this video report. The video runs about 20 minutes, and is well worth watching.

While demoing the ORM features in Centaur (CF9) and Bolt (the CF IDE) during the MAX keynote, I showed and executed some code, and this snippet appeared on the screen for a short time:

I have now received three e-mails asking if that code was real or not. And the answer is yes, that is real code generated by Bolt, and it really was running in Centaur. Really! And yes, I know the code is not great (heck, it's not even that good, good thing we're not shipping yet).

But, you have to wonder, what made them ask? And did we inadvertently let a CF9 enhancement slip out of the bag? ;-)

No, that's no a typo, Adobe Hair it is.

Adrian Bridgwater attended MAX Europe in Milan, and comments on our sneaks session.

I've posted some pics of MAX Europe in Milan, Italy, last week.

I got the chance to chat with Simon Bisson at MAX Milan, and he shares his thoughts over at IT Pro on the future of ColdFusion in a piece entitled The ColdFusion Renaissance.

RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol - yep, we've moved from 3 and 4 letter acronyms to 5 letter acronyms!) was demonstrated at MAX, both in the Day 2 keynote and in the Sneaks. As demonstrated by Agent Steve in Milan and Agents D & D in San Francisco, RTMFP provides the ability to do direct client-to-client streaming. But what exactly is RTMFP? How does it differ from what was available in Flash Player previously? And why is yet another protocol needed? If you want to know the answer to these questions and more, check out Nigel Pegg's post entitled Try RTMFP and Client-to-Client Direct Streaming, With FP10 and Cocomo, Today!.

I mentioned the Cocomo app created by Serge Jespers and Andrew Shorten. The app was "Paparazzi Central" to be used by paparazzi to share tips with colleagues and upload photos to share with publishers all over the world. And of course Serge and Andrew created a series of images for use with the app. This is one of them, check Serge's site for the others. ;-)

It's early Tuesday morning in Milan. MAX Europe started yesterday with a keynote by Michele Turner and Mark Anders. The content was similar to the U.S. keynote, but with local partners and examples highlighted. The Fiat AIR app in particular was a thing of beauty, and the crowd loved the Cocomo demo by evangelists Serge Jespers and Andrew Shorten (I'll post links to those doctored images when I get them).

I presented my 3 hour hands on Flex/AIR/ColdFusion/DS lab yesterday, and this time all worked flawlessly. Phew!

We're now backstage prepping for the Day 2 keynote. Tim Buntel and I are reprising The Agency, slightly modified for the local audience, and with local agents recruited to join the fun.

You'd think a keynote is a keynote is a keynote. Once it's been done once, then recreating it elsewhere should be a cinch, right? Unfortunately, it never works that way. And right now folks are scurrying around backstage, checking and testing and tweaking and fine-tuning and ... 15 minutes or so to go!

In San Francisco, Serge Jespers and Andrew Shorten provided live blogging of both Day 1 and Day 2. Both Serge and Andrew will be on stage during the keynote today, and so the live blogging will be performed by evangelism team members Mihai Corlan, Tom Krcha, Piotr Walczyszyn.

I am in the Milano Convention Centre here in Milan, Italy, location for MAX Europe 2008. We're sitting backstage, working on keynotes, tweaking demos, figuring out staging, and waiting (MAX keynote prep work involves lots of hurry-up-and-wait time). MAX Europe attendance has exceeded that of last year, just as we did in the U.S. this year. It's going to be a fun MAX!

As a follow up to my MAX session on data services, an attendee e-mailed me to ask me to explain the differences between the various connectivity options supported by LCDS and BlazeDS. I replied with a link to a post entitled BlazeDS and LCDS: Channels, Channels Everywhere on Damon Cooper's blog, and am posting it here as well in the hope that it is useful to others.

I am in Poland for a few days, a slight detour before MAX Europe in Milan next week. While I am in Warsaw I'll get to meet partners and customers along with local Platform Evangelist Piotr Walczyszyn, and will also present at RIA Day in Wroclaw.

Well, two mini-me's actually. ;-) These adorable paper figurines were created by the very talented Brazilian, Cláudio Dias (the same guy who sold a Darth Vader model to help pay his way to MAX). The one on the left is me in a CF shirt, and the one on the right is everyone's favorite superhero, Scorpio Man (complete with mask, cape, and tail)! Check out Cláudio's other creations on paperinside.com, you'll be amazed at what he's created.

On, and I posted a few other MAX US 2008 pics, too.

Last week at MAX we introduced Alchemy, the project that lets you compile C and C++ code to run in the Flash Player. Branden Hall of Automata Studios (aka Agent Branden from the MAX keynote) has posted an excellent post on how Alchemy works.

And on a related note, Flash Magazine has a brief story on a very important C based application that has been ported to Flash Player, ID Software's genre defining DOOM.

It's never too early to start planning for MAX 2009. Earlier this week, during my Day 2 keynote, I announced that MAX 2009 in the U.S. will be in Los Angeles, at the newly renovated L.A. Convention Center, October 4th-7th, 2009.

MAX US 2008 is over, and the general consensus is that this ranks as one of the best to date. The venue was great, the content was superb, the special event is being praised by all ... I think that most people would be astonished if they knew how much time and work goes into creating and producing MAX, and when it all comes together as it did this year, well, that's pretty phenomenal. Oh, and among the comments I heard tonight was this one: "this was so much fun, it felt like Macromedia MAX". I agree.

And with that, I head home tomorrow for the weekend, and then it's off to Europe to do it all again!

This morning I presented a 3 hour MegaLab session at MAX, 180 minutes of LCDS, CF, Flex, and AIR. And things did not go as smoothly as I'd have liked. The 400MB ZIP file that we prepared for attendees worked fine on Windows, but would not work on Mac machines. Apparently, when the ZIP file was expanded, one folder contained files on Windows but was empty on Mac! Other that that, the session went really well. For the Mac users, as promised, I will have a corrected ZIP file built for you to download, and will post the link to it when that is done.

Serge Jespers and Andrew Shorten live blogged the MAX US keynote this morning, and are about to do the same for the MAX Awards and the sneaks. Replay available after the event.

As announced in the MAX keynote this morning, Alchemy is a project that allows users to compile C and C++ code to run on the ActionScript Virtual Machine. With Alchemy, developers can now reuse hundreds of millions of lines of existing open source C and C++ client or server-side code on the Flash Platform. The C or C++ code is compiled to ActionScript as a SWF or SWC that runs on Flash Player 10 or AIR 1.5. And Alchemy is available now on Adobe Labs.

During the MAX keynote this morning I announced that we are working on an Eclipse based ColdFusion IDE codenamed "Bolt" to be released in conjunction with the next version of ColdFusion. More details to follow, but, visit Labs to request access to both Bolt and Centaur. Oh, and yes, the name "Bolt" pays homage to the original ColdFusion lightning bolt.