Woot, more resumé fodder! [Note to my employer: Not that I'm looking! ;)]

Today I found out that I'm among those selected to join the Adobe Community Professionals program (formerly Community Experts, aka A.C.E. — but there was a conflict with Adobe Certified Experts, thus the change).

I took over as manager of Philly CFUG last October, and through that I've been working on my stage-freight and hopefully helping the Philly CF community start to re-awaken. I'm working on my own presentations, submitting topics for conferences and CFUG meetings, and still working as a copy editor for FAQU, which I personally hope finds a way to get back into print as the economy stabilizes.

2010 is going to be a great year. I'm just glad I get to go along for the ride.

I've been using MAMP Pro for a while to do local ColdFusion development on my Macbook. It makes installing, configuring, and connecting Apache, MySQL, and (shudder) PHP an absolute breeze. And with a little bit of know-how, you can add ColdFusion into the mix to make a stack that is not only easy to use, but fun. When I was consulting, it was well worth the $60 pricetag to be able to use multiple hostnames, but if you only need 1 hostname or are perfectly happy to work out of subfolders of http://localhost/, then the free version of MAMP would be fine for you.

I'm not going to show you how to install ColdFusion 9 into MAMP Pro, because there is already a great video that shows how to install ColdFusion 8 into MAMP Pro, and the install process for CF9 is not different enough to warrant a whole new video by itself. Instead, I'm going to show you how to fix an error that I consistently ran into during the installation process detailed in that video.

At right around the 19 minute mark of that video, the presenter has completed installing ColdFusion and configured MAMP to connect to it; so he restarts his MAMP services to give it a go. At this point, I get the error:

Start Apache failed
Apache wasn't able to start. Please check log for more information.

How do you fix this? Well, why don't I show you?

If this version is too small, you can view it full screen, or you can watch the HD copy on Vimeo.

Hopefully this proves helpful to others out there that want to run CF9 on MAMP or MAMP Pro. I know it drove me nuts for a while.

Previously I wrote about my own feelings after the announcement that Flash will soon be compileable into a native iPhone application.

Kendall Whitehouse, a fellow UPenn staff geek, was at MAX this year and has a great write-up on the situation from a business perspective. Not a whole lot of "news," per say, but definitely some interesting insight for anyone interested in the topic. Kendall also has a few sets of photos from MAX in his flickr photostream.

Yesterday at Adobe MAX, it was announced that Flash will now compile into a native iPhone application. This is big news. Huge, even! But it's also a poke in the eye to everyone who has been clamoring for a Flash Player plugin for the phone's Safari web browser, which is to say: millions of iPhone owners and countless people who refuse to buy one because of its lack of Flash support.

Not to take away from what Adobe Engineers have done — because it actually is pretty cool that Flash will compile into a native iPhone application — but this is a bait and switch. This does (almost?) nothing for the real complaint: That embedded Flash widgets on the web (via the phone's Safari browser) are not usable. Apple's claim that the whole web is at your fingertips is still a bold faced lie.

And let's be honest. Everyone knows it's Apple that's holding out, because they know all too well that the minute they let Flash onto the iPhone everyone will start writing their apps as Flash and posting them on the web, and stop jumping through Apple's App Store hoops — and donating a percentage of their profits to Apple for the privilege. But while we're being honest, it's only fair to say that it's Apple's device, and it is certainly credit-worthy that they had foresight enough to know that Flash would hurt their business model. It's their device, and they are willing to suffer whatever consequences may come from their decision to block Flash. Obviously they're suffering… all the way to the bank.

That said, it would be refreshing if Steve Jobs would just come out and admit that they're not going to let Flash onto the iPhone because it would hurt their business. Part of me thinks the honesty and openness could itself hurt business, because I'm sure there are hold-outs out there, hoping and praying for Flash every night before bed; and admitting on public record that it will never happen could drive them away, but beating around the bush with answers like "we're working on it" and "we want it to happen" might fool some people into keeping their hopes alive. But it's possible that such openness could help, too. People might find the honesty and transparency refreshing — I know I would — and be more open to the idea of adopting the phone. But it won't happen. Apple isn't exactly known for its transparency.

So, while I applaud Adobe for their engineering efforts, I think that this is a bad marketing move. Call a spade a spade, call a plugin a plugin, and don't try to pull the wool over people's eyes. I understand that Adobe has a working relationship with Apple that they need to maintain, and I don't have a problem with that. But I still feel dirty, like some shady back-alley dealer is pushing this Flash-iPhone compiler on me when I asked for a Safari plugin. And that itself takes away from the respect that the technology deserves.

Full disclosure: I have an iPhone and love it to death; and I love Flash and Flex. I'd love to see them together on the iPhone, but I don't think it will ever happen.

If you listen closely to CFConversations Episode 33, you'll hear Terry Ryan and Adam Lehman explain why Adobe's official product names and release dates are kept secret for so long — hence the use of code names like Scorpio, Centaur, Bolt, Catalyst, etc.

"Basically, if we say the name of the product it has to go on our reports, and because we're not selling it yet you get zero's on the report and so that causes all sorts of problems. There are very legal reasons for doing it…" — Terry

"Then there's copyright and trademarks. If we were to (hypothetically!) come out a year ago and say, "it's called ColdFusion 9", but then took more than a year to release it someone could actually steal that trademark. Traditionally, when we go to public beta is when the official names come out." — Adam

That said, Adobe has been publicly announcing (CF, Bolt) that the name of the next version of ColdFusion is (big surprise) ColdFusion 9, and the name for the IDE (that we currently refer to as Bolt) is ColdFusion Builder. I guess we can expect an announcement for public beta any time now, right?

When you put two and two together, you can infer that they will be released more or less hand in hand. It wouldn't make much sense for them to be released a week or two apart, splitting the hype; it makes much more sense to combine them and have one big party. That isn't much of a surprise. Some of the features announced for Centaur — ColdFusion 9 — pretty much require IDE integration. (And some of them don't, but are still pretty badass!)

But the big take away from these announcements is that we can expect ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder to be available for purchase no later than June of 2010. The clock is ticking.

Oh, but there's that big Adobe MAX conference in October, too. I wonder what they'll be talking about…