I'm very satisfied with this great software. It garantees great performances, expecially at low and very low bitrate. The only defect I found is the lack of a command line mode. If you have to set up and launch the encoding on a remote computer or if you need to integrate FME in a pre-existent authomatic procedure or system, You would need a command line mode or a programmatic way to handle starting, stopping, changing configurations.

Adobe Systems announced the public beta of Adobe Flex 3 software, the cross platform, free open source framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs). This major functional release adds rich new UI capabilities, enhanced developer productivity, desktop deployment and enterprise testing and performance tools. The Flex 3 public beta also marks the first significant deliverable for the open source Flex project, beginning with the availability of nightly builds and a public bug database.

Flex Developer Bootcamp is an intensive, one-day hands-on training program that will teach Web developers and designers how to build Rich Internet Application using Flex. The one-day bootcamp will take place on June 24, 2007, at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

Flash Lite 3 is on the way to be released in the next months. The more exciting feature will be the support for the 'traditional' Flash video codecs (Flash Lite 2 only supported the external launch of 3gpp and mp4 videos). The subscribing of video should be accomplished by both progressive downloading and FMS streaming.

Adobe Systems Incorporated has introduced Adobe® LiveCycle® Enterprise Suite (ES), an integrated family of software for automating processes that help businesses and governments engage with customers, citizens, partners, and suppliers.

Our instructors are not those fly by night trainers that would teach you by reading aloud someone's manual in the classroom. We spend most of our time working on the real-world projects that include Adobe Flex, Java, and a plethora of other technologies. We can offer you Adobe Certified Flex training, where we use original Adobe courseware and labs enriched with live discussions of the real-world issues that developers face daily. Last week, I've been teaching a class to a large group of Java developers of a Fortune 100 firm, and in addition to covering the training materials - I've spent at least two hours discussing the proper ways of designing their first Java/Flex projects.

One of the great things about Flex is that you get to spend most of your time working on the business logic and workflow, and less on the cosmetic aspect. This is because the Flex default's look-and-feel is great! The only problem of course is that most people won't spend much time customizing the look, resulting in many Flex apps looking the same. In Flex 1.5 many folks customized the color scheme, but few ventured into modifying the actual skins of the components.

On a day when AJAX was pronounced the hottest technology in IT by Gartner, SYS-CON.TV produced a live discussion of Rich Internet Applications and its sister term, AJAX. Of particular interest to the SYS-CON.TV audience were the remarks of Adobe's Mike Potter, who outlined the dynamism of Adobe's Flex approach to AJAX development, discussed how it integrates within the overall AJAX community, and how the company's updated server-side ColdFusion technology now integrates with it.

Here is some more information about the first public beta release of Flex 3 (now available on Adobe labs), the first major deliverable for the open source Flex project (including a public bug base, and the beginning of public nightly builds). Some of the new features in Flex Builder 3 are ...

Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), formerly known as Apollo, is a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to use their existing web development skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop. And you can get it right now on Labs.

Today, Adobe has released 3 new public beta's on Adobe Labs: The Adobe Integrated Runtime (formerly known as Apollo) beta, the Flex 3 Beta, and the Flash Player Updater were all publicly released on Labs today. I've been recovering from a failed hard drive all day (remind me to post a blog about the wonders of SpinRite 6.0 when I get a minute), but I'll post more about all 3 of these, as well as the ColdFusion 8 (Scorpio) beta released 2 weeks ago, when I get a few minutes.

I found the entire event to be surreal, like an out of body experience. I'd never been in a make-up chair before, and I'm really an 'in the trenches' kind of developer - I've never much aspired to be on TV, but I also won't turn down the chance to discuss things that I am passionate about with other like-minded and extremely intelligent people. However, it was a bit humbling when they had to use a little bit extra make-up on my head to make sure the shine from my baldness didn't interfere with the camera :)

There are a couple of things to note before we begin. First, HTTP Compression is a great way to speed up your Website and lower bandwidth utilization all at the same time. In this example, your ColdFusion server (6.1 and above) will encode CFML output using GZIP and have the browser decompress this data on the fly.

SYS-CON.TV has invited me to participate in the live TV broadcast 'RIA Shootout.' This panel will discuss variety of tools and techniques available for developing rich Internet applications. If you are not sure if RIA is for you or what software platform is the best fit for your needs, this panel may give you an overview of what's available today. At the end of the show, we'll be answering questions from the virtual audience, but if you miss the live show, its recorded version will be published at SYS-CON.TV some time later.

'Flex Developer Bootcamp' is an intensive, one-day hands-on training program that will teach Web developers and designers how to build Rich Internet Application using Flex. Flex Developer Bootcamp is a hands-on workshop that is not offered anywhere else: during this day attendees will create two fully functional applications. This workshop will be taught by Flex experts from Farata Systems ? Yakov Fain (Adobe Certified Flex Instructor) and Dr. Victor Rasputnis, co-authors of the book Developing RIA with Adobe Flex and Java.

My partner Victor and I will be running a series of intensive 'SYS-CON Events Flex Developer Bootcamp' across the country. First, we ran such workshop as a part of the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East last month in New York City. We've received a very positive and exciting feedback and were invited to re-run this class in various cities across the USA. This hands-on-bring-your- laptop class consists of two parts - during the first 4 hours you'll learn the basics of Flex, and after lunch you'll be learning how to use Flex with the server side programs (we use Tomcat and MySQL Server database). This workshop is geared toward busy enterprise developers and managers, who can't afford taking a week off for training but need a jump start for their upcoming Flex projects.

ColdFusion MX7 introduced the ability to asynchronously spawn ColdFusion requests using an event gateway. While many take advantage of this capability, it has some significant limitations, the biggest of which is that threads can only be spawned, there is no way to monitor spawned threads or wait for them to finish. (The other limitation is that the functionality is only available in ColdFusion Enterprise).

We are going to introduce you to an effect that's a lot of fun to use. Items on the Flash stage are rarely static. Things move around, menus pull down, and so on. The line between what is Flash and what is video on the Flash stage has, for all intents and purposes, been erased. It makes sense, therefore, that when planning a Flash/After Effects project, that the stuff that moves, in either app, should be indistinguishable as to its source.

The increasing integration of Adobe and former Macromedia products continues with Creative Suite 3, which is available in a version targeted specifically to Web developers and designers. Designers today - whether they started in an era of X-acto knives and border tape or have recently graduated with a degree in digital design - must have at least a nodding acquaintance with the various strains of code that underlies their work. Yet the tools have long been powerful enough that they don't have to consider themselves to be programmers.

Most of us at one time or another has had to give a presentation - for a project, a company, or something else; we have all used PowerPoint (or other desktop applications such as OpenOffice and KeyNote) in these presentations. We are all familiar with PowerPoint presentations, maybe even 'too familiar.' We've seen too many PowerPoint presentations, but only few great presenters. It's not a PowerPoint problem though as it's just a tool, and it dominates desktop presentations for a reason. It's fine for what it was originally designed for: 'Creating on the desktop - presenting on the desktop.'

Other than Flash Player, ClearBI does not require any additional software install on the client side. At the time of this writing, ClearBI is the only professional reporting solution on the market of rich Internet applications developed using Adobe Flex and Java. ClearBI is available in two versions: ClearBI Plugin and ClearBI End-User.

After a 7 year hiatus, ColdFusion once again has an interactive debugger, and this time it is built on top of Eclipse (and uses the same debugging interface as Flex Builder, and other Eclipse plug-ins). If you are interested in taking the debugger for a spin, here's what you need to know to get started: First of all, you need ColdFusion 8. If you don't have it yet, get it!

The Real-World Java Seminar is a one-day event that's packed with technical presentations delivered by the Java industry experts. Attending this event will allow you to take a fresh look at the architecture of the projects you're working on now and can serve as a roadmap for your further development as a Java professional. The largest Java developer event on the East Coast, Real-World Java Seminar will offer sponsorship and exhibit opportunities to the leading Java technology companies. Additional information on sponsorship and exhibit opportunities can be obtained by e-mail at events(at) sys-con.com or by phone at 201 802-3021.

Today's online experiences often fall short of user expectations. For many consumers and business users, it is no longer enough to simply interact with static pages of information. Instead, a growing number of users want Web applications that deliver the responsiveness, performance, rich media and interactivity typically found in desktop applications.

One of the major features of upcoming Adobe Apollo is support disconnected Web applications, and Adobe's Kevin Lynch announced that Google Gears will be available in Apollo. Adobe Flex applications already use the space on the client's disk for storing instances of any objects (this is called local SharedObjects), and turning this disk space into a fully searchable RDBMS sounds pretty exciting to me. Last year Sun Microsystems have included a client database Java DB in Java 6, which would be more useful if Java offered a competitive Web client VM. This situation won't change for at least a year (we are expecting a small footprint Consumer JRE next year).

On May 30, Adobe released the public beta of ColdFusion 8. Although things can change between the public beta and the final release - the features included in CF 8 are unlikely to change between now and the official release, so I thought I'd give a high-level overview of some significant new features and why developers and companies should be interested in ColdFusion 8.

Nitobi (http://www.nitobi.com) has announced it will support the ColdFusion platform in its suite of enterprise AJAX components. The ColdFusion edition of Nitobi Grid and Combobox offers support to newer as well as older versions of Coldfusion. The implementation enables a simple backwards-compatible CFINCLUDE style XML API for reading and writing the Nitobi compressed XML schema for AJAX transport.

Customers of all sizes have actively participated in the ColdFusion public beta and found the solution offers many compelling reasons to upgrade. 'ColdFusion 8 delivers several enhancements that boost day-to-day productivity,' said Brian Rinaldi, ColdFusion Developer, Distributed Computing Group, Sun Life Financial. 'Features such as debugging and server monitoring accelerate routine development and maintenance ? and can really make a difference when it comes to keeping service levels high and applications running smoothly.'

Today I'm speaking with Ben Forta, the technical evangelist for Adobe. The first thing I have to ask you is - the acquisition has happened, Adobe is now controlling ColdFusion and has taken over everything that Macromedia was doing, and this is my first chance to really speak with you since that happened - what is going on in the ColdFusion world? How has the acquisition gone for the ColdFusion team and yourself and what's in store for us in the near future?

When building the right project team to complete a custom solution there are many forces at work. These include business drivers, technical drivers, and organizational and political motivations. Regardless of the business or organization there are three basic rules to follow in building a team to deliver a technical solution. The first is to involve the business before the team is even assembled.

In playing around with the ColdFusion/Flex wizards, I found that Adobe includes a really nice resizeable closeable window. When I get more time, I'll integrate this with my MaximizeRestorePanel class.

Over the past year the Dreamweaver product design and development team have been out on the road talking to Web designers and developers (Web pros) about the prospect of using AJAX to build more engaging and interactive Web pages and applications. While many Web pros were excited by what could be built, we also heard big concerns both about how to get started and how to integrate new AJAX frameworks into existing workflows.

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is nothing new. The technologies behind AJAX have been around for quite a while. Jesse James Garrett just gave the amalgamation of XML, DOM, and JavaScript a catchy new name. Many CF developers hear buzzwords like AJAX and Web 2.0 and simply tune out because they think it's too much to comprehend.

As both a .NET programmer and ColdFusion developer, I always wondered how I could leverage the world of .NET in ColdFusion. Both platforms come with powerful features and using them together might be a wonderful friendship, if one could only make them cooperate. There are two worlds out there and none of them is an island.

When it comes to code, less is more. Or to be more precise, less is better. How do you write less code and still write enough code to make your applications function as required? One way is to reuse code: write code once, use that code many times. If the words 'code reuse' evoke thoughts of copying bits of code and pasting it elsewhere, keep reading because this article will teach you a better way!

For Web developers, form validation is a basic task, and yet one that presents some interesting challenges. Even discounting security issues such as SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting (XSS), form validation is a critical step in your error handling strategy.

Gateways; you've heard about them. You've read the hype. You've probably created one or two. You've seen applications do wonderful things with them. There have been articles written about them. Don't be fooled. Not everything is always the way it seems. There's a dark side to the gateway system. A side where things don't go as expected. I think the gateway system is like an exotic sports car with a child at the wheel. It is full of power, has extensive form and tons of function. But it seems like someone with no knowledge or understanding is at the controls.

Many times object-oriented programming (OOP) is billed as the end-all solution to cure the spaghetti code that can come from procedural style applications. After all, you just have to stuff your logic code into a component (big OOP buzzword - encapsulation), and now your code is instantly better, right? How hard is it to stick a createObject function call or a tag in when you need to access that bit of code? Can anybody look into the future and see a problem here?

Yes, you read the title correctly: 'Scorpio,' the highly anticipated eighth major release of ColdFusion is coming soon to a town near you. Even before the release of the highly successful ColdFusion MX 7 two years ago, the ColdFusion team was already hard at work scheming, experimenting, planning, building, creating...and the result is 'Scorpio.'

I've written in the past about using DataMgr to make sure that the tables and columns you need exist. I have been asked a few times this week about making sure that those newly created tables are automatically loaded with data. If you don't know how to have DataMgr create the tables and columns you need, you can watch the 'Synchronize Database Structure' presentation now.