Rob Gonda's Blog

Google stats down?

Has anyone else noticed that the Google stats have not been accurate in the past few days? I have five sites there, but luckily, I do not rely solely in a third party free service to keep track of important information. It’s too bad though, I had I faith high in Google services.

Flash Position In Hollywood, Florida

We’re looking for someone who eats, sleeps, and breaths Flash ActionScript!

iChameleon Group offers an incredible career building full-time position working with notable National + International companies. Some of our client projects include Mini-Cooper, Earthlink, Slim Jim, De Beer’s, Bridgestone, and Coke. Our fast growing company develops various exciting, innovative, and high profile websites and applications fusing media, video, audio and Flash.

We strongly suggest viewing our portfolio at www.ichameleongroup.com to understand the quality of work.

We are a fun, eccentric, hardworking, creative group in a business casual environment.  We are looking for a dynamic, motivated team player who will enjoy working in a fast-paced, deadline driven, ever changing development and solution-based environment.

Requirements, skills + abilities:

  • Team Player
  • Self Starter
  • Interactive site development experience
  • 3+ years of experience                         
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • Dreamweaver MX 2004
  • Flash MX 2004
  • ActionScript, HTML, CSS, XML
  • Strong Motion Graphics
  • Ability to create animation via ActionScript as well as the traditional timeline.
  • Knowledge of Flash Components
  • Experience with Flash Remoting
  • PC fluent (Mac A Plus)
  • Solid communications skills (written and verbal)
  • Outgoing, Energetic Personality 
  • Good Organizational Skills
  • Detail oriented, strong follow-up skills and ability to work on multiple projects
Additional bonus skills:

  • After Effects
  • Final Cut
  • Experience in producing games and game interfaces.
  • ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, PERL, or any other web language 
  • Ability to speak to levitate things with you mind.

Want to come join our team? Submit your resume and cover letter, including salary history, to jobs[at]ichameleongroup[dot]com

ColdFusion Position In Hollywood, Florida

iChameleon Group offers an incredible career building full-time position working with notable National + International companies. Our fast growing company develops various exciting, innovative, and high profile applications fusing media, video, audio and Flash.

We are a fun, eccentric, hardworking, creative group in a business casual environment.  We are looking for a dynamic, motivated team player who will enjoy working in a fast-paced, deadline driven, ever changing development and solution-based environment.

The successful coldfusion web developer candidate must posses:

  • The ability to support for the full application development life cycle activities of software products and development.
  • Demonstrated skills in documenting development.
  • Strong problem solving and debugging skills.

Requirements, skills + abilities:

  • Team Player
  • Self Starter
  • Interactive site development experience
  • 2-5 years of experience                         
  • ColdFusion MX 7
  • Object Oriented Programming    
  • Experience with Flash Remoting
  • Database design and SQL
  • HTML, JavaScript, and CSS
  • PC fluent (Mac A Plus)
  • Solid communications skills (written and verbal)
  • Outgoing, Energetic Personality 
  • Good Organizational Skills
  • Detail oriented, strong follow-up skills and ability to work on multiple projects
Additional skills:

  • Macromedia Certified ColdFusion MX 7
  • Framework Knowledge (Fusebox, Mach II, Model-Glue, Tartan)
  • Design Patterns
  • UML
  • AJAX 
  • ASP, PHP, PERL, or any other web language 
  • CVS and/or subversion experience

Want to come join our team? Submit your resume and cover letter, including salary history, to jobs[at]ichameleongroup[dot]com

IBM Leads Open AJAX Initiative

AJAX news just in: this just came out on e-week today.

"The new initiative, known as Open AJAX, includes such prominent supporters as BEA Systems, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, Google, IBM, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla, Novell, Openwave Systems, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo, Zend and Zimbra. The group plans to promote the use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and its use on various devices, applications, desktops or operating systems.

To promote the adoption of AJAX, IBM recently proposed the Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework."

The Ajax Experience 2006: May 10-12th

Ajaxian and NoFluffJustStuff Java Symposiums (NFJS) are pleased to announce The Ajax Experience 2006. This international event will take place May 10-12th at the beautiful Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, California.

The Ajax Experience will feature over 30 technically focused sessions across two (2) full days spanning four (4) parallel tracks covering effective web architecture, enterprise systems, and agile process.

Speakers

The conference is all about the quality of the people, and the speakers list keeps growing.

  • Alex Russell: Founder of The Dojo Toolkit
  • Bill Scott: Creator of Rico, and Yahoo! Ajax Evangelist
  • Bob Ippolito: Creator of MochiKit
  • Brad Neuberg: Really Simple History library and the new dojo.storage work
  • Bram Smeets: Interface21
  • Brendan Eich: Creator of JavaScript
  • Brent Ashley: Ajax Expert
  • David Geary: JSF, Rails Expert
  • Douglas Crockford: Creator of JSON
  • Dylan Schiemann: Co-founder of The Dojo Toolkit
  • Eric Pascarello: Author, Ajax in Action
  • Glenn Vanderburg: JavaScript guru
  • Greg Murray: Ajax/Servlet Lead at Sun
  • Jason Hunter: Greasemonkey and Ajax
  • Jesse James Garrett: Father of Ajax, Adaptive Path
  • Joe Walker: Creator of DWR
  • Jonathan Hawkins: Microsoft Atlas Lead
  • Max Carlson: OpenLaszlo and Ajax
  • Michael Mahemoff: Creator, Ajax Patterns
  • Patrick Lightbody: WebWork 2, and Struts Ti committer
  • Rich Manalang: Creator of MonkeyGrease, and Oracle
  • Rob Gonda: Ajax Dev Journal EinC and ajaxCFC author
  • Rod Smith: IBM and tooling around Ajax
  • Sam Stephenson: Creator of Prototype, and 37 Signals employee
  • Scott Dietsen: CTO of Zimbra
  • Thomas Fuchs: Creator of Script.aculo.us

Location

Westin St. Francis
335 Powell Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Check out the conference website for more information.

Web Applications vs. Desktop Applications

Will web applications ever replace regular desktop applications? Will desktop applications adopt web paradigms? Are Web Applications Web 2.0? 

The whole 2.0 thing is getting much abuse now; its hype/meaning ratio is inflating by the minute. Web 2.0 is really exposing functionality through API's and allowing people to collaborate, much more then it is about Rich Internet Applications.

The first impression when you ask anyone about Web Applications is negative; they claim they will never use them. I certainly cannot see (yet) a Photoshop or Avid web application, but let's go back a few steps. An example of a Web Application in its simplest way could be Google Maps. Having Google Maps handy, how many people download and install a desktop mapping application? Unless there is a specific business-need for it, no one. Furthermore, businesses are shifting their applications to rely in Mapquest's of Google's API.

Can you see the advantage? You do not have to install Google Maps and you do not have to download patches or updates. Everything is streamed from a centralized database. The advantages start to become clearer. Now, the same concept can apply for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations software, charting software, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and even games.

Web applications could eventually completely replace common desktop applications, which require upgrades, fixes, and security patches. Rich Internet Applications are in the way of offering everything a regular application does, but reside in the Web. If your Microsoft Word resided on the web and allowed you to do everything your regular application does, but additionally gets automatic updates, is portable and accessible from everywhere, would you use it? Given the fact that everything is streamed on-demand from the server, leaving on the client the main user interface and connectivity tools only, Web Applications will make the described scenario possible. Perhaps, Microsoft already announced Windows Live and Office Live, which will do exactly that.

This will not happen overnight, but there will be a transition from desktop applications to web applications as technology evolves. Asynchronous requests are just the beginning, but there are still some common browser problems to overcome. Flex 2.0 and Microsoft's Expression Studio are right at the corner, and they will become huge players in years to come.

For more info, visit:
http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/flexbuilder2/
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/default.mspx

Need help: ColdFusion with WebLogic

I need to install CFMX7 Enterprise deploying a .war file in a WebLogic server (actually two). Can anyone refer me to some documentation or reference that explains how this should be done?

Additionally, I will probably hire a consultant to help me with this task, so if anyone is experienced and interested please drop me an email.

Ajax's Disruptive Influences

Dion Hinchcliffe just wrote a great AJAX article worth checking out. I like his points, especially “The End of Software Upgrades, Fixes, and Security Patches”, which is a great point for not just Ajax, but for the RIA applications group, which include Ajax, Flash, Flex, Laslo, XAML, or XUL.

CF developer with 30 years of horrible experience

Ray Horn, a ColdFusion developer with over 30 years of experience decides to show his ethics and cause some polemics in the blogshpere today.

Ray Camden wrote this nice Blog software, which over 100 blogs out there are using including mine, and this guy –Rabid—chose to take the open source software, make a few modification, encrypt it, remove documentation, remove the link back to Ray’s site, and sell it. How dare he!

Anyways, enough said, find below the links to today’s threads and please join us to ban Ray Horn from the CF community.

Ray Horn's Blog where he claims Ray should pay him! (comments have been removed)
Ray Horn's lame apology
Joe Rinehart
Dynamic Flash
Drisgill
John Beynon
Wayne Graham  good point about Copyright and Intellectual Property
Stephen Collins
Sean Corfield
Ray Camden (official blogCFC author)
Rick Root
John Wilker
Robert Blackburn
Pete Freitag (Open Source Licenses)


UPDATED: Ray Horn just removed his shameful comments on his blog; nonetheless, the word is out!  Luckily, I had the comments opened in my browser:

Ray Horn's Blog Comments

Shame on you. I don't see Ray taking donations for providing you with blogCFC after working on it for 3 years; it is open source and benefits the community, but you think it's right to make a couple of modifications and encrypt the code? I'm not trying to be harsh, but I strongly disagree with what you're doing.


So then you must be saying that I "should" offer any code I add to his Blog for FREE simply because the source was obtained for FREE ? Does this mean, you are not in favor of rewarding ingenuity or hard-work ? Just curious...

Never fear, I will be coding my own Rabid_Blogware(tm) using Rabid_AJAX(tm) and Geonosis(tm) before too long... it won't be Open Source but that's life.


Just for the record... Raymond Camden "could" have just as easily architected BlogCFC in such a manner so as to protect "his" investment since he does have 3+ yrs of work wrapped-up in it. It wasn't difficult for me to architect a CF based system using JavaScript so that I can protect my intellectual property from prying eyes or unwanted modifications or undesirable reuse. You won't hear me cry "foul" if someone uses something I wrote and gave away for FREE in a way that improves my original work. After-all, when I give code away I do so knowing it could be improved by anyone with suitable skills. Ray Camden should be happy that someone is honoring his original work by adding to the substance of his genius and hard-work. Why, I bet I am paying the highest compliment possible by adding to "his" work rather than seeking to code my own right off the bat. It is a mystery to me as to why he isn't happier about all this than he has seemed to be... If someone took some code I wrote and added to it and then actually used it I would be quite very happy and I would even make a heavy donation to that person just for honoring me with his efforts. But that's just me, I am sure.


Well, I can't speak on behalf of Ray; this is my own opinion. Ray opted for giving away his code and hard code for the benefit of the CF community. Sure, he could have protected his code in many different ways, but it was technology what stopped him from doing that, but caring for the community and trying to encourage people to develop open source projects.

I agree with your own work being encrypted and getting reward; that is the everyday bread of a programmer/developer. However, I have seen plenty of people contributing to blogCFC and/or other open source projects, including myself, and none of us have ever tried to make a profit out of it. That is the true meaning of open source. You clearly would have never got to the point where you are now if it wasn't for Ray posting his code for free, so I am pretty sure you do see the advantage of having people like us that goals other than monetize from every singe line of code you write.

I respect your point and wish you the best luck with Blogware and your Ajax project, but I must express my opposition to your perspective of blogCFC; <my two cents />

Best,

-Rob


Well if Ray Camden wanted to craft an Open Source License that guaranteed nobody would try to profit from any work done that is associated with his work he could have done so but then I doubt it would still be considered "Open Source" now would it ?

The risk all Open Source authors must accept is the fact that their work "may" be used for the purpose of putting money in someone else's pocket.

I am, at-least, making the combined efforts of myself and Ray Camden available for FREE as an integrated whole the only thing I am not just giving away is the source code I crafted. I am NOT trying to resell BlogCFC in any way shape or form - it is still 100% FREE for all to use. Additionally people are still free to seek out Ray Camden's original BlogCFC IF they prefer to use his more than anything I have done. I am simply making changes to the original that I personally find useful - generally speaking, I am a pretty good judge of what may be "useful" since the feedback I generally get from my coding efforts is that my designs tend to be intuitive and useful.

So far nobody has given me any money for any of this and I doubt seriously anyone ever will - likewise I don't feel any urge to give away the code I have added other than to make the integrated whole available for FREE.

I recommend those who produce "Open Source" code should give serious thought to how they might feel when they learn someone else has added to their code and making money from it or desiring to make money from it.

And what about thet poor guy who created Linux and made it available via Open Source ? Should he not be unhapy thay others are making money from "his" efforts ? I mean, afterall "he" created Linux and should "he not be rewarded for his efforts ? Think about it.

I have done nothing but praise Ray Camden for his efforts however if I were to try to use BlogCFC for real-world Blog Site Management then I would be forced to either added to his code or code my own in order to save time or get more done with it.


since /you/ gave no license.. then i can offer these for free!!

rapidshare.de/files/11224720/decrypts.zip.html


There are a bunch of things I *want* to say, but they really aren't productive so I'll just stick with this:

I don't know anything about open source licenses, or what it means that Ray didn't explicitly use one in his code. However, taking his hard work, making a few small changes and then offering the entire package for sale may not be illegal, but it certainly is reprehensible.

I give you an 8.5 on your swan-dive out of favor with the CF community... bravo!

Microsoft released official WMF patch: instructions provided

This is tedious, but please do:

1.    Reboot your system
2.    Run a Windows Update
3.    Reboot your system
4.    Go to Add/Delete Programs and uninstall your unofficial patch
5.    Reboot your system

The official bulletin can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS06-001.mspx

If you don't have access to a Windows update, you can still download the patch from the link provided above.

Microsoft initially claimed that they would release the official patch January 10. How crazy is that? 10 days without a patch for what critics call the worse hole in Windows ever! Pressure made them release it January 5, and all they did was to cut and paste the unofficial patch and embed it into the problematic DLL.

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