One of the exciting new features in ColdFusion 9 is Apache Lucene Solr integration. Solr is an open source enterprise search server that you can use in place of Verity in ColdFusion 9 with few limitations? Want to learn more? I'm excited to announce that Adobe's own Ray Camden will be presenting an Adobe eSeminar on this top on Thursday, September 8, 2011 @ 10:00 AM PT (1700 GMT). For more details and to register, please visit http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1864016.

If you'd like to read about ColdFusion 9's Solr integration, please visit http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WS2B335964-A0DA-4add-B9FE-4041464EC9E1.html.

The Adobe ColdFusion team has set up a 2-part eSeminar series that I will be presenting to help those new to ColdFusion get started. The first of these sessions is geared towards those who have never done any development but who are familiar with the basics of HTML. The second session builds on the first and is the perfect time for those who have done previous development but are new to ColdFusion to jump in. The sessions have been scheduled for a week apart so that attendees at the first session have a little time to practice their skills on their own after the first session in preparation for the second session. Join us!

Here is the information on these sessions:

• ColdFusion 9: Ridiculously Easy: The Basics - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 @ 10:00 AM PT (1700 GMT)
  • Full details and registration: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1844274
• ColdFusion 9: Ridiculously Easy: Web Applications - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 @ 10:00 AM PT (1700 GMT)
  • Full details and registration: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1864012

I'm giving the Getting Started with ColdFusion Lab at Adobe MAX 2009. You can get my presentation for it by clicking this link.

Presentastic is a demo app I created to show off how easy it is to take advantage of ColdFusion's cool capabilities for working with PowerPoint files. The instructions for creating Presentastic are available via this link. Check it out!

2009-11-19 UPDATE: You asked for it, you got it: The actual code file for PresentasticPlus is available via this link. PresentasticPlus is the version of the app that implements the PDF Portfolio creation functionality referenced at the end of the instruction document.

2009-12-01 UPDATE: The one cool new ColdFusion 9 feature for working with PowerPoint files that the original app didn't showcase was converting HTML to PPT--so in order to showcase this feature, I created a new version: PresentasticGold. The code file for PresentasticGold is available via this link.

I did a presentation called "The Scoop on Scoping" and it's high time I post it here. It has a lot of good information, however, if you don't plan to read it, let me at least give you the Golden Rule of ColdFusion Scoping:

Scope all references to all variables all the time (where ColdFusion allows it)

In ColdFusion 9, with the introduction of the "Local" keyword to identify the function local scope, there really won't be any good excuse to not refer to scopes by name all the time and so that "(where ColdFusion allows it)" part can pretty much go away. :)

The PDF version of the presentation is available via this link.

My CFUnited presentation "iPhone Apps + Adobe ColdFusion," is about so much more than just using iPhone Apps and Adobe ColdFusion together! It's a really good place to start when you're looking to get into iPhone development, regardless of whether or not you're interested in making calls to a remote ColdFusion server. Certainly there is great information in the presentation for anyone who wants to make calls to a remote server, particularly a ColdFusion server, but you don't have to be interested in making remote calls from your iPhone apps to find the information in the presentation useful. So check it out! The related link for this blog post gives the link to my blog post "iPhone Apps + Adobe ColdFusion" from Friday containing links to the presentation in PDF format and to the code resources in a ZIP file.