UPDATE 7/13/2009: The iPhone 3.0 Firmware is now out and it has a bunch of great new feature. Unfortunately, many of the things I felt were lacking in the iPhone 2.0 Firmware were not addressed. But one was and so I've updated the information below accordingly. Look for the "UPDATE" tags.

I thought some of you might be considering iPhone 2.0 and so I thought I'd post these insights (to add, I'm sure, to all those insights others have posted of late). For those who like executive summaries, here you go: I recommend iPhone 2.0.

I am using earlier generation hardware with the new 2.0 firmware so I can't review 3G for you or any other new features of the iPhone 2.0 hardware.

Major Pros of 2.0 Firmware:

1. Data push. This works really well for calendar, contacts, and email. I've never had a phone with data push before so I can't make comparisons (my main point of comparison is to Palm and synching locally to Outlook). My favorite features are multi-contacts groups and multi-calendars--I have always wanted this in order to keep my business contacts separate from my personal contacts and to keep my business calendar items separate from my personal calendar items. In iPhone Contacts and Calendar you can choose to view all or just one particular contacts group or calendar, respectively.
2. Directory lookup. This is the other part of Exchange integration: you can look up any contact in the Adobe directory.
3. Extensibility via add-on apps obtainable with the App Store application. There are numerous useful apps available, many of which are free.

There are also existing pros like the browser, the Google Maps app, the solid camera, the in-phone voice mail control, and the chat-style text message conversation threads.

Major Cons of 2.0 Firmware:

1. If you set the view of Contacts or Calendar to a particular contacts group or calendar, respectively, then exit the application, the view sometimes changes to all when you re-launch the application.
2. While there is a way to set the default calendar for new calendar items and there is a way to set the calendar for a new calendar item when it is created, there is no way to move a contact or calendar from one group to another and there is no way to set the default contact group for new contacts and there is no way to set the contact group for a contact when it is created (instead it automatically goes into the contact group you're viewing or, if you're viewing all, it goes into the top-level Contacts group).
3. There is no support for Tasks. There are some 3rd party apps available, some even free, but these do not synch with Exchange Tasks.
4. There is no copy and paste. Word has it that Apple just doesn't see this as a priority. Unfathomable. UPDATE: Copy and paste is now present in the 3.0 Firmware!
5. There is no "quick text" for SMS...and since there's no copy and paste, there's absolutely no way to send a text message without typing the whole thing in. UPDATE: Well, at least you can copy and paste in 3.0 Firmware, which is better than nothing.
6. No trial period for add-on apps that cost money (ditto for add-on apps that are free, but of course that's a moot point).
7. No ability to configure how many recent calls are stored. You're stuck with the default, which is something like 50 or 100. I would like to see a configurable setting for number of recent calls displayed and I would like for one of the options to be "all" so that there is no limit. This device has gobs and gobs of storage space--it has 1000 times the storage space of my Kyocera QCP-6035 that I bought in 2001 and that device could be configured to store up to 999 recent calls with no problem--so storing an effectively limitless amount of recent call information should not be an issue--and just to be safe, it could be programmed so that if space did fill up, the last item went out every time a new item needed to come in.
8. No ability to replicate contacts, calendar items, etc. This would be really useful, particularly on calendar items. When you go to the dentist, do you make your next appointment? I think most of us do. And so you put it immediately into your iPhone. Well, you're standing there looking at the item that got you there that day; wouldn't it be nice to copy it and just change the date and time for the new appointment? Obviously the dentist is just one of many examples of how useful this functionality would be.

Well, I published this post for about 5 minutes, then realized it wasn't entirely accurate so I pulled it down so I could have some time to revise it. I was hoping (and frankly, thinking) no one had actually seen it--then I looked in my own blog reader and found out it had consumed my feed. Doh! Sorry to anyone else who got the feed with the original post and then couldn't even link out to the post because it was no longer live.

Yes, indeed it is true: I am posting to my blog. :)

If you're like me, you are given USB flash drives from time to time. Now, when you buy a USB flash drive, at least at retail here in the US, it comes in packaging that tells you if it supports USB 2.0. But when someone gives you a USB flash drive, it very often doesn't come with any packaging at all--and that leaves you wondering a) how big it is and b) whether or not it supports USB 2.0. Unfortunately, many of the USB flash drives that are giveaways do not supports USB 2.0 (I presume this is because USB 2.0 flash drives are more expensive to buy, and probably produce, than USB 1.1 flash drives and so giving away USB 1.1 flash drives therefore saves the givers money). But...some USB flash drives given away do support USB 2.0, so you can't just assume when you receive a flash drive that it doesn't support USB 2.0. What's it really matter, you may ask? Well, USB 2.0 is considerably faster than any previous USB edition. And to be brutally honest, the deal is that when someone gives you a slower USB flash drive and you're in the situation I'm in where you already have a couple of USB 2.0 flash drives, you want to know whether or not the flash drive you've been given is worth keeping or not.

So...how do you tell if a USB flash drive supports USB 2.0? I wish I knew! I've poked around on both Mac and Windows XP and I've searched extensively online and I can't find any method that will definitively provide that information. At this point, the best I have is that sometimes you can get at least an idea on Windows XP as follows:

1. Connect your flash drive to one of your PC's USB 2.0 ports. If your PC doesn't have 2.0 ports there is good news: if you connect a USB 2.0 device to a USB 1.1 port, Windows XP will often (possibly always) present you with a message that says the device can perform faster if you connect it to a USB 2.0 port. Perhaps this is in fact the best way to ascertain on Windows XP whether or not a device supports USB 2.0.
2. Open Device Manager. This can be accomplished by right-clicking My Computer on the desktop and selecting Properties to open System Properties, clicking on the Hardware tab, then clicking the Device Manager button.
3. Expand the Disk Drives item.
4. Take note of the name listed for your device: as you can see in the image below, the name may tell the tale: in the image, you'll see that one of my devices is called "USB 2.0 Flash Disk USB Device." Now, that name could be misleading; just having "USB 2.0" in the name may not guarantee that the device supports USB 2.0--but I'm thinking it's probably a pretty good guess that if "USB 2.0" is in the name then the device does indeed support USB 2.0. The problem, though, is that even if the inclusion of "USB 2.0" in a device name does definitively mean that a device supports USB 2.0, it appears that the lack of the inclusion of "USB 2.0" in a device name does not definitively mean that a device is not USB 2.0: I connected another of my USB flash drives that has USB 2.0 actually stamped on it and the description displayed was "Memorex TD Classic 003B USB Device"--nothing there about "USB 2.0." That said, I think sometimes the lack of "USB 2.0" in the name can be enlightening: in the image, you can see that there is a device called "USB Flash Disk Device;" in light of the fact that this description is so similar to the description of the other device, excepting the conspicuous absence of "2.0," I think it's safe to assume that device isn't USB 2.0--but ultimately, that's still an assumption. I later connected another of my USB flash drives and it was called "Generic Flash Disk USB Device"--I'm guessing that one too isn't USB 2.0, but again, that's only a guess.

In the end, this post isn't as helpful as I hoped it would be because I have not been able to provide a definitive methodology for determining whether or not a device supports USB 2.0. If you have insights on this subject, please take the time to post a comment.

After my last post (about my blog's move) generated a whopping 3 views (possibly all by me!), I began to believe that my suspicions that RSS readers may not like HTTP 302 redirects might be well-founded. So I checked out Full As a Goog and sure enough, it wasn't showing my new post some many hours after I posted it.

So I did a little digging into the matter of redirecting RSS feeds and I found that an HTTP 302 redirect (which is what I was using) should temporarily redirect the feed. I'm not sure why that wasn't working.

But it doesn't really matter because I don't truly want a temporary redirect, I want a permanent redirect. For that it appears there are two choices: use an HTTP 301 redirect or use an XML level redirect (further info on both is given at the above link). It is possible to generate either using ColdFusion (for the former, you would use <cfheader> and for the latter you just put the appropriate XML into your RSS XML output). The latter struck me as a more interesting approach so that is the one I am now using.

Does it work? I'm not sure--you tell me! If you were consuming the feed from its old location at http://www.joshuaadams.com/blog and your reader is now consuming the feed from its new location at http://blog.joshuaadams.com then yep, it worked for you. But if you're still showing the old feed, then no, it isn't working for you (although that then begs the question of how you ended up here). Comments letting me know if it worked for you are appreciated; comments letting me know it didn't work for you are even more appreciated.

I have made a slight change in the location of my blog: previously it was at http://www.joshuaadams.com/blog and now it can be found at http://blog.joshuaadams.com.

So is that old location given above now a broken link? Nope--if you hit a page in its old location, you will be redirected to its new location. Note that this is true not just for the main page of the blog but for any page. How does it work? Just a few lines of code for ColdFusion 8. Stay tuned for more details....

What I'm not sure about is how consumers of RSS feeds will react to this change--the RSS feed isn't present in its old location but requests for it in its old location will be redirected to its new location. However, I'm not sure how well readers will handle this. Please leave me a comment and let me know how yours does.

Lest I become one of those people who has a blog but never posts:

ColdFusion has more great features than you realize. Well, okay, I can't legimately claim to know what you realize. But as I am coming up to speed in my job as ColdFusion Specialist, it strikes me just how many great features there are in ColdFusion 8. And my guess is I'm not the only one who would have that reaction.

Rather than expound on all these great features myself, let me instead point you to adobe.com for this list of new features in ColdFusion 8. In time I expect to post additional information and code samples for some of these features. Are you interested in learning more about any features in particular? If so, post a comment and let me know!

I am pleased to announce that I have accepted a Systems Engineer position in the role of ColdFusion Specialist with Adobe Systems, Inc. I am excited about working for Adobe and about the role as ColdFusion Specialist. What has me so jazzed up? Getting to work with ColdFusion (and also Flex, AIR, LiveCycle, and the many other great tools from Adobe) and at the same time with you, the ColdFusion user. I love ColdFusion, but what I love even more is working with ColdFusion users as they do new, better, bigger, and innovative things with ColdFusion! And that's exactly what I have been hired to do.

Over the past several years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know so many in the ColdFusion user community at conferences, user group meetings, and other events. I'm excited for this opportunity to focus on continuing those relationships and forging new ones. Because for me, that's the greatest thing about my job: I am here for you! If there is anything that you need from Adobe in regards to ColdFusion, I'm your man. So don't be shy--get in touch! I'm still in ramp up mode so I'm not going to list contact information here, but you can simply add a comment to this post or use the Contact link at the bottom of the page to send me a message. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

One more thing: not to make this sound too much like an awards acceptance speech, but the reality is that there are a number of people who deserve my thanks for their role in helping me get to the point where I was able to land this position. But rather than try to cover them all and risk missing any, I will instead turn my thanks to the Atlanta ColdFusion User Group as so many of those deserving my thanks are people I know through my involvement in ACFUG. Thanks ACFUG and those I know because of it--I appreciate you! If you're reading this and you're serious about your career and you're not attending meetings of your local user group, you need to start. If there is no local user group, you need to start one. And another great option--and the place to turn if absolutely no one lives near you such that any user group you would start would be a user group of one--is the Online ColdFusion Meetup.

2010-12-22: given the age and content of this post, it is difficult at this point to conceive of a legitimate comment that could be posted. Yet comments continue to be posted: spam. And it's strange because it is this blog post more than any other that receives these spam comments (I think it might be because this post is linked from Ben Forta's blog). So it seems wise to me then to stop the insanity by closing comments to this post. Should you have a legitimate comment you wish to post here, please contact me via the contact form here on my blog. Thanks!

Look, there are exceptions to every rule, but generally, quality costs money--and the more quality, the more money it costs.

Today I was asked if I could DJ for 60% less than my minimum price for a wedding reception. My response in short was yes--if the budget is a shoestring with the event at a rec center and the frills at a minimum. I said, however, that if she is willing and able to pay for a nice venue, nice food, nice flowers, and so on, then if she wants me to DJ for her, she's also going to have to pay my rate, the rate of a nice DJ. The truth is that, from the perspective of my materials costs, I could justify the lower price. However, time is a precious resource: if I'm doing a job for you, how much time it takes me is an important consideration in how much I charge for that job. And I invest a large amount of time in DJing a wedding reception because that's what it takes to do it right. Now, that doesn't mean that anyone has to be willing to pay me what I ask. But people hire me. And they do pay me what I ask because they understand that quality costs money and what I'm asking is a great price for the value I deliver. (NOTE: again, there are exceptions to the "quality costs money" rule; for instance, maybe this particular prospect can find a DJ of equal or better quality for the price she wants to pay. But any DJ who charges what she wants and delivers quality on par with what I deliver is, in all truth, doing bad business--he/she isn't charging enough for his/her services...and time!)

What's this have to do with ColdFusion? Well, it reminds me of a great blog post about ColdFusion (see--you thought I'd put this post in the wrong category, didn't you?) from Jason Delmore. Give it a read if you haven't already.

Are you one of those people who does some of his/her best thinking in the shower? I am. And for longer than I can remember, every now and then, I've had a thought to which my response was "hey--I need to put up a blog so I can post about that." Today's thought? "I have a blog now--I can post that!" Of course, now I can't remember what any of those other thoughts were. ;)