Well, its finally here! The first public release of Skweegee has been posted to the Riaforge project site. Version 0.4.0 has been in private beta for just over 2 weeks and I feel like its finally ready for public consumption.

Keep in mind that its still a little early on so there are some obvious functions missing but it is very usable. The biggest thing missing is the wiki, since I decided to pull it from this release, but will be added back in by the 0.5.0 release. Skweegee.com is running the 0.4.0 release currently and I have enabled the public read-only access so you can get a glimpse of it in read-only mode.

The Google group is opened up to the public now as well, so feel free to join the group and take part in the discussions or post any issues you may run into. I dont have alot of time right now to post too many details but I will try and get a much more detailed post up later this weekend.

For now, you can download the release from the Riaforge project page.

Thanks to all of the folks on the private beta who tested and submitted feedback!

The Jacksonville ColdFusion Users Group (JaxFusion) is starting to get re-organized after some time off. One of the big changes is that the group will expand to not only cover ColdFusion related topics, but also Flex and AIR as well. Another change will be the meeting location, we are looking for a new location near the Southside somewhere as Downtown was just out of reach for most people in the area after a long day of work. One of the requirements for a meeting location is a projector and preferably a decent internet connection. Since there are quite a few folks in the community now willing to present over Adobe Connect this will ensure some great presentations in the future. So if you have a suggestion for a location or if you are a Jacksonville business willing to donate some meeting space once a month, please contact David Fekke at david@fekke.com.

With the Jacksonville ColdFusion Group on somewhat of a hiatus (no meeting since August 2007) I decided to head over to the local Ruby on Rails User Group Meeting to see what was the haps in the Jacksonville Ruby community. First off, let me say that I had no idea there was such an interest in Ruby on Rails right here in Jacksonville. To say the least I was shocked to find out that Obie Fernandez lives here and runs his RoR based consulting business HashRocket from Jacksonville Beach. For those of you not in the know, Obie is to the RoR community what Ben Forta and Ray Camden are to the ColdFusion community. The meeting had a good turn out, Im not sure of the exact numbers but I would estimate around 20 people showed up. Since they had no formal presentation lined up, they decided to do some pair programming. Basically, taking one or two of the noobs like myself and pairing you up with one of the more experienced guys. For about an hour and 45 minutes I got to sit with an experienced RoR programmer who answered pretty much every stupid question I came up with and even helped me solve several problems in the RoR application Im working on as a learning aide. Back 7 years or so ago when I was running the Jacksonville ColdFusion Group (Allaire days), we always struggled to get presenters so I ended up doing about 90% of the presentations. I sure wish I would have thought of pair programming back then. Its a great way to get some of the newer folks some personalized attention to help them out. I suspect that getting presenters nowadays isn't quite as difficult with the introduction of Adobe Connect, but, if for some reason you find your next meeting without a speaker, consider pair programming, I bet you get a great turn-out!

I was talking with Luis the other day about some ColdFusion and framework specific stuff that we would like to see in the upcoming ColdFusion 9. During the conversation Luis pointed something out to me that I hadnt known before. After using ColdFusion for over 10 years, Im almost ashamed to admit that I didnt know this. But then again, I didnt have any OO programming knowledge and other than classic ASP I had no programming experience at all when I started working with ColdFusion. Strings in ColdFusion are not just Strings. They are actually Java strings. Duh you say? I guess I got so used to CF not being typed that I never really thought about it. So for those as clueless as I am, heres what that means.

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A few weeks ago I posted about a mixup with my Amazon wishlist shipping address. Not long after posting that, Mike Potter of Adobe responded saying that he was the one that sent me the copy of the Flex book and that he would get it taken care of for me. Well, I wanted to publicly thank Mike for getting that straightened out for me! Just having Adobe send me the copy of the Flex 2: Training from the Source book would have been great. However, Mike not only sent a Flex book, but the Essential ActionScript 3 book from Oreilly and a copy of the Total Training Flex 2 DVD! All of this stuff is really good material! I am tearing through it right now and loving it! So thanks again Mike, hopefully we can catch up at a conference or something and I can buy you a beer! Also, thanks to those at Adobe who take the time to support the developer community! Makes me proud to be a ColdFusion programmer!