A bonaza of ColdFusion News

There is a lot going on right now in the World of ColdFusion. First, July marks another birthday for our dear ColdFusion. Joseph JJ Allaire and his brother Jeremy released CF in July 1995, making it 14 years old this month. Not surprising, Adobe wished ColdFusion a happy birthday by officially releasing the public beta version of ColdFusion 9 (Centaur) and ColdFusion Builder recently. Since then, the CFers have been blogging machines. Below is a good sampling of the news floating around.

Adobe releases public beta of ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder [ColdFusion Jedi]
Adobe ColdFusion CFML Reference
Adobe ColdFusion 9 Videos [Adobe]
Getting Started With The New ColdFusion Builder [Ben Forta]
Adobe wires ColdFusion into Microsoft Office and SharePoint

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Raymond Camden - Twitter Jedi Master?

In the world of ColdFusion, Raymond Camden is definitely a Jedi Master. His ColdFusion blog is one of the most popular websites for CF developers, not to mention his blog engine (BlogCFC) is one of the most popular CF apps out there. He writes books about ColdFusion, gives seminars about it, makes his wife speak to him in backwards ColdFusion...the guy does it all. Now he is Tweeting about ColdFusion.

Twitter, the ridiculously popular microblogging site, has allowed CF developers from around the world to collaborate. So, it comes as no surprise to know Ray has amassed a large and loyal following on there, too. Not only is he Tweeting about ColdFusion, @cfjedimaster is harnessing the power of the Jedi to thwart any web nerd that comes even remotely close to putting #coldfusion in the same tweet as *gulp* a negative word.

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Hackers causing havoc in the World of ColdFusion

Nothing like waking up on a Friday before a holiday to discover that Hackers have been causing havoc in the world of ColdFusion.  Our inbox this morning contained a message from one of our preferred ColdFusion Hosting companies Crystal Tech (now Newtek Technology Services) about the attacks and several CF sites are reporting on the coordinated efforts.

Hackers are exploiting sites running older installations of some ColdFusion applications, such as FCKEditor (a popular HTML text editor) or CKFinder (an Ajax file manager). The potential security vulnerability exists in a popular ColdFusion shopping cart application CFWebstore that allows uploading of a shell script to a vulnerable site and gain root access to the server. For less technical readers, this isn't a good thing. This allows hackers to take advantage of the vulnerabilities to plant malicious scripts onto compromised websites, as part of a drive-by download attack that ultimately aims to infect visitors to the hacked site.

Luckily, none of our CF sites are in danger, as we don't use FCKEditor for anything in our development (TinyMCE rocks!) and CFWebstore is not a product we use for our sites. Plus, Crystal Tech has assured us that that they "have already taken steps to minimize the potential for compromise".

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TechRepublic Blog puts ColdFusion on life support

Another day passes, another blog post published on a tech site about the impending death of ColdFusion. But this one comes as more of a slap in the face than previous posts, as it comes from the blog of a very reputable technology publication: TechRepublic.

TechRepublic, a site brought to you by the conglomerate known as CBS, is a reputable publication that many IT professionals go to for information.  In addition to their unique content, the site brings in articles from various feeds on the web, and is a great source of tech related news.  One of the sources of that information is a company called Global Knowledge, a "worldwide leader in business training".  They specialize in Microsoft and Cisco Training (nerd note: that was foreshadowing).

Global Knowledge is the source of a recent article titled "10 dying IT skills". Written by Linda Leung, this article is an attempt to compile a list of dying IT skills in the tech industry. The theme of the post is a popular one for tech blogs, as it requires little to no effort to construct on the quick. For the most part, the article does an adequate job of listing skills on the verge of death. COBOL, HTML, Novell NetWare, etc. COBOL only still exists because it is too expensive for some banks to switch from and HTML should be scrapped for XHTML or DHTML. But then the article jumps the shark with its inclusion of ColdFusion as a dying skill. And thus the ignorance of another tech author is exposed.

To suggest that ColdFusion belongs anywhere close to this list is insane, and proves no real research went into writing this post.  For starters, comparing ColdFusion to COBOL is irresponsible.  Spouting nonsense this ridiculous is punishable by flogging in some countries.  Then, it suggests that Adobe doesn't have the money to compete with the marketing of Microsoft and Sun.  Interesting theory.  And this says nothing of the logic in saying that ColdFusion is a dying skill simply because the job searches performed by the author for CF jobs was less than that for PHP jobs.

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Developer Ignite offers Nerds a chance to shine

Developer Ignite is a free information exchange event designed to connect developers in the Phoenix area and allow them to share topics of interest with a group of people. Inspired in part by Ignite Phoenix, Developer Ignite is not only a great way to hear new ideas, but it is also a great opportunity to network with like-minded nerds.

Since this is a technical event, topics will be centered on relevant and important information to software developers.

Ignite-style events are gaining in popularity, due to their rapid format. Each speaker gets 5 minutes and 20 slides (rotated automatically after 15 seconds) to share a topic that they are passionate about. After the presentations, attendees and presenters mingle together to further discuss and elaborate on the topics.

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