Dave Carabetta: My Thoughts - Blogging

CynergyTV: Flex, Silverlight And Why I've Disappeared

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:21:00 -0400

So why have I been so quiet for pretty much the last year outside of some token posts? Well, our re-launched CynergyTV experience holds the reason, and I'm glad I can finally talk about it. So Dave, you mean you've spent the last year re-building CynergyTV? Nope, not quite. That was done by an extremely talented team here at Cynergy that worked extremely hard to not only refresh the user experience but deliver the content in professional audio/video quality supported by lots of hardware and software upgrades in our data center. Incidentally, when I say team, I mean it in the truest sense of the word -- our president, Carson Hager, recognizing that we could and should present our accomplishments better and allowing guys to stop being billable in order to get this done; our Marketing group spending hours in the recording studio choreographing the audio/video; our User Experience group iterating through lots of potential look and feel options until it was nailed; our Rich Interface team implementing the user experience in Adobe Flex; and finally, our Enterprise Services and Network Support teams building out the services tier to support the streaming video content (not a trivial task as I've come to learn), notifying the appropriate people when the Let's Talk form is submitted, and then setting up the appropriate infrastructure to host it all in our data center. If that sounds like a lot of work, that's because it was -- and it was well worth the investment. So back to my opening question as to why I've been so quiet. Well, if you head over to CynergyTV (after reading this post, of course), you'll see that one of the showcases is for an application we built called Quickcomm Enterprise, a telecom expense management (TEM) tool for one of our clients, Quickcomm. It is this application that has basically been most of the last year of my life. As the Technical Lead on the project (which is a combination senior application architect and project manager here at Cynergy), I have spent over 1,600 hours working with my team here at Cynergy and the team at Quickcomm to deliver the most disruptive TEM solution on the market and I'm extraordinarily proud and privileged to have worked with both teams. Since the completion of that project a short while back, I have since made the transition for being a Technical Lead to Business Development -- yes, the dreaded "sales" guy. I was ready for a new challenge beyond coding and the growth opportunities here at Cynergy made this transition both seamless and a no-brainer. So now I get to put on my sales hat: If you're interested in speaking with us about an idea you have or have an existing application you want re-invented to provide a better user experience, drop us a line and we're happy to speak with you further. And of course, if you have any feedback at all about the re-launched CynergyTV, feel free to leave a comment and I'll make sure it reaches the right people immediately. Lastly, if you're a developer who wants to work with a phenomenally talented team that continually delivers cutting edge applications, we'd love to speak with you about career opportunities at Cynergy. It's a great time to be building RIAs and we'd love for you to be a part of it!

Fixing Cairngorm Code Hinting Issues In Flex Builder

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 00:30:00 -0400

Changing jobs, a week's vacation to Mexico, and spinning up with my new company has made this blog awfully bare lately. However, I hope to get back in the saddle by posting some tips and tricks that I've learned while diving head first into Flex 2 development. To that end, here's a helpful tip if you decide to use the Cairngorm framework in your project with Flex Builder. First off, it's important to make sure you have the Cairngorm SWC file properly added to your project. Since that's beyond the scope of this tip, you can check out Joe Rinehart's step-by-step instructions for doing so. After double-checking that I had the SWC properly imported, I couldn't get the Cairngorm-specific code to appear when I referenced the appropriate paths, and I certainly didn't want to have to drop the source code into my project. After a lot of digging, I was able to solve my issue by doing the following:

Right-click on the project in which you're using Ciarngorm and select the Properties option at the bottom of the context menu.
The fourth option in the dialog box that appears is the Flex Build path option. Select that to switch to that view.
Click the Library path tab to switch to the SWC in the project build path.
Highlight the Cairngorm SWC file and click the Up button at the right to move it to the top of the library path.
Click the OK button and wait for the project to re-compile.
Optional: You may need to close the project and re-open it to get the highlighting to work.

Truthfully, I don't know why I had issues getting the hinting to work. I dropped in the Cairngorm 2.1 SWC and it just didn't want to pop up any of the hints for me. If you're having this problem, hopefully the above steps with resolve your issue.

My Shiny New Job With Cynergy Systems...And The Value Of CFUNITED

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 16:30:00 -0400

It is with incredible pride and a renewed energy that I'm happy to announce that I have officially accepted a position with Cynergy Systems starting later this month! In my new role, I will be a consultant working on Flex 2 applications integrating with Java backends. I have been on "Cloud Nine" since late Friday when I received the offer, and my brain is about ten miles ahead of my fingers as I type this out, so if I'm all over the map with this post, please hang with me! Cynergy has quickly established itself as a leader in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) revolution, and I couldn't sit on the sidelines and watch while they had all the fun. Their collective talent and passion absolutely blew me away, and there was no second-guessing once I accepted the offer. You can see some examples of their expertise over on their blogs and the flexcoders mailing list (hint: search for "Cynergy" or "Dave Wolf" or "Andrew Trice" for some sample posts). In short: these guys know their stuff, and I'm hoping to uphold that level of expertise. You may have noticed in the opening paragraph that I noted that I will be working with Java. Those of you who know me (or have read my other posts) know that I am a longtime ColdFusion developer (I just hit my ten year mark recently). This change means that I will be stepping away from ColdFusion for a little bit while I diversify my skill set with Java and Flex 2. I'm a bit sad, a bit nervous, but, most of all, I'm incredibly excited to be broadening my base and getting into areas of work that are new and challenging. Diversifying my skill set is something that I've been wanting to do for years, but just never found the time to do outside of reading books and playing around with personal projects. And while I firmly believe that ColdFusion will gain more and more traction down the road as more companies recognize its beautiful integration with Flex 2, the reality is that the lion's share of current Flex RIA work is using a Java backend. Further, it has been suggested they are open to eventually bring in more Flex/ColdFusion work down the road at Cynergy, so don't think I'm leaving the CF world forever. I look at it as a hiatus while I go cut my teeth with Java. Also, this site along with some other personal projects will continue to use ColdFusion as its backend as well. OK, so I mentioned something in the title about the value of CFUNITED. Well, if not for the friends that I made down at the conference over the last two years, this opportunity likely would not have come to fruition. See, two years ago, I was fortunate to meet Adam Wayne Lehman (who is now a ColdFusion specialist for the North American Sales Team at Adobe). We have kept in touch since then, and, at this past conference in June, he introduced me to a good friend and then-co-worker of his, Cliff Meyers. We had a great time at the conference, and then caught up a few weeks ago. Cliff went to work for Cynergy just after CFUNITED and raved about them. At the same time, I was hitting a ceiling at my current job and decided to throw my candidacy out there to see what would happen. Fast forward to last Friday when the official offer was extended, and here we are! While I agree with Sean that there are more to conferences than just the networking, I have to say that there's no way that this opportunity would have come to pass as quickly as it did without CFUNITED. So if you're ever on the fence as to the value of this conference (or other conferences in your field), I'm happy to be a case study in their benefits! It has changed my life and I'm incredibly excited at the opportunities that lie ahead. I'll be starting there towards the end of this month while I properly transition out of my current job. It may or may not be quiet on here until then!

Adobe Flex 2 Case Study And The Power Flex 2 Charting

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:10:00 -0400

I was reading through last week's eWeek magazine and came across an excellent case study highlighting the power of the Adobe® Flex 2™ platform. Admittedly, I usually only skim through case studies because they're mostly positioned as "product X is the greatest" and is usually filled with enough buzzwords to fill an entire "buzzword bingo" card (and this one has a bunch). However, I did take notice of one particular aspect of this case study's implementation that I think gets glossed over in the Flex 2 vs. AJAX decision-making process: visualizing your data. (And let's be honest for a second: while I know you'll hear many who say that you can use both Flash and AJAX together, including the Adobe brass, that doesn't seem to be happening in most applications that I've seen (with perhaps a smattering of notable exceptions); most are in one camp or the other.) While developers will likely note that the cross-platform features of the Flex 2 platform are its biggest strength, I respectfully disagree. That's an incredible convenience, but it's not why I'm going to use it in my work. See, I'm of the school of thought that I need to present my users with the best experience possible based on the presented requirements. Humans are, by nature, visual beings. If presented with a table of data or a chart that presents that same data, a user is going to more quickly and efficiently draw his or her conclusion from the chart virtually every time. It's how our brains work. I think of the old cliche that "a picture is worth a thousand words." That may sound trite, but cliches become cliches because they're true. To that end, the most differentiating feature of the Flex 2 platform, to me, is the charting suite. The Flex 2 charting components allow users to visualize their data in ways that previously required third-party vendors and lots of supplemental code to interact with it. Andrew Tahvildary, vice president of development and Primavera Services (the subject of this case study) notes that, with Flex 2's charting components, "...we were able to use a combination of charts and data grids to provide multidimensional views over a large set of analytical data." I just don't know of many AJAX libraries that come out-of-the-box with this capability, and at Flex 2's price point. Have you seen the Adobe Flex 2 Component Explorer yet (Adobe Flash Player 9 required)? There are 16 default chart types, and all of them are extensible so that you can customize a chart to your needs. Want to see what a real-world implementation of the charting components might look like? Have a look at the Dashboard example (Adobe Flash Player 9 required) and watch how selecting data slices in one part of the application affects the charts in the other areas of the application without pages refreshes or xmlHTTP requests. The power to visualize data sets, whether simple or complex, is a mostly overlooked feature when building applications, and the Adobe Flex 2 charting suite provides you with the ability to make your users much more productive at minimal development cost. Have a look!

For Tech Job Seekers and Employers, Joel Spolsky's New Site Is A Great Idea

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:40:00 -0400

I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Joel Spolsky. He just "gets" how to run a technology company and treat his Fog Creek employees. Well, he has just set up a new Jobs site that essentially aims to take the annoying marketing and recruiting out of job hunting, while providing high-quality tech listings. Are you tired of vague job listings that ask if you want to work for a "well established, leading online company," but get no more information than that until you talk with a recruiter? Well, apparently, so is Joel (and me too, for that matter). He's not aiming for it to supplant the gi-normous job boards like Monster or HotJobs. Rather, his goal is to keep it as a niche site where you can get the real job details for a given position without any hassle. Unique features include:

For candidates, the site is entirely free, including not having to register for anything.
Listings expire after 3 weeks. As he notes, most candidates don't apply for jobs that have been posted for longer than that.
All job posts must disclose the company at which the position is located. No "Company Confidential" listings are allowed. Since there are no recruiters involved, you can do all the research you want for a position without being hassled.
For a small $350 fee, an employer can post listings on the site. In comparison to the 15%-20% of base salary that recruiting fees that many recruiters charge employers for placing a candidate, this is chump change.
He offers his standard 90-day money back guarantee. If you don't find anybody to fill the position, hire the wrong candidate, if they quit just after starting, etc., you get your $350 back unquestioned. (Charities and non-profits can get in touch with their customer support reps about reduced fees.)
The job posting form contains checkboxes for answering each of the 12 questions of the Joel Test, which is his measure of the quality of a software team. This is a non-marketing way to really gauge the type of team you might be joining.

Since this is an experiment on his part, you'll note that there is no search functionality or saved profiles or anything beyond the basic listings. (This might expand if the site proves to be successful.) However, from Google to Six Apart to BEA to MySQL, there are a number of big-name company jobs currently listed, along with a lot of other smaller companies who I have seen are doing some great work. I'm not sure how the site will hold up, if only because recruiters will always find a way to post seemingly legitimate job listings, and there doesn't seem to be a screening process for who is posting the job. That being said, I love the idea of side-stepping recruiters with no tech background who are seemingly the gatekeepers to a lot of great jobs. Here's Joel's official announcement.

Adobe Flex 2 Receives High Praise From eWeek

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 10:10:00 -0400

I just saw over at eWeek that Labs Director Jim Rapoza has given an extremely positive review of Adobe Flex 2. It's also currently the "Top Story" on their homepage, which should give it some nice exposure for the time being. There's also a small slideshow that has some screenshots of their walkthrough. The one negative that they mentioned was that Flex Builder currently only runs on Windows. However, as Sho Kuwamoto recently showed, there is a Mac build of Flex Builder 2 running internally at Adobe right now, so that criticism will hopefully be squashed in the near future.

Adobe Product Notification RSS Feeds

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 14:39:00 -0400

I thought I had blogged this before, but I guess not. Did you know that Adobe has RSS Product Notification feeds for every product that they offer? Stay up-to-date on the latest news, including TechNote, hotfix and security patch notifications for your product(s) of choice. Check it out!

What Other Blogs Do You Read?

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:35:00 -0400

Reading the various blogs aggregated by FullAsAGoog and MXNA is great, but there tends to be a lot of overlap, and the topics usually revolve around Adobe. So I was wondering what else might be out there that's not just "noise?" There's just one simple rule to keep in mind when replying: The blog(s) you mention can't be aggregated by either FullAsAGoog or MXNA. Here's a short list of my current favorites:

Guy Kawasaki: One of the original Mac evangelists in the early 80s, Guy is now a managing director at Garage Technology Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. His blog is filled with a treasure trove of real-world knowledge and advice on public speaking and starting and running a business (among other things). If you're in business, you need to read his work. Oh, and I'm also reading his books. I finished The Art of the Start, which provides a sobering blueprint for starting any type of business, and I'm now reading Rules For Revolutionaries, which is an amazing reference for creating and marketing any product or service.
Mark Cuban: The billionaire owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, it's easy to think of him as somebody who was just lucky during the dot com boom (when he sold his company, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo! for something like $9 billion dollars in July, 1999). However, I've come to realize that while luck always plays into things, Mark is one of the smartest, savviest businessmen I've come across, and you can learn a lot from his posts. He has helped fund the blog search engine IceRocket.com (for which I wrote the pinging support for BlogCFC) and founded and opened HDNet, an all high-definition TV channel of DIRECTV.
Robert Scoble: Robert just left his job as Product Evangelist at Microsoft to take a position as VP of Media Development at PodTech.net, which is essnetially an aggregator of podcasting and video blogging content. A true blogging pioneer, Robert has a great pulse on the digital media market.
Joel Spolsky: If you were at CFUNITED in 2005, you know why I read Joel's work. He is an incredibly engaging speaker and provides real-world advice on topics such as running a great technology company, software development, internet trends, and more. One of the founders of Fog Creek Software, we use his amazing FogBugz project management system. Joel "gets" developers and truly believes that the people he surrounds himself with are the key to success. I've also read his books Joel on Software, which is a cleanly organized book of his blog entries (which are all styled as witty essays, by the way), and The Best Software Writing I, which is a selection of writings by various authors on all things related to software and software development.
FlickrBlog: OK, not much to describe here, but they do occasionally post status updates for Flickr.com. But they do post some amazing high-quality photos which make my shots look incredibly amateur!
TheServerSide.com: I really just subscribe to this to see if any of the headlines are appealing. It's very J2EE-oriented, but there are some product announcements that catch my eye.
Tom Kyte: If you use Oracle, you need to subscribe to Tom Kyte's site, AskTom. Tom is a world-renowned Oracle guru who answers literally thousands of questions of all levels related to using Oracle. His site has an unbelievably amount of valuable information, and I've learned countless tips and tricks over the last few years.
ThinkSecret: This is my one Apple-related blog. These guys specialize in breaking news and announcments surrounding Apple products. Since Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about just about everything, ThinkSecret seems to be the most reliable source of what's coming down the road.
Slashdot: As they call it themselves, it's "New for Nerds." While it tends to be a bit anti-Microsoft, they do keep you updated on the goings-on of all things related to technology. And I'm not talking just about software either -- they cover medical, aeronautics, etc.

I have a few more, but they're just feeds related to product announcements (i.e., Oracle security updates, etc.). What about you? Who/What do you read? Remember, they can't be aggregated by FullAsAGoog or MXNA.

Browser Detection Gone Too Far

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 14:45:00 -0400

I was looking through the latest stories on MXNA a few minutes ago and saw an entry that looked interesting enough to click into. So, using my trusty FeedDemon blog reader, I clicked the headline and was taken to the entry...for about a second. All of a sudden, I was automatically re-directed to a page that said this:

Are you kidding?! I mean, I'm a big Firefox fan and use it for almost everything, but please don't interfere with my personal preferences by re-directing me to a landing page telling me to upgrade. That's both obnoxious and not your business. In this case, FeedDemon happens to use the IE engine within its IDE to access the internet. Yes, I know you can select an option to open links in my external default browser (which is Firefox, by the way), but I want to stay within the IDE. And yes, I see that there's a link to "continue anyway," but you know what? You lost me as a reader already. I'm not interested in continuing. I don't mind subtle prodding to get users to upgrade, i.e., Firefox banners in a side column, etc. But don't jump in the middle of my experience and force your personal preference/wish on me. I came to your site to read your content, not be told which tool to use to do so.

Great OS X Resource For "Switchers"

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 11:30:00 -0400

So I had no idea that there was a name for people like me who are making the switch from Windows to Mac OS X. Apparently, we're called "Switchers." That's cool...Lord knows I've been called worse! Anyway, that's not why I'm writing this entry. I was surfing through Digg last night and noticed an article entitled A Guide to OS X Software for Switchers. Now, even though I had to send my MacBook Pro back for a new one (grrrrrrr) and am still waiting for it, this "guide" is exactly the sort of resource I am looking for. The one area where I've had some issues getting used to the switch is how to get the "little things" done that were second nature to me in the Windows world. There are lots of resources for using "big ticket" items like web browsers and Eclipse, but I'm talking more about things like unzipping SIT files (seemingly the preferred zipping method for the Mac community), FTP-ing files to my web site, capturing screen shots, etc. Well, this "Guide" has all those answers and more. If you are a recent Switcher or even if you are a long time Mac user, there are tips, tricks, and references for everybody that are extremely useful. Now if I only had that replacement machine to apply these tips... ;)

Happy Birthday To Me

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 17:37:00 -0400

Yep, June 10th is indeed my birthday and I've entered the last year of my twenties....29....wow. Where does the time go? Anyway, I hope everybody's enjoying the World Cup. Oh yeah, this is also my first post from my brand new MacBook Pro!!

I Hate Ray Camden

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:08:00 -0400

Ray Camden is at it again. Seemingly at work 25 hours a day, 8 days a week, he has started an awesome series on building a rather meaty Model-Glue application that allows friends and family to interact with Flickr, thus relegating the rest of us ColdFusion bloggers to jealousy and anonymity. I'm a huge Model-Glue fan myself, so it's nice to be able to compare my experience and approach with his. As always with software development, there are some stylistic differences between our approaches, but there hasn't yet been anything where I've said "Oh dear Lord, Ray, don't do that!!" (well, I came a little close with his use of <cflock> around creating a new user, as shown in Part 3, but that's not really Model-Glue-specific). Since I've never properly met Ray, I should note for extreme clarity that the title of this post is completely sarcastic. It just never ceases to amaze me that he has the time to put in this kind of "extra-curricular" work when he's got a regular job and a family. Thanks Ray!

Squeet: Free RSS Reader Via E-mail

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 14:40:00 -0400

Via Scoble, here's a cool, free service from Axosoft, the same company behind the $5 Project Management software from a couple of weeks ago. Essentially, all you do is plug in a RSS feed URL and your e-mail address, and you'll be sent an update via e-mail when the feed is updated. Best of all, it's completely free, including no obligation to register. Now, you might be thinking "I'm reading this via your blog, so obviously I have some sort of RSS reader or am visiting from an online aggregator." Well, besides telling colleagues who don't use either of the above, a great use case for this might be to enter the feeds to the Adobe product notifications so that you get an e-mail when the product has been updated. This way, if you're on the road and a TechNote, updater or hotfix is released, an e-mail is sent to your Crackberry or cell phone instead of having to actually use your RSS software or go to an online aggregator's site. For reference, this is the place to visit to get the RSS URL to all Adobe products (actually, it's still just Macromedia products, but I'm assuming Adobe products will get in there eventually, too).

An "Aura" About Me: A New Day, A New Blog Design

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 10:35:00 -0400

According to my trusty stats, I've been blogging for 96 days. When I first started doing this, I thought I'd get out a few ideas and then see where this took me. Hence, the initial blog design was a slight modification of Raymond Camden's BlogCFC default skin (using an image-based banner) and the Nifty Corners JavaScript/CSS trick for rounded pod corners. Nothing too exciting, but I'm not a designer and it got me out the door so that I could focus on the content. At the same time though, I wasn't happy with the look and feel. It was too "amateur" looking. Further, my hopes of getting a few of my friends to read my blog were incredibly surpassed and I'm currently just over 6,000 hits! Thanks! Over the last couple of months, I've been envious of those who are using the Aura Web Page Exoskin. There's just something about it that's very clean and professional looking, particularly for blog layouts. I initially tried using the Aura Skin for BlogCFC provided by Joe Rinehart, but it's about a year old and there were some significant modifications made to the layout.cfm template in Ray's subsequent BlogCFC updates, so I abandoned that and just downloaded the CSS code from Leorex directly. It took me a several hours to get things laid out and conforming to the proper color palette (I still hate CSS, by the way), but what you're seeing now is the result of that work. You may need to clear your cache to make sure you get the latest CSS, but I think this is a better representation of how I want to live on the internet. There's a small issue with the comments window with the gray sliver down the left gutter, but it was 1:30 am and I really had to get to bed at that point. Anyway, let me know what you think. In particular, let me know if something looks funky in your browser. (Admittedly, I only tested this against IE 6 and Firefox 1.5.0.1 on Windows along with getting a screenshot of what it would look like in Safari from Snugtech.com. But there's nothing complex about the CSS that should cause fits in modern browsers.)

Discount Technical Books (Including 46% Off MS Press Titles)

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:01:00 -0400

Yeah, a little bit spammy with the title, but I just thought I'd pass on this goldmine. For years now, virtually every time I've needed to buy a technical book, I've been amazed that Bookpool.com has been able to noticeably undercut the competition with their pricing. I'm not talking 5% or 10% ... I'm talking about 30% or more on most books. They are a phenomenal service for what they do. They are currently having a sale on all MS Press titles (up to 46% off), and I thought that some of the MS software users/admins (i.e., SQL Server) might want to grab a resource. Even if you don't use MS software, they have almost every major book title you can imagine (including all of Ben's books). Further, they run massive discount promos like this for almost all publishers at some point, so this is not a one-time deal. I know there are online services like Safari Bookshelf by O'Reilly, but I personally have some sort of mental block with large quantities of online reading. If I'm dabbling with something, these services are great. But if I'm serious about the subject, I need to have the book in my hand. Strange, but hey, that's me.