Simon Free - AIR, ColdFusion, Merapi

In this interview, recorded at CFinNC 2009, Dan Wilson speaks with Adobe Community Expert Simon Free about Merapi, a bridge between applications written in Java and those running in and created for Adobe AIR. Simon describes how he built a desktop AIR application that talks, through Merapi, to a Java library that controls a Lego Mindstorm robot. Simon also describes some of the practical use cases for Augmented Reality (AR) -- applications which involve the overlay of virtual imagery on the real world -- and FLARToolkit, a software library for building AR applications.

Todd Sharp, SlideSix.com and the Adobe Platform

In this interview, recorded at CFinNC 2009, Dan Wilson speaks with Todd Sharp, the creator of SlideSix.com, a multimedia enabled presentation sharing community that has been featured on popular technical blogs such as TechCrunch and Mashable. Todd provides a a detailed walkthrough of the SlideSix.com architecture and describes some of the powerful new Flex and ColdFusion features he used to develop the site.

Adam Lehman, ColdFusion and ColdFusion Builder Product Manager

In this interview, recorded at CFinNC 2009, Dan Wilson speaks with ColdFusion Product Manager Adam Lehman on the rebirth of the ColdFusion platform. Evolving from its early days as a C++ product, to becoming a fully Java-based implementation for the enterprise, ColdFusion today commands a growing community of 800,000 developers. The language-become-platform is being touted by industry pundits not only as a productivity tool for Java but as a viable, standalone solution for building and integrating Rich Internet Applications within an SOA environment.

Corfield on ColdFusion

Corfield talks about the the CFML specification and explains the ways in which they hope to resolve code portability issues. Corfield is a strong proponent of open source and he has worked on open source projects for about fifteen years. The For ColdFusion Foundation (4CFF), Corfield explains, is intended to open source development in CFML and to provide a central location for key projects. The foundation is in its early stages, but Corfield says that they will be announcing their first few project transitions soon. Finally, Corfield talks about what's on the horizon for the CFML ecosystem.

Ben Nadel on Project Management/Delivery

Ben Nadel is the Chief software engineer at Epicenter Consulting. He's been a ColdFusion and web application developer for ten years, starting with front-end QA work and then moving to the back-end with ColdFusion and MySQL. Now he's working with web front-ends again, this time with rich user experience technologies like Flex, AIR, and jQuery. Nadel talks about the state of web applications ten years ago when design and user experience weren't considered important. Today, Nadel's boutique designs software around the user with interface-driven architecture.

jQuery is one of the most indispensable tools for building user interfaces, Nadel says. Without the seamless enhancements and theme-rolling of jQuery, Nadel doesn't know how he would build some of the things that he builds today. Aside from jQuery, Nadel thinks that Flex is another compelling technology for creating rich user experiences without having to worry about cross-browser compatibility. You can find his blog at bennadel.com.

Mike Labriola - Flex Expert on the Past, Present, and Future of RIA

Flex is being used in many important places you might not know about, like hospitals. Michael Labriola says that's because Flex has a thin client that brings a lot of desktop-like functionality to the web browser, its becoming a very popular tool for deploying web applications via AIR. In this interview, Labriola covers subjects from FlexUnit, the iPhone, and his thoughts about the future of computer interaction. You'll also get to see Labriola "geek out" about Flash 10.1.

Michael Labriola is the lead developer of FlexUnit 4 and Fluint. He is also an Adobe Community Expert and an author of several Flex and AI books. Labriola has worked on Flex from the very beginning. Most of his time is spent helping people who are learning Flex and mentoring them through their first project.