ColdFusion 9 Static Classes

One thing I would like to see in ColdFusion 9 is the bringing together of ActionScript and CFML. The more similarities the better for all concerned.

Having worked with a lot of Flex recently, I love ActionScript and would love in particular to see ColdFusion introduce Static Classes.

While Im on my wish list, a couple nice things that would be easy to implement, and save some confusion.

They should introduce a new tag

<cfclass

which is exactly the same as <cfcomponent but with a different name, the reason being, is that the names are confusing.

In ActionScript a Class is a Class and a Component is something different.

In ColdFusion a Class is a Component and a Component is a Class.

Not sure why they didn't name it like this from the start, at least the extension is correct, (CFC = ColdFusion Class)

Fantastic Contraption

I stumbled across a good Flash game recently, Fantastic Contraption. Not only a really good game, it plays well, challenges the mind and hooks you in.

I was playing this game and realised that there are probably a lot of ways to complete a level, in fact when you complete a level you get to see how others did it, which is very cool.

I tried to focus on simple solutions, some other solutions I saw were more complex, some were simpler and some were simply amazing, I saw one level where the person catapaults the ball and something to catch it, to the other side of the level, amazing.

So I thought i'd post my solutions, through the 20 levels for others to enjoy.

1. Rolling Away
2. Reach Up
3. Mind The Gap
4. Junkyard
5. The Wall
6. On a Roll
7. Full-up
8. Higher
9. Around the Bend
10. Up The Hump
11. Mission to Mars
12. Up The Stairs
13. Big Ball
14. Four Balls
15. Down Under
16. Awash
17. Handling
18. Tube
19. Back and Forth
20. Unpossible
21. U-Turn

I really want to go back now and find other solutions, because you learn different moves as you go, I have to admit that I had to google the solution to Tube because to me it seemed impossible.

Apple iPhone Sync with SBS Exchange 2003

Firstly let me say that this IS POSSIBLE. There are a lot of posts out there that say.

• You can't do it with Exchange 2003 you need Exchange 2007
• You need to use iMap
• You need ISA server in the middle

This is all rubbish. I have a fairly standard Single SBS 2003 box with exchange all on the one server, very typical for a small company.

Straight out of the box, I ran the exchange wizard on the iPhone, and guess what, it worked perfectly, great I thought, isn't it wonderful when technologies just work.

Then I took it home, and to my surprise it didn't work externally. Strange I thought, I had lots of theories, mainly being that

1. Firewall has some necessary ports blocked
2. DNS has cached the internal name of the exchange server
3. Something isn't configured correctly

So here is what I did, firstly opened all ports on the firewall, still didn't work, ok that eliminates the firewall as the issue.

Tried removing the settings and setting up again externally, still didn't work, I thought that should eliminate the DNS issues.

So I started searching, found lots of posts saying it doesn't work. I posted questions, people told me it doesn't work. I thought, hang on, but it works internally so it must work.

I eventually found a post that said it works using OMA (Outlook Mobile Access) which is accessible via

https://exchange.company.com/oma

Could I get to that, I tried and I couldn't. IP restricted, I changed the settings on the virtual directory to allow it external access and still no luck I checked a few of the other exchange virtual directories and a couple had this internal only also, so I enabled them. I then restarted IIS and all was good.

In the mean time I had lost hope, this all occurred over 3 days, I tried IMAP and VPN and all sorts of things, and IMAP is rubbish compared to Exchange sync, you don't get calendar or contacts and it wasn't syncing my deletes or moves.

So now I am happy and can configure this for the rest of the company. I hope this helps someone, I can confirm it 100% works and works well with SBS 2003 Exchange.

Apple iPhone 3G vs BlackBerry 3G

I have been using a BlackBerry 8707g for a couple of years now, and have really liked it, previously I was using a O2 XDA 2 which I also liked.

A couple people at work were moving to iPhones so I was playing with one trying to get it all setup (Another Post Coming) and as I played, there were a couple things that the iPhone did that my BlackBerry struggled with. These really jumped out at me being someone who mainly uses my BlackBerry to read emails. Here's what I found.

1. I could actually read emails as they were formatted, including html emails, this was fantastic, reading emails zooming in if needed with top text quality. The BB really is good at reading plain emails, but anything special, formatted it struggles.

2. I get a lot of emails from our Jira system, which is a web based system. One thing I've never been able to do on the BB is to read the jira Issues on the web, the BB just doesn't render web pages well enough. But on the iPhone it was flawless, displays the web pages perfectly, zoomed out, then you can zoom in and move around as you need, I was impressed.

3. I then thought thats nice, I wonder how other webpages look, and they prety much all look great, shame there is no flash support, but all in all it was a great experience.

4. Then opened a PDF & PPT attachments and wow, they were almost perfect, the PDF's are great, this is a real pain on the BB, you get a thumbnail, then need to say, more, more, more until you get the whole thing.

I was about to get a new BB, but figured it would be the same old stuff, and this iPhone was truly taking my email / web browsing mobile. The keyboard is no where near as good, but I read a lot and don't reply to a lot from my phone.

So long story short, I went for an iPhone, this is my first ever Apple purchase, I'm not into music so I missed the iPod craze, and am a Windows / Dell man.

The iPhone has beaten the BlackBerry at it's own game, email. BlackBerry is set to become the next Palm unless they can address these issues.

They have done a great job, there are some things missing, simple stuff that they will fix with future software updates, but a very good device.

Here is a list of pro's and cons of my new iPhone, all of the cons can be fixed with software updates.

iPhone Pros

• Better render of emails, formatting and html emails.
• Better rendering of webpages
• Better screen, bright, large and crisp
• Has 16gig of memory, my BB doesn't take a memory card although new ones do.
• Has a camera, my BB doesn't once again new ones do.
• Good online access to additional programs etc.

iPhone Cons

• Couldn't work out how to order email by sender or search emails
• Emails show that you have replied but don't allow you to link to the reply
• Emails marked as Urgent aren't highlighted
• Can't copy and paste
• Notes don't sync with exchange