Peachpit has been AWESOME with support of our user group. Many of the books that have been given away over the last 4 years have been from Peachpit. Not only have we been given a lot of books, but they're also very GOOD books! I used the heck out of several of their books including Object Oriented Programming in Action Script 2 and Eric Meyer on CSS.

To show your gratitude, please consider purchasing their books when you have an opportunity. It looks like the famous "Forta books" on CF8 will be coming out in a couple weeks on Peachpit.com and I KNOW you're all waiting to grab up all three(!) books. To sweeten the deal, Peachpit is offering all user group members a 30% discount on purchases made on their online store. Just enter coupon code UE-23AA-PEUF (case sensitive) when you checkout.

So we get free books, you get a discount, Peachpit gets customers. What's not to love about that arrangement?

Another group that you might want to keep an eye on (or at least join electronically) is the Philly Computer Human Interaction group. They're focused on usability and interface design - topics that ALL of us should have at least a passing interest in.

PhillyCHI meets monthly, usually in downtown Philadelphia.

Not to be confused with the PhillyCFUG, the Connect user group is focused on users (current and potential) of Acrobat Connect (formerly Breeze).

The Philadelphia Connect User Group:
September 7, 2007 at Wharton

Featured speaker: Lou Metzger, will discuss how Wharton customized Connect to include interactive "Break-Out Rooms" within the online Meeting Rooms.

Co-presenter: Jacquie Beck, will discuss how her team is using Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional to leverage content on the Web.

Attendees will receive a free copy of Jacquie's whitepaper on Reusable Learning Objects.

• Q&A
• Upcoming events with Adobe
• Networking

When: September, 7th, 2007
Where: Wharton: University of Pennsylvania
Aresty Institute of Executive Education
255 South 38th Street
Philadelphia, PA 191104
Time: 12pm - 2pm (Lunch will be served)

Information and registration available at the Connect user group site.

Just a quick update to let you know the dates for the final 4 meetings of the year:

• Tuesday September 25
• Tuesday October 23
• Tuesday November 13
• Tuesday December 11

Time and location is forthcoming for all of these, as are the final topics. Included on the list are the following:

• CF8 Ajax features
• CF8 CFPresentation (a big topic)
• Intro to AIR for ColdFusion developers
• Spry
• PDF manipulation in CF8

Want to see something different? Better yet, got a topic you want to present on? Leave a comment or email Steve! The floor is open to ALL presenters on topics from beginner to advanced - and trust me, they won't laugh at you. Presenting at the user group is a great way to improve yourself in front of a friendly crowd!

Great buzz throughout the night, which I'm sure we'll see more of in tomorrow's aggregators. Figured I would share my opinions here before I get focused on work again.

One more important thing: a MAJOR shout out to Rob Hall, the manager of our local Flash User Group. He was a very strong proponent/instigator/conspirator to get Philly on this tour and busted his hump to get lots of people out for it. The event wouldn't have been nearly as well attended without his efforts to put out a call to arms. The contest idea didn't hurt either - and I know the Adobe guys appreciated the case of Lager!

Back to my thoughts:

Great:

• Venue
• Crowd
• Food/sugar supply
• Presentations
• Pace of the event

Regrets:

• Not enough time to code
• Not enough time to socialize
• Ben's talk was cut short

We could have easily done an all day event with the amount of stuff there was to cover. I had so many questions about offline/database stuff that I will have to go research for a future CFUG presentation. Maybe that would be useful to the other groups - guess we'll find out!

If you attended, I hope you enjoyed it!

Rob Hall has (heroically) pulled together a contest!

Digg Graphr:
Colored display of the latest posts to Digg, sized by a weighting algorithm based on number of Diggs. Filterable by categories. Rollover presents some descriptive text of each item. Colors change by age too (darker=older). Customization writes out user prefs to a local file (there's the AIR hook!) Good use of right click menu to go to story on digg or the story's source site. Very cool!

Media Finder:
A five minute app :-) Find local jpg files using the fileIO libraries and preview them. Quick and dirty, only one function in the Flex app.

Eat My Trash:
A goofy little animated character that "eats" files you're throwing away. Uses fileIO to move the file to the trash can. Cute, funny, belches. A definite crowd pleaser ;-)

Rip the Tables:
Drag an mp3 to the speakers, does animated playback. DJ does a little scratch on demand - also a crowd pleaser!

Eat My Trash/Rip the Tables was the winner - Jay took home a Nintendo DS Lite! The other two guys got copies of the Adobe Master Suite. Awesome!

We've got an almost full auditorium for presentations by Ryan Stewart, Mike Chambers and Kevin Hoyt. Intros to the concepts behind AIR, a bunch of sample apps, how to build a basic Flex-based AIR app and finally how to build an HTML/Ajax-based AIR application.

Good crowd response, especially to the question about which place makes the best cheesesteaks. Leave it to Philly...

Solid audience attention and lots of laptop screens lighting up the audience. Should be a very interesting evening!

Now we just need them all to show up!

This is AMAZING!

As advertised, this venue is sweet - literally! Sugar of every imaginable type on every table. We're sitting in the planetarium right now. 4 XBoxes set up, and an overwhelming temptation to start projecting stuff on the dome seems to be the common thinking.

We're getting an early start on the coding (i'm dosing up on Nerds as we speak) so hopefully by the end of the night I'll have a functional AIR application ready to roll!

Nearly 200 of your peers have registered to attend the onAIR event at the Franklin Institute next week. Will you be there too?

The AIR bus tour is stopping in Philly next Wednesday, August 22. The venue: the Franklin Institute! Event information is on the onAIR website, including registration details. Your attendance benefits the Adobe user groups of the greater Philadelphia Area...and you!

It's FREE

What to Bring: Yourself, laptop, any Flex, HTML and JavaScript apps you want to get running on Adobe AIR. Adobe will provide the beer, Red Bull, coffee, food, XBoxes, schwag, knowledge, venue and bits.

A Contest! A Contest!

The Philly Flash Platform User Group and Adobe are co-sponsoring a CONTEST for the best AIR application! The prizes are awesome - Copy of Flex Builder 2, a Nintendo DS Lite with a copy of Super Mario World and an O'Reilly "Ultimate AIR Developer" book bundle are all up for grabs.

To participate, register for the event, then if you are not already a member of the Flash user group, sign up as a member, download a copy of AIR and get to work on your best application. Then submit a link to your .air file no later than midnight August 20th, 2007 to be eligible for the contest.

We're in the running to have one of the best-attended nights of the entire tour - come on Philly, don't let us down!

-Your friends from the Philadelphia ColdFusion, Flash and Flex User Groups.