Finally, Adobe have released Coldfusion 8. Before I begin, we need to take a look at the price tags.

US Price
Enterprise edition - $7,499

UK Price
Enterprise Edition - £5,500

Can someone explain how a product that retails for $7,499 in the US can be £5,500 here? Don’t exchange rates mean anything anymore? That is around a £300 rise in price since Coldfusion 7 hit the shelves.

It’s about time Adobe asked themselves why they seem to making a conscious effort to drive more and more people away from CF and towards competitors such as PHP, .Net etc. I was asked what CF has over other platforms to warrant the price tag. I couldn’t think of a single thing. True, it has support for RSS, image manipulation, zip file management to name a few (for a full feature list, visit www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/features/ ) but the likes of PHP have had such support for years. So where are the incentives? I have been coding in CF since CF4 came out, and even I cant see any.

CF developers often talk about the way you can knock a site together in no time. I find that developing in any language which makes use of a framework is just as quick, if not quicker. E.g. CodeIgniter/PHP.

The truth of it is, CF is simply not worth it. I would love to hear how Adobe justify the prices. I cannot remember the last time I was asked to develop a CF application from scratch AND purchase either CF hosting or a CF license. Most clients approach me with either an existing site written in CF or a server with CF installed which they want to make use of.

Oh, and if I had a penny for everytime someone mentioned Myspace as a shining example of a great CF site, I would have enough to purchase CF8 license myself. :)

Who remembers them? They came in paper sleeves for a few pence, lasted around 10 throws before breaking in two.

I played with them when I was a nipper, it was a jaw dropping moment to see my nipper now playing with them. He bought them from a museum souvenir shop for 30p each.

:O

Got me thinking about the other toys I played with, who remembers BMX Flyer?

I am excited to announce a new venture which I have now become part of.

FAFTv is an online comedy channel showcasing the best of established and upcoming talent. It will span everything from stand-up, sitcom, sketch and animation.

The site will allow you to watch production quality comedy material, submit a rating, enter competitions and a bucket load more.

If you have any material, ideas or scripts you’d like to submit for consideration then send it through to info@faftv.com.

Launch date is 5th November, 2007.

My Fuji F31FD has finally arrived. What can I say other than it’s a bloomin’ marvelous camera.

I could be seriously out of touch with what cameras are capable of, but the features this has makes me think the Canon debacle was a blessing in disguise. Face recognition (which admittedly Is a bit hit and miss), picture sizes, photo editing, LCD brightness and its support for low light conditions as well as standard features, all for £120.

Like I said, this may be the norm. I don’t really keep up with gadgets as such and so all cameras may have said features. Still, it’s a worthy purchase.

My only gripe so far, storage is handled using XD flash memory. So now I have a collection of compact flash, sd and xd memory cards. Can’t we just have the one!?!

Not to mention the cheapo 20 in 1 card reader I bought. Still can’t find where to stick the xd card which It claim’s to support.

I wont give an in-depth, expert’s review. Instead I will give an idiots review:

Colour: It’s a nice shiny silver one, I like silver things

Shape: Oblong shaped with rounded corners, the flappy cover for power and USB sockets is a bit rubbish. I give it 2 months before it falls off.

Response times: Fast, I can take a picture without a single grumble from anyone.

Flash: Good as well as clever, seems to adapt to the distance of the subject. So days of taking photos of my child with a “startled rabbit in car headlight’s” look are a thing of the past.

Weight: Not too heavy, easily sneak into partner’s handbag without getting noticed.

Robustness: Feels sturdy, but I would still be nearby, ready to pounce wearing a wicket keeper’s glove when letting others use it.

Value for money: Yeah, suppose so. Would have been nice to have reused my flash memory cards.

Learning curve: I found it easy to use, and I am an idiot.

You can see example pictures here

I realised that I never mention what I am working on, or about to work on, or just completed work on. Well now I will.

It’s been a while, but we finally got there. The new version has now been launched. It took the original version to the next level with a slew of new features, ultimately creating a much more enhanced way for clients to, amongst other things, browse, save and download tracks. The technology behind the flash interface was a series of ASP.Net/C# scripts with a MySQL database. Data exchange was managed using XML. Check it out for yourself, head on over to the Extreme Music site and click on GET TRAX.