Automatic Sync Technologies (AST) today announced its CaptionSync automated captioning system now delivers XML caption output for the Adobe Flash CS3 captioning component. This will allow organizations to bring their Flash video into accessibility compliance faster, more affordably, and easier than ever before. This caption output is available immediately at no additional cost to AST users.

Already, even in pre-release, Adobe's Spry seemed to catch the imagination of many Web professionals wrestling with how to integrate new AJAX frameworks into existing workflows. Created with designers in mind, Spry uses regular HTML tags, CSS, and JavaScript, and is easy to use - boiling down to a couple of JavaScript libraries that you include in your Web page in order to be in a position to add dynamic interactive content to your site.

Total Training(TM), Inc., a pioneer in engaging and innovative video-based training, today announced five new DVD-ROM based training series: Total Training for Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) CS3 Extended: Essentials, Total Training for Adobe Illustrator(R) CS3: Essentials, Total Training for Adobe Flash(R) CS3 Professional: Essentials, Total Training for Adobe InDesign(R) CS3: Essentials, and Total Training for Adobe Dreamweaver(R) CS3: Essentials.

Strata, the company adding the power of 3D to the designer's toolset, announced today three new plug-ins for Adobe(R) Systems' Photoshop(R) CS3 Extended software. Each of these 3D[in] plug-ins will be priced at less than $149 and will ship spring of this year.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by at our publisher's offices (SYS-CON Media) and they showed me our Flex book with the correct cover, but all pages were blank. Yesterday, I've got an email from them with the words, 'Yakov your book is ready, stop by and pick it up'. The guys from production department are really nice, so they've attached this video just to show me that the book is really really finally super-duper ready. Check this out (the video file is large though).

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced that the first public alpha version of Apollo is now available for developers on Adobe Labs. Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system application runtime that allows web developers to leverage their existing skills in HTML, JavaScript and Ajax, as well as Adobe® Flash® and Adobe Flex? software to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop. Apollo combines the reach of Internet technologies with the richness of desktop applications, working seamlessly across operating systems and outside the browser to deliver a more consistent and engaging user experience. The alpha version of the Apollo application runtime and the Apollo Software Developer?s Kit (SDK) can be downloaded for free from www.adobe.com/go/apollo .

e frontier, (http://www.e -frontier.com/), a leader in graphics and animation software, today announced that they will offer for download, a free exporter for Poser 7 that will allow Poser 3D content to be imported into the 3D layer of the new Photoshop CS3 Extended software.

Are your colors cool? Do you wish they were cooler? Adobe believes there is power in color. Their new web solution, Kuler, is a clear demonstration of this. In this article, you will find out how to use Kuler to create, share and rate color themes.

Paravue(R) Inc., today announced Turbo Mask(TM), an image masking tool designed for graphic and web designers, photographers, and motion graphic artists that work with Adobe Photoshop CS and Photoshop CS Extended. Most image masking tools rely on skill to get the desired results. Turbo Mask works like human eyes to pick out the important subject in an image. Leveraging the Paravue technology, Turbo Mask understands images like people do and can isolate subjects and remove them from backgrounds accurately -- often with just one click. With Turbo Mask, digital artists can focus more on creativity and less on time-consuming cutouts.

A noted Flex Evangelist from Adobe has published a list of top dozen of consulting firms that offer application development using Adobe Flex. Farata Systems is one of the firms that made this Flex honor roll. This company is run by experts who put lost of efforts into studying Flex Framework - they've spent time going deep under the Flex skin, learning its source code to make sure they can offer the most efficient solutions to their customers. The fact that Flex is a well designed extensible framework has allowed them to start building their own components and plugins that dramatically improved their team's productivity while working on the enterprise applications with Flex and Java, and this week they are going to offer Beta version of some of these components at myflex.org.

Amyuni Technologies launches v3.0 of its PDF Converter, PDF Creator and PDF Suite products. All products are now Microsoft Vista compatible, with full support for both PDF and XPS and offere extremely accurate conversion of any type of document into PDF and XPS, the company says.

Farata Systems has announced a strategic partnership with Midnight Coders to offer Web reporting and data-bound components and services that can be used in Flex, Flash and Ajax-based rich Internet applications. 'This partnership is an important step in improving productivity and time-to-market of rich Internet applications?, says Victor Rasputnis, Managing Director of Farata Systems. ?With FlexBI your end users do not depend on IT to tailor business reports the way they want them to be. With DAOFlex, IT folks do not have to write a single operator to create a complete CRUD application. Now we?ll give our customers a server deployment freedom they deserve ? to choose between Java, .Net, PHP and Ruby.'

Since our last issue, several events have transpired that have significant impact for ColdFusion developers. I have been keeping my eye on several trends and have been evaluating whether or not they deserve focus in ColdFusion Developer's Journal. I've begun blogging about these trends and about my observations and ideas regarding these trends and the future of CFDJ.

This article looks at an easy portal infrastructure that's based on a Flex-based portal container and portlets (individual Web applications) deployed as Flex modules. This portal framework provides full support for AJAX-type message processing with a very efficient deployment of portlets and manages the portlets so that they can logically connect to any Web application, freeing developers from routing to J2EE/.NET portal frameworks.

ColdFusion, BlueDragon, Coral Web Builder, IgniteFusion, and Railo. All are CFML engines, but none of them support the same implementation of CFML as each other. This, in the long run, is not a good thing. Up front, I am not opposed to other CFML engines. Yes, I use only ColdFusion in production environments, but I have played around a with BlueDragon and other CFML engines. That being said, I feel that we need a common CFML base from which to base all CFML engines; a CFML core, if you will.

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced the Adobe Creative Suite 3 product line, an offering of tightly integrated design and development tools for every creative workflow. Adobe?s new Creative Suite 3 line-up unites the best of Adobe and Macromedia product innovation to provide designers and developers with a broad spectrum of creative options for all facets of print, Web, mobile, interactive, film, and video production.

Farata Systems, a leading provider of Flex and Java services and components has announced availability of the Alpha version of the first community site www.myflex.org that will become a repository for commercial Flex components and Eclipse plugins developed by independent vendors.

'It takes a village,' said Cynergy VP Dave Wolf this morning at AJAXWorld 2007 East, 'to build an engineering team capable of writing world-class Rich Internet Applications.' You cannot create the right atmosphere in a 'cubicle farm,' he contends. And Cynergy walks the talk, and walks the walk, with no individual offices, large spacious office environments, and a commitment to keeping its staffers energized and creative, more like an ad agency than a development shop.

Can a Flex programmatic skin draw text? The short answer is, yes! The longer answer is, it's a little tricky. Let me break it down. First of all, in Flash, the only way to draw text is with a TextField. Flex can't do anything about that, so any Flex class that wants to draw text has to do it using a TextField.

Bluestreak Technology, Inc., the developer of the award-winning MachBlue(TM) platform for mobile phones and digital television, announced today that MachBlue Mobile will be commercially available for J2ME-compatible mobile phones.

This article describes a basic method for indexing and searching images and digital photographs based on color using ColdFusion and CFImageHistogram (www .leavethatthingalone.com/ projects/cfhistogram/). This method indexes and searches color in images quickly using ColdFusion.

The key to successful build management in distributed environments is a foundational commitment to consistency, repeatability and portability. This is just as true for small, homogeneous development environments using in-house, scripted build systems, as it is for large, complex environments, where a new class of non-scripted, distributed build-management tools are now available.

Hot Banana Software, Inc. (www.hotbanana.com), a leader in Web content management for marketing, today announced that it has launched Version 5.5, which takes Web CMS to the next level by integrating Web site optimization and marketing automation features. The company also made significant changes to its SaaS and licensed pricing, squarely focusing on small-to-midsize marketers.

While recently channel surfing, one of the 'Geico caveman' commercials came on the tube to remind me that Geico.com is so easy to use, even a caveman can do it. Plenty of ColdFusion developers are not what some people might call 'real programmers.' This is not necessarily a reflection on the platform; I've met plenty of Java and .NET developers who couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag either. The very idea that someone is 'not a real developer' is ridiculous. You're either a developer or you're not. If you get the job done and you do it fast and well, I don't care what you wrote it in - even if you are a caveman.

With the onslaught of excitement around AJAX and RIAs, incredible user interfaces that engage users in a passionate and sticky experience is paramount. Creating these experiences requires much more than just great developers or creative designers. It takes both sides working together in a very disciplined and choreographed workflow that empowers designers to create world class interfaces and enables developers to implement those interfaces to create rich and engaging experiences quickly and efficiently. The designer to developer workflow is the focus of the major players in RIA and will be the defining area that decides whether your RIA development succeeds or fails. Come hear from the industry?s experts in RIA design and development about approaches, experiences and lessons learned.

According to Adobe's senior technical evangelist and AJAXWorld 2006 veteran Christophe Coenraets, we're seeing today the first steps of the industry's journey down a path towards 'high definition' user interfaces. 'Real time data, in-context collaboration, vector graphics-powered expressiveness, rich media integration, and offline capabilities will soon become standard attributes of any client application,' says Coenraets.

Integration New Media, Inc. and Really Strategies Inc. announced a new joint white paper, entitled NIMAS: An Opportunity for Educational Publishers. This free white paper provides educational publishers with an overview of the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS), an explanation of how NIMAS applies to them, and a summary of the new opportunities it creates.

Event-driven programming model offers an excellent architecture based on loosely-coupled components consuming and throwing events. In this tutorial I'll show how to design component that communicate with each other via events.

Pop quiz: what company both doubled its annual revenue in 2006 and closed a $26.25 million round of funding? Clue: it also tracked 290,000 downloads of its RIA platform and lined up IBM, Walmart.com, H&R Block, Monster, Barclays Global and Pandora as customers. Extra clue: it also announced project 'Orbit' which will allow developers using its platform to compile into Java Mobile and run it on devices.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) services today are going mainstream. Corporate executives and individuals at home are demanding access to many of the same GIS capabilities previously used only by engineers, geologists, and government officials.

Cynergy Systems delivers Web, RIA and Legacy Migration solutions to over 1,400 customers worldwide. Maintaining offices across three continents and leveraging over a decade of experience, Cynergy Systems focuses on the delivery of rich, powerful business applications to customers across dozens of verticals including Healthcare, Manufacturing, Banking, and Governmental Organizations. Partners include Adobe, Microsoft, Sybase, Percussion Software and Jive Software.For more information, visit www.cynergysystems.com.

'With Flex 2.0 and Flash Player 8.5, we can finally deliver the kinds of rich applications our clients demand without compromise. That's Web 2.0!' With these words, a VP at Cynergy Systems today gave his ringing endorsement of the Adobe Flex 2.0 product line and Adobe Flash Player 8.5.

As the biggest-ever i-Technology event devoted specifically to AJAX-compatible Rich Internet Application technologies, it is hardly surprising that AJAXWorld Conference 2007 had an entire track devoted to Flex.

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) describe what the software development community aims to do; break out of primitive Web delivery to deliver robust functionality, exciting data visualization and 'thicker,' role-based and process-oriented user interfaces. These types of RIAs are now possible.

The Adobe Engagement Platform enables great experiences through the following key elements. Cross-platform, cross-browser, cross-device clients, a composite-driven programming model, and server frameworks and tools that accelerate the development of compelling applications. Adobe Flex, part of the Engagement Platform, is a complete application development solution for creating cross-platform rich Internet applications. And by combining the best of AJAX and Flex, developers can now build next generation expressive, interactive applications that include vector graphics, audio, video, and charting.

In XML, namespaces are used to avoid potential naming conflicts with other components having the same names. Flex also has namespaces. Familiarity with Soprano family is a pre-requisite for reading this article.

My goals here are to integrate www.adobe.com/ products/flash/ Flash with www.adobe.com/produc ts/flex/ Flex, i.e. not just treat it as a design asset tool, but as a contributor to the functionality of the client; using Flash for enhancing the design, and helping reduce transition code which tends to be verbose in Flex.

SYS-CON Events (www.sys-c on.com)announced today that AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East(www.ajaxworld.com), which will take place on March 19-21, 2007, will attract over 1,000 developers, architects, IT managers, and software professionals of every stripe who will be converging in New York City toattend the most comprehensive meeting on the most significant technology subjects of recent times: AJAX, Rich Internet Apps & Web 2.0.

At the end of each year, when SYS-CON informally polls its globe-girdling network of software developers, industry executives, commentators, investors, writers, and editors, our question is always the same: where's the industry going next year?

Andrew Trice, co-author of Flex 2 articles on Adobe's Developer Center, maintains a blog at http: //www.cynergysystems.com/ blogs/page/andrewtrice in which he helps orient newbies and experts alike about Flex. Web Developer's & Designer's Journal is pleased here to bring a sampler of some of his more recent shared insights.