Two new projects and three updates to ColdFusion open source projects this week. I was particularly interested in Terrence Ryan's discussion of Apptacular. He hasn't released code yet but the videos make this look like an impressive code generation/scaffolding application. It leads into my thoughts on how my own Illudium project fits in a world of ColdFusion Builder extensions and ORM. I've been debating either a complete rebuild as an extension or simply end of lifeing the project. Terry may have put the final nail in Marvin's coffin. Terrence Ryan, Martian Killer.

I had the pleasure of contributing yet again to the Adobe Edge newsletter's latest issue. The article is titled "Data-centric development in Adobe Flash Builder 4" and ostensibly covers the new wizards built into Flash Builder 4 for integrating services in ColdFusion, PHP, Java and http/web services. However, the article also dives into the basics of ORM (Hibernate) integration in ColdFusion 9 as well as some of the default wizards that come with ColdFusion Builder for generating a server-side model using ORM. While the finished product of all of these wizards isn't necessarily a "ready-for-production" app, they do get you a long way towards a finished product with amazingly little work.

As both Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder near a final release, I expect the process only to become easier and smoother. This brings up an interesting aside about this article and the trouble writing about beta software. I originally wrote the first draft of this piece many months ago and for a variety of reasons it wasn't published until now. However, so much changed in the beta releases at MAX that I ended up having to revisit nearly every aspect of the article and revise it. The good thing was, though, that it was for the better in every sense.

So, go read the article, and please share what you think via comments.

I caught some flak on my critical review of Star Wars Trench Run the other week. Apparently I am in the minority thinking that the gameplay was somewhat shallow and repetitive for the $4.99 price tag. This week, I want to give a prime example of why I stand by that belief by showing a game that is, in my opinion, amazingly fun and addictive with countless hours ofgameplay for the current price of only $2.99. Defender Chronicles mixes some RPG elements into a classic Castle/Tower defense type game to create a game that is often hard to put down but doesn't require hours of dedication (a la Civilization Revolution).

Six new projects this week in ColdFusion open source. Yep, all new projects this week. Its interesting to see how ColdFusion Builder extensions have started taking off and we're seeing a couple a week lately. I expect this will continue to grow as we near an "official" builder release as people realize this is simply the coolest feature in the IDE (by far).

This morning I attended a short event put on by MITX in downtown Boston. It was a panel discussion covering Facebook Connect featuring Dan Abdinoor of Hubspot, Leah Busque of RunMyErrand.com, Meagan Ellis of Kel and Partners, Justin Levy of New Marketing Labs and John J. Maver, Jr. of Thought Labs. For the most part this was a non-technical discussion about Facebook Connect as it was a panel of that ranged from public relations to development to entrepreneurs. It tended to cover the "why' of Facebook Connect rather than the "how." Below are some items I found interesting or at least worth noting from the session. If you are already familiar with Facebook Connect this will probably be nothing new to you, but if you are thinking about looking into it, this information could be useful.