(Approx. 512 words)

SIGNIFICANT BITS
November 2008
By Sean N. Henderson, Vice President, Danbury Area Computer Society, Connecticut
www.dacs.org
shenderson (at) dacs.org

This article has been obtained from APCUG with the author’s permission for publication by APCUG member groups; all other uses require the permission of the author (see e-mail address above).

COLDFUSION IS HOT

Many DACS members reading this probably have some experience programming with PhP. Maybe this is a time to remind developers and those making application choices about ColdFusion.

When Allaire first released Cold Fusion (two words then) in 1995, it made some headlines purely because of its name. It was a number of years later when I met a person at my wife’s college reunion who was a ColdFusion developer, and she raved about how easy it was to create database-enabled Web pages.

As fate would have it, I too, have become a ColdFusion (CF) developer and have to say CF makes Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and database-enabled sites really easy.  Much richer than old-school CGI (Perl or otherwise) and even still more feature rich than PhP.

The neat thing about CF’s version of HTML, called CFML, is that if you can write HTML, then it’s just a couple of tags and commands more to be writing dynamic websites with CFML. Some hosting providers provide a version called ColdFusion 4.5 Express. The current “standard” appears to be based on 6.1 MX. The current version is 8 (no MX) and i

s published by Adobe, and includes support for AJAX.

HYPE ABOUT SKYPE

Skype is a VoIP (Voice-over-IP) telephone service. For PC-to-PC users, there is no charge. Charges incur when wanting to have voicemail, call a landline number, call a mobile number, or have a landline number or cell phone reach a Skype account.

PC Magazine recently listed their survey for various technologies, and Skype was down from last year.

My purpose in trying Skype was to see if it was a viable low-cost replacement for a mobile phone. How would that work?  There are various scenarios, none of them simple. The barrier is roaming across Wi-Fi networks. (Actually, this obstacle was addressed in a recent Sybase iAnywhere Mobile presentation at DACS.)  My target device is my Palm TX running PalmOS. A recent test of Skype to my brother out west has us talking for over an hour over a very clear connect. I was using a USB LCD phone connected to my laptop, connected to the home router by way of Wi-Fi. My brother similarly connected, except just speaking open air using his laptop mic and/or speakers. The sound quality was clearer than any cell phone call I've had.

ANOTHER USB GIZMO
There's an inexpensive USB LCD handset phone available for use with Skype. The UP-730 seems to work as expected and sounds better than expected.  The unit was purchased for under $10 on-line. It allows scrolling through the USB contacts through the handset. Is it really necessary?  No. But, it has a longer cord than most headsets and it made using Skype feel more like regular phone service, especially on longer calls.