Today I gave my first presentation to the online ColdFusion User Group.  For those who haven't witnessed one, checkout the user group page at http://www.coldfusionmeetup.com.  If you are a presenter, this is a great way to not only get your presentation out to a broader audience, but it means that Charlie Arehart adds the recording of your session to his database of user group presentations at User Group TV.

I received an obscure text message a week ago about a Daylight Savings Time patch for my BlackBerry Pearl but it didn't inspire me to do much.  Fast forward to last night where my appointment reminders didn't go off and then all of a sudden started going off well into my meeting. Maybe I'm shirking responsibility here but part of me thinks I'm not the only Blackberry user who got this message and thought - not urgent - especially since it told me roaming charges may apply.

If you need a cheap host for your podcast, pdf files, site images or any of your static site assets, take a look at Amazon S3.  I've been using it since just after it launched and it's a great way to reduce bandwidth to your ColdFusion/ Application server.  For WalkJogRun my average monthly bill is just under $6, not bad for a site that has seen 27 million hits this last year.  I'll give you a quickstart guide to for using it with your site and at a later date I'll describe how to use S3.

The online photo market has been saturated for some time but the most frustrating part was the lack of interoperability between the disparate systems... until now.  I had lunch with a Microsoft employee just the other day and we discussed how Microsoft is trying to redefine the culture from a "not built here" to working with clients to deliver integrated solutions.

I've been working with a client to troubleshoot his Google Analytics setup and discovered a documented issue you should look out for.  The Google Adwords campaign summary was reporting over 2000 clickthrus but the Google Analytics AdWords campaign summary showed zero visits for the same period.  After some investigation it became clear that the issue manifested itself after the new site was launched.

I was sitting in the Starbucks on Friday morning after a WaMu Small Business meeting waiting to meet a friend and pecking away at some new content for my website, when a young girl came up and asked me if I would be interested in discussing my coffee habit for Business Week.  She explained that she works for business week and proceeded to ask me about why I drink coffee at Starbucks, whether I drink canned coffee and what my day to day coffee consumption is.  This is where our stories diverge.

Well, not quite but for those of you who didn't know it, Charlie Arehart now has a pay-per-minute phone and web based CF support line.I called Charlie last week while trying to diagnose / debug a tricky BlueDragon bug.  I called him and described the issue and he threw out some ideas.  After a few minutes of hands off troubleshooting he popped open an acrobat connect session and soon enough I was sharing my screen so he could see the issue through my eyes.

Getting downtown from the AirportSave your pennies for beer and take the blue line CTA train from O'Hare or the Orange line from Midway towards towards the loop.  At $2 it's far cheaper than your $40 cab ride.  Heck, depending on the time of the day it may be faster too.McCormick Place - the venueIt's located in the south loop area which isn't exactly central or near the fun.

I know, two launch posts in one month but this one is THE most significant for me in that it marks the launch of my solo career as a consultant.  The beautiful design of Adam Howitt Consulting is the handywork of my former colleague and good buddy Jeff Kenny. He always amazes me when he pulls this stuff together.

It's always a big relief to see a client really embrace a CMS and throw resources at it to get the website moving.  Glo-Brite is a client I've been working with for the last year and we launched their site about six months ago.  We stalled for a while but finally got back on track as Paul dedicated a resource to load all his heavy duty truck parts, uploading images, creating page titles and descriptions from their catalog.