Fuzzy Orange are proud to launch a new open-source project to the community.

Codenamed 'Rhea', after the mother of the Olympian Gods and Godesses, this project is a package of ColdFusion components providing instant access to interact with the Rackspace Cloud Servers and Cloud Files APIs.

We at Fuzzy Orange, a longstanding partner with Rackspace and user of the Cloud services, wanted a way to simplify the way we deployed to the Cloud server and provide an easier in-house method of managing the Cloud Files.

Having spoken to developers and after reading documentation, we noticed the need for a ColdFusion application to merge with the Rackspace API, and as such, Rhea was born.

Having built the system from the ground up, we now use this API internally to deploy dynamic content to our Cloud Servers and to upload and manage static content to the Cloud Files containers, streamlining and enhancing the way we work.

We have opened up the application and pushed it out to the community so that others can benefit as well, and we look forward to hearing from those that are using it.

The download itself contains an installation guide and documentation on the basic implementation of the code, as well as a list of the methods currently available to users to work with the API.

As ever, nothing is timeless, and we will be working on upgrades and amendments to the code base to ensure you continue get the best application available.

Rhea V0.99 is available to download now from RIA Forge: http://rhea.riaforge.org/

Fuzzy Orange have managed to plant ourselves once more into the pages of .net magazine, and the latest issue features a tutorial from FO's very own Andy Allan.

In this tutorial, Andy covers some of the features and functions available to ColdFusion developers to work with and manipulate images, and builds an image upload application complete with CAPTCHA verification.

The article also provides some valuable information on working with thumbnails, displaying EXIF Meta Data from images, and using the built-in drawing functions to create a custom image.

The April issue (issue 200) is available now so make sure you grab yourself a copy.

With the welcome release of Adobe AIR 2 in beta, revised APIs and additional classes and features provide end users with an enhanced experience, whilst still giving developers a simple but extremely powerful way to develop feature-rich desktop applications.

Once again FO have managed to comfortably pull up a chair and join the ranks of developers and contributors in another of the UK's top Development/Design publications, Web Designer magazine, exploring some of the new features available with the AIR 2 beta through the process of developing a small but powerful desktop app that will provide levels of functionality wrapped inside a useful file explorer application.

The tutorial will guide you through the steps to create a desktop app that interacts with the user's operating system to detect the addition or removal of external storage devices, and provides a clean, friendly method of browsing the local file structure and integrating with native applications.

Issue 166 is out today (January 14th) so make sure you pick up a copy and enjoy everything that AIR 2 has to offer.

Being a ColdFusion company, we obviously like to stay as up to date as we can with the product, and we upgraded to ColdFusion 9 on the day it was released (the upgrade was actually performed whilst attending Adobe MAX).

Since it's release, we've also become a Rackspace partner, which was primarily due to the relationship we have built up with their team as part of a co-support agreement we have with one of our largest clients.

With this new partnership it made sense for us to move our platform to Rackspace from our existing hosting company. Additionally, with ColdFusion 9 being the first version to officially support the Cloud, we decided to migrate to Rackspace's cloud platform.

Rackspace have a number of options for the Cloud, including Cloud Sites and Cloud Servers (in addition to Cloud files, which to simplify things, is for storage purposes).

Cloud Sites is a "load and go" solution, whereby you upload your site, and it automatically scales by default. So if demand increases, you can set your account to automatically handle growth, at a cost of course.

Starting at $100 a month, this will get you either a Linux or Windows hosting account with enough oomph to get you going. Should you require additional power, you can pay for what extra you need. Full pricing can be found http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/sites/pricing

At this time, Cloud Sites do not support any kind of Java technology, which includes ColdFusion (although hopefully this will change soon). However, that's where Cloud Servers come in.

If you've used virtualisation software such as VMware them just think of Cloud Servers as the same thing, only instead of paying a normal hosting fee, the price you pay for your server depends on how much memory you want, starting from 512mb and going up to 16GB.

Right now, only Linux is supported with Cloud Servers, though Rackspace currently have Windows servers in beta.

As we're a Linux shop, we just needed to choose which distribution we wanted. Rackspace currently offer:

• CentOS 5.2
• CentOS 5.3
• Gentoo 2008.0
• Debian 5.0
• Fedora 10
• Arch 2007.08
• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 8.10
• Ubuntu 9.10
• Red Hat EL 5.3

Out of those distributions, the only one you have to pay extra for is Red Hat.

In regards official support from Adobe, only Red Hat is covered (Adobe support Ubuntu 9.04 but that's not available as an option). However, we've been running ColdFusion on CentOS (and previously Fedora) for a long time and we've never had an issue.

So our flavour of choice is CentOS 5.3, which we then upgraded to 5.4.

For memory we chose 2GB. Normally we'd run with more, but Rackspace only support full image backups (at this time) on Cloud Servers with up to 2GB of memory. Support for all memory sizes is coming soon.

So, for the servers that are business critical to us, we have pitched for the 2GB versions. For other servers, where a full image backup isn't as important, we've pitched for 4GB.

We can easily increase the memory allocation in the Cloud Management Portal, simply by choosing an increased amount of memory, and we'll do so when the additional backup support goes live.

Building the Server

Once you've picked your memory allocation, your operating system and provided your credit card details, you're transferred into the Rackspace Cloud Management system, where you can watch the progress of your server build. It maybe took a minute or two for the system to build our servers.

Once your server is built, you'll be provided with the root username/password to log in and configure your server. From this point on, it's just like managing any Linux based ColdFusion server.

You get your firewall up and running, lock it down, block remote root logins, etc, etc.

Next, you install ColdFusion.

So in about 20 minutes, we had a Rackspace Cloud server running ColdFusion.

We've moved our servers to the cloud, using Rackspace, who are also our new hosting partner.

We're also running CF9 Enterprise, which is the first version to be officially supported in the Cloud, so it's a perfect match

Something we discovered lately, which we reported to Adobe, is that if you perform an EAR/WAR install of ColdFusion 9, and choose RDS to be disabled, the installer enables it regardless.

Adobe have issued a technote here.

Matt and myself wrote an article for the November edition of .NET mag, and we've also been speaking about this new ColdFusion 9 feature across Europe as part of Scotch on the Road.

To follow up on this, Matt has started on a series of blog posts on ColdFusion as a Service, and you can read part one here.

The RRP for ColdFusion 9 Enterprise has dropped by £1,474.00+VAT in comparison to ColdFusion 8 Enterprise. ColdFusion 9 Standard pricing has remained steady.

Visit the Adobe UK online store

As an Adobe Authorised Reseller, we can always better the RRP pricing, so if you're looking to buy brand new ColdFusion 9 licenses, or looking to upgrade from ColdFusion 8, drop us an email at info@fuzzyorange.co.uk or just use our Contact Form.

With the release of ColdFusion 9, we've managed to infiltrate the UK's largest Web Design/Development magazine, .net mag, and write a tutorial on ColdFusion as a Service.

In this tutorial, FO senior developer Matt Gifford and myself, explain how you can build Flex and AIR apps that utilise ColdFusion features without writing a single line of ColdFusion code.

The demo app we've written allows you to drag and drop an image onto the app, and then by calling these backend ColdFusion services, rotate and resize the image, and finally, email the manipulated image to a user specified email address.

Other services that can be utilised include; PDF creation, word to PDF conversion, charting and more.

The November issue is out October 13th so pick up a copy as soon as you can.

OK ... it's been out for a week now, but after getting back from AdobeMAX, Kev and myself have had a lot to catch up on, not withstanding the fact we're off to Munich on Sunday for the start of SOTR Europe.

Talking of SOTR, we'll have lots of CF9 features showcased there, including; ColdFusion as a Service, Taking ColdFusion Applications off-line with Adobe AIR, ColdFusion 9 Administration features, ORM, and more.

CF9 is a great release, and we've already updated all our environments, including, laptops, staging, qa and production.

So, go give it a whirl.