One of the wonderful things that has happened in Adobe Acrobat X is that the navigation has been completely redone, it's awesome! (If you didn't get the sarcasm in that statement then I assure you, I don't think it's awesome!). So without further delay, here is how you would find the crop box and trim box settings in Acrobat X.

1. Click Tools

2. Click Show/Hide Panels

3. Select Print Production

4. Click Set Page Boxes

5. Do your cropping!

Hope this helps some of you out there!

I've been a big fan of the Railo initiative for some time simply because I'm a big fan of ColdFusion and the fact that you can deploy your apps for free on an open platform. The Railo 3 Beginner's Guide was written by some of the key members of the Railo team including Mark Drew and Gert Franz which makes it an attractive offering. You get it straight from the horse's mouth so to speak.

So, what's in the book? You will get more than just a beginner's guide to Railo and you'll delve into the world of ColdFusion development starting with some basic topics such as variable scopes while being ushered along to some, in my opinion, quite advanced topics like ORM and Caching. The book importantly gives very detailed step by step instructions (with screenshots) on installing Railo and configuring the administrator. I also like the fact that the examples cover the three main development platforms Windows, OS X and Linux allowing just about anyone to get up and running quickly. I like to follow along while learning new topics and this book provided a very good platform for learning and interacting with ColdFusion. One concept that I was happy to see explained was Server and Web contexts, this topic can be very handy as you start deploying larger applications.

I do have a couple small issues with the book. Firstly, I think the language at the start of the book seems aimed at someone who is just starting out with web development but it quickly jumps into concepts that aren't so elementary. While this may appeal to some I think the tone was a bit mixed. Secondly, I don't think there was a clear enough distinction between what is Railo specific and the Adobe ColdFusion Server product. Although I don't think that's a big issue. All in all I think the book did a very good job of introducing Railo, allowing you to get up and running and gives a very good introduction of ColdFusion. Great work Mark, Gert, Paul and Jordan!

Facebook recently announced Premium On Facebook, which is their latest strategy for delivering an advertising platform on the world's largest social network. One of the big new features is the "Logout Page ads" which displays a massive ad when a user logs out of their session. This isn't the first time this sort of advertising has been seen and has been on many of the smaller sites all over the internet for years. I do believe though that FB is going after revenue generation incorrectly. Paid advertising obviously makes money, just ask Google, and with 800 million users floating around advertisers are more than willing to take a punt on the platform. However, my opinion on the matter is that as more and more people spend more and more time on Facebook they will be more and more willing to perform all their activities on the single platform. It's the one thing that Google has been pushing for but Facebook is uniquely poised to achieve, and that's making the WWW "disappear" and replacing it with a single point of browsing. There are millions of people whose only interaction with the internet is via Facebook. They don't know how to send email, shop or even search but they can go on Facebook and comment on photos! With this sort of platform already in place, a smart FB would make it easy for customers to shop. Everyone seems to think that this is an insane idea, you go to Facebook to be social not to shop. True, I'm not advocating that you put the shopping experience directly in the user's face, but if you provide a platform for users to be able to purchase items based on the social interactions of the people they trust and respect, aka, their friends, they will be more than likely to buy quickly.

Here is the way I think the platform should go:

• Create an ecommerce platform that aggregates products from business all over the net, similar to Amazon
• Provide a single click pay platform similar to the Apple App Store, get rid of FB credits!
• Utilise social graph data to deliver shopping recommendations in current ad spots
• Capitalise on gifting and deliver social and group gifting
• There will only be one store front and businesses paid on a CPA basis as well as a percentage of clicks to ads for their products

Most people seem to disagree with me on this option but I do believe that if Facebook puts this platform in place now they will continue to build on their existing revenue base and take significant market share away from the likes of Amazon and Groupon while giving the big G a massive kick in the gut as well by reducing the dependence on external search.

What do  you think?

My last post on here was way back in July and I should be ashamed of myself. I start every year with the hope that I'll be an amazing blogger and the internet will adore me, I will score fans and forever be admired. As I get older, I realise that this is not likely to happen, however, I'll continue to post here and be determined to make a little comment about something everyday.

So, for my first post of 2012 I will comment on my wonderful trip to Paris. I really love that city. I stayed at the amazing Hotel Jules, one of the GLA Hotels and had the privilege of being looked after by Mr. Jean-Louis Descoins and his exceptional staff. Don't forget to stay there on your next trip to the city of love. The weather was dull and grey most days but the sites never cease to amaze. I made my way to the Musee D'Orsay and Sacre Coeur, two sites that you must visit at least once. I did have the chance to catch up on my reading, and I'll tell you something, I really love my Kindle Keyboard! I was able to power through the last bits of The Once and Future King by T.H. White and knock off the classic The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Thanks to some generous gift giving I've also got World War Z by Max Brooks and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson on my list. I know, I'm such an amateur when it comes to reading for fun but I'm hoping to turn pro pretty soon!

What's on your reading list?

I finally had a chance to look at Google+ tonight and in all honesty it is everything I expected it to be. It isn't much at the moment since being on a social network without many friends is like being at a rock concert by yourself. However, the user interface really appeals to me. In fact, all of the UI changes implemented by Google in recent days are exceptional. Yes, people will still find faults but I like the consistency across the services. The design itself makes really good use of soft lines and subtle highlights. I've also loaded the new design for Gmail, which is particularly stunning. The additional white space and sparing use of color as prominent call to actions is really exceptional. I suppose it will only be a matter of time before this is rolled out across the other properties. I know this would be a welcome change to the Google Docs section.

All in all I like the direction that Google is taking. Consistency in branding is always a big plus.

I really like the spreadsheet functions added to ColdFusion 9. It makes my life so much easier but I discovered an annoyance with the spreadsheetFormatColumn function today. It would seem that you have to set the column formats after you add data to a spreadsheet. If you attempt to set it before calling spreadsheetAddRows it will set the column format to default. Not cool.

I was a big fan of Delicious because keeping track of all the sites that interest me is a hard task. The problem with this service though is that it is difficult to easily access the information unless you install a plugin on every browser that you use. This is even more of a problem when you have several machines both at home and at work. Of course, you can visit the site but the workflow is not ideal. The advent of tabs in browsers can allow you to open Delicious in one tab while working on other tabs, however, do you really want to have to keep that service open all the time? It just doesn't feel important enough.

My current solution to the bookmarking problem is to use Gmail. I email myself links then use labels to organise them. Again, not ideal, but it has two advantages over Delicious.

1. I typically always have Gmail open in a tab during the day
2. Gmail is with me everywhere, including on my mobile devices

I believe that Delicious can be resurrected if it can overcome these two main hurdles. Can the YouTube founders do this? Maybe, but it would be very difficult. The incarnation of the service will have to be much more compelling than it is currently. A utopian solution would be to get the main browser creators to include a reference to a universal bookmarking service that uses Twitter or Facebook logins for access. Hey, I never said I wasn't a dreamer!

I've finally started playing with Railo and tried installing it on my Mac with Snow Leopard installed. I wasn't able to get it to run initially but had to make two quick changes to get it running:

1. Give the current user (the user under which you are currently logged in) Read + Write access to the entire* Railo folder, including all the sub folders.
2. Change the default port for Tomcat from port 80, to port 8080 since I already had Apache running on port 80. To change the port, edit /Railo/Tomcat/conf/server.xml and change the connector port.

I have largely ignored Railo in the past but I am really eager to play around with it and get some stuff deployed on this platform.

* Note that I am using Railo in a development environment so I gave full Read + Write access to the entire Railo folder, in a production set up this would definitely not be a wise thing to do. I don't think this would be a problem in most development environments since the user under which Tomcat would be running would usually have the correct permissions.

I've not posted for a long time on this blog (or any for that matter). As with many people I seem to always have an excuse for not posting on here but then I see the trend setters of the internet able to post every day about something pretty cool. I reflect on this and wonder why I don't find something useful to post about or even have anything to say on a regular basis. I am going to write a bit more and hopefully it will be interesting and useful!

Picture this:

You are sitting on the bus,  your commute is 45 minutes long so you whip out your iPhone and start browsing Twitter. Your friend posts a link to this awesome article on social marketing, you follow the link and then sit for the next 15 minutes frustrated with:

1. waiting for the page and all it's ads to load
2. not being able to read the content because you keep having to pan back and forth on the screen.

This tends to happen to me a lot. There are VERY few sites out there that seem to understand that today there is a need for a mobile version of a website. Sure, you can get an app for your favourite site on your iPhone, Android, Symbian or Palm powered phones but these apps usually don't offer the website content or experience. The modern mobile OS and browser technology allows most websites to load and operate just as they would on a laptop or desktop but the experience is poor. With limited screen real estate, I want to execute my tasks quickly and effectively. I don't want to pinch or zoom on anything other than a map!

Two sites that have provided excellent mobile versions are:

1. Amazon - who understands user behaviour better than the users themselves, provides a slick, easy to use interface which makes shopping a breeze
2. Wikipedia Mobile - utilizing a minimalistic design, Wikipedia provides quick, relevant information on the go, no matter what your screen real estate!

These are just a couple examples but there are countless businesses and website owners out there who choose to ignore the tremendous mobile market to be tapped. Wake up people, it's 2010!