A couple of people have asked me over the last few weeks, so it’s probably worth saying out loud: No, I don’t work for a large company, so yes, I’m available for consulting and research projects. If you’ve got one of those burning questions like, “How would our company/project/department/whatever make use of JRuby-and-Rails, and what would the impact to the rest of the system be”, or “Could using F# help us write applications faster”, or “How would we best integrate Groovy into our application”, or “How does the new Adobe Flex/AIR move help us build richer client apps”, or “How do we improve the performance of our Java/.NET app”, or other questions along those lines, drop me a line and let’s talk. Not only will I cook up a prototype describing the answer, but I’ll meet with your management and explain the consequences of the research, both pro and con, for them to evaluate. Shameless call for consulting complete, now back to the regularly-scheduled programming. Enterprise consulting, mentoring or instruction. Java, C++, .NET or XML services. 1-day or multi-day workshops available. Contact me for details. Java