So long and thanks for all the fish
This will be my last post on ZDNet. Blogging here has been one of the most fun things I've been able to do in my career.
The Universal Desktop
The technology and business implications of the next generation of software, rich Internet applications.
Latest Posts
RIA technologies and the downturn
The news is a pretty depressing place right now but there was a small article in the Economist about how the Fashion industry is responding to the downturn that caught my eye. Towards the end of the article the Economist mentioned how designers are looking for ways to leverage digital distribution:One firm, Halston, recently released its autumn collection through a music video.
The iPhone conference cometh: 360|iDev March 2-4
One of my favorite RIA events is 360|Flex. The organizers, Tom Ortega, and John Wilker, do a great job of getting the community excited and putting on an event with great technical content and great networking opportunities.
The mulitouch future of RIAs
I've been really enjoying Richard Monson-Haefel's blog on multi touch lately. Now that RIA technologies are able to do so much, it's become apparent that the mouse and keyboard are simply too limiting as input devices.
No more free Sprout Builder
Marshall has the news up that Sprout Builder will no longer be offering free accounts. Sprout Builder is one of my favorite applications on the net and I always thought what they were doing for the Flash Platform was good.
Brightcove adds some new leadership talent
This morning Brightcove made an announcement that they're adding a few new faces. A couple of those faces will be familiar to anyone who has been involved in the RIA world for the past couple of years.
Looking ahead to 2009
2008 was a big year for rich Internet applications. We saw companies like Curl and Appcelerator make big pushes into the RIA mindshare.
Native Client: Google's (other) plugin play
Yesterday Google announced an early developer release of Native Client, a plugin for web browsers that lets you essentially run native code like C or C++ in the browser. In theory it could be extended to other languages.
The widget conundrum
There's a pretty good article in Advertising Age about the benefits of widgets and the fact that not a lot of people are using it. AdAge says that "entire segment" will amount to around $100 million.
Google's video chat plugin - a big deal for RIA developers
A couple of days ago Google released a video chat plugin for Gmail. With Google, it's always a little hard to figure out where all of the pieces fit - that's why there are entire blogs dedicated to the company - but in this case, I think this seemingly innocuous Gmail feature hints at something bigger.