Knowledge@Wharton interview with Kevin Lynch

Kendall Whitehouse has an interview up with Kevin Lynch at Knowledge@Wharton in which he discusses everything from Adobe AIR to the Open Screen Project. It's one of the better interviews I've seen and gets into a lot of aspects of Adobe's strategy around RIAs. They also talk about Kevin's new role as CTO and what that means for the company.

Some of the best information comes when Kendall asks about the different ideas between Microsoft and Adobe. Kendall got to interview Scott Guthrie at MIX and this interview with Kevin is a nice compliment to that. On Adobe AIR and desktop application security, Kevin does a good job of setting everything straight:

AIR is enabling applications to be built with web technologies -- using things like HTML, Flash and Flex -- and it brings those applications to the desktop with the rights of a desktop application. Otherwise, there's not much point in bringing them to the desktop.

The installation process for AIR lets the user know that this application was signed [with a digital certificate] by a particular vendor. You can approve or disapprove it. If you approve it, then it does have capabilities like other applications you install on your computer. It's very much following the desktop application model in enabling these applications to be more functional and act like desktop applications, but run across operating systems.

In the rest of the interview Kevin talks about how Adobe AIR fits into the next generation of cloud computing and then a bit about the Flash/Silverlight competition. Kendall always does a good job of getting good answers by asking good RIA questions. This one is well worth the read.