You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

With the special numbering of 9,000, we kick off Ryan and I's highlights of Adobe MAX 2009:

• Quick rundown of Adobe MAX 2009 announcements such as: Flash 10.1 with much focus on mobile, LiveCycle ES and mobile access.
• Check out PNC's Virtual Wallet.
• Ryan having just given a talk on the Adobe Collaboration Services, I ask him to give us an overview.
• Of the services and announcements, I like Shibuya which is Adobe's service for doing an App Store. This brings up our favorite topic of small development shops - even of one - having a viable revenue pipe.
• Experimental code using putting FXG into the canvas tag and other sneak previews. (Check out some more HTML 5 vs. Adobe "fun" over on Apple Insider.)
• iPhone app development with the Adobe tool-chain. Be sure to check out the "iPhone in a blender" video which is sure to further win over Apple's hearts. And, see the PhoneGap approval we reference.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and paid travel and hotel for Adobe MAX. See the RedMonk client list for other clients mentioned.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

In this episode, "in the field," I'm joined by Adobe's James Ward again who I happened to run into at the RedHat Summit/JBoss World conference this week. Being at a (half) Java class, I spend most of the time asking James (who spends much time speaking with Java folks) what uses of RIAs he's been seeing in the Java world. We also talk about layering RIAs on-top of cloud services, like Salesforce. Being at a RedHat conference, I ask him to give us the matrix of where Flash (Player, Flex SDK, and Flex Builder) works in the Linux world, across 32 and 64 bits. He does a nice job of laying it out with plenty of context and history.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as is Sun.

In this episode, Ryan and I talk with SAP's Craig Cmehil about the upcoming SAP Hacker Night at SAP TechEd. Naturally, we spend a lot of time talking about RIAs in the SAP world and community as well. The news is slim this week.

Here's the show run-down:

• Craig RIA Hacker Night - Craig gives and overview and preview.
• I then ask Craig to tell us how RIAs fit into - and show-up - in the SAP world. We go over some examples of how RIAs are used in the SAP world.
• Ryan then asks about the speed of RIA adoption in SAP technologies.
• Check out the new Netflix app on the XBox. Beyond just browsing movies, you can have "parties" and watch movies with friends. Coté doesn't know what to make of this, but it's an interesting consumer RIA, connected thing. Like a VCR with an IP address.
• Augmented reality watch - Yelp app, and another iPhone app Craig spotted.
• Capgemini using Adobe Catalyst for RAD development.
• Apple Tablet rumors.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as is Microsoft.

This week, Ryan and I are joined by (hopefully soon to be come regular) guest co-host Mike Downey, 3 weeks into his new job as a Silverlight Evangelist and with a wicked mic. We open up talking about the RIA usage Mike saw in the field during 6 months as an independent consultant, and then go over some of the highlights from the RIA world since last we talked:

• What has Mike been seeing in the field? More emphasis on UX for behind-the-firewall applications.
• I also ask Mike what kind of software development process he saw these folks using.
• Both Ryan and I circle around the question of "selling UX" in corporations, asking around that topic several times. Mike has several interesting observations from the field that he shares.
• NBC football in 720p HD via Silverlight. Mike tells us what functionality will be in there: very DVR-centric.
  
• SXSW panel proposals - Ryan has an interesting one on "beyond mice and keyboards," Coté has a panel on HTML5, and Ryan rounds up other interesting looking ones. It's a lot of help if you got vote for and/or leave comments on these: then they might get picked!
• Seadragon.com - Deep Zoom on your own. Here's a door at a Chiang Mai temple - not a mega-high resolution photo (2048 x 3072, 6.3 megapixels), but fun nonetheless.
  
• RockMelt browser - stealthy startup working on a new "browser." Is this a Facebook browser, or a sort of Compuserve/AOL walled-web thing?

Disclosure: Adobe and Microsoft are clients.

In this episode, John and I spend a lot of time horsing off, but we talk about some on-topic things as well:

• The most important news of the week: John has an iPhone. (And yes, Wal-mart does sell the iPhone.)
• Lower Amazon prices - John details this. The Deli case. No word on the Deli, but there is Memo Jokes.
• How do you setup a Windows box, esp. virtualization. John says ESXi, the free VMWare client.
• SpringSource and cloud foundry - deploying and managing Java apps in public clouds.
• Last episode, John had commented on the valuation for other Little 4 types in light of the SpringSource price. Zenoss' Mark Hinkle got back to John on this topic.
• We get into enterprise/corporate uses of PaaS - using Heroku and EngineYard as proxy for thinking about how Azure and Java in the clouds might pan out for corporate developers vs. IT staff.
• While the quick and easy approach is awesome, I ask John to recount some IT disasters he's seen when there's not enough IT process and too much "quick and easy" think.
• What's up with devopsdays? In Belgium Oct 30 - 31st - John will present there on the Ubuntu elastic cloud with Chef. From this Patrick Dubous guy. Maikin Piss!
• itSMF Fusion conference - Sep. 20-23rd in Dallas. Is that anything? Agenda looks nice and ITIL-y. Mike Walker in Atlanta runs the ATL itSMF.
• "Cloud Brokers" and extradition free countries - but seriously, John explains this idea of "cloud brokers."

Disclosure: Zenoss, IBM, Microsoft, SpringSource, and others mentioned are clients.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I go over the recent RIA news. My notes aren't as in-depth as the usually are, but here's the high-level outline:

• Ryan's mountaineering. iPhone 3GS - how's that video? We review YouTube vs. blip.tv vs. Vemeo.
• Personal data analytics - makes me remember one of the Azure contest winners, http://myimpulselive.com/.
• Silverlight 3.0 launch - all sorts of overviews out there, and also see the RIA Weekly video if you haven't already.
• SketchFlow, and SketchFlow vs. Catalyst.
• Continental Case with Silverlight; see also Cynergy examples along these lines.
• I give a re-cap of the Adobe Industry Analyst Summit I was at this week. See posts here, here, and here.
• Summary of the Matthias Zeller podcast on portals and composite RIA.
• In talking about a story on Mixpanel, Ryan busts out with "Interaction Analytics" and recalls like Robot Replay. We also discuss how lacing in interaction analytics seems like a natural for RIAs.
• How can we get RIAs to improve the software development process? Seems like Agile and developer-centric cloud computing would converge with RIAs nicely.

Disclosure: Microsoft and Adobe are clients.

While at the Adobe Industry Analyst Summit this week, I caught up with Matthias Zeller. Having been at Adobe for sometime, he's had an interesting history with RIAs from the work he did with SAP (where he's a mentor) and now onto the Adobe Genesis project (see blog too) that he's been working on in recent times. As Matthias says, he's been traveling around to talk with customers a lot recently, specifically around how they use and would like to use portals and situation applications.

Ever since talking with James Ward back in episode #41, I've been keeping an eye on how RIAs might could be used for portals. In going over the customer conversations he's been having, Matthias gives us a pretty good idea. He uses the term "composite RIA" several times, which is a nice follow-on from the "mashup" and "situation application" phrasings.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Joshua Marinacci joins me to talk about more about JavaOne and JavaFX. We discuss:

• Josh's coffee places: Allen Brothers, Dutch Brothers.
• Josh's take on JavaOne and CommunityDay.
• In talking about Kenai and Zembly, we get into a discussion about moving parts of the software development process into the cloud.
• We then talk about the Java Store, which he's been working on in the recent time. See his recent Q&A on the Java Store.
• The difficulty of collecting money in these stores - figuring out regional tax laws, income tax, etc.
• JavaFX 1.2 - lots of control improvements & additions. Redoing GUI concepts - separating styling from controls. Button, slider, checkbox, but some things missing: table, tree, combo box. No more layout managers, there's containers. No ties to AWT and Swing, everything is skinable with CSS. Also: charts. Linux and Solaris support.
• JavaFX tools? Updates Production Suite for CS4. More people working on the open source Eclipse plugin. JavaOne showed sneak-preview of the design tool. Also the other fun JavaFX Wii-mote and motion sensing demos during the Gosling talk. See the JavaOne Toy Show replay.
• Also, we rat-hole on JavaFX profiles - desktop and common, and I'd expect mobile out there. But Josh, says they're trying to limit them.

Disclosure: Sun is a client.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I are back with a bevy of RIA topics:

• Adobe Flash tools in beta: Catalyst and Flash Builder. See Ryan's round-up as well. There's a big, multi-city, global user group tour as well.
• JavaFX at JavaOne - Larry likes it; JavaFX for OpenOffice? Java Store (desktop), Java Warehouse ("will eventually be used by TV and mobile service providers to create their own 'private-branded storefronts' for programs that run on their platforms"). See Project Vector post from Jonathan. So, you have the Warehouse which is the repository and "back-end" for applications submitted by developers (the apps are to be focused on Java and JavaFX desktop apps for now) and then the Java Store which is the consumer-facing store-front. In the future, the Warehouse may be a supply channel to other store-fronts, e.g., TV and mobile-based things. Also, see Joshua's piece on new features in JavaFX 1.2, like Linux & Solaris support, chart components, etc.
• The Rise of the "HTML5" Meme - seems like we have Google + HTML 5 + Mozilla/Chrome as a new, emerging RIA/UI silo. After Google I/O last week, there was some zero-sum, horse-race framing around Google Wave being a front in killing off Flash and Silverlight. See also Ryan's HTML 5 vs. Flash features comparison. And, though not mentioned in the episode, see the recent Bespin updates.
• PhoneGap has been leaping in popularity. See a previous episode with Nitobi's Andreé Charland on PhoneGap too.
• Silverlight release date? July 10th event as reported by The Register.
  
• After reading a brief piece on .Net RIA Services, I wonder if there's pattern collections for other RIA technologies?
• piece linking up ADO.NET Services (Project Astoria) with Silverlight. A RESTful approach to connecting with the back-end.
• Reflecting on my recent vacation in Thailand, I speak to explosion in (unlocked?) cellphones over there and the abundance of pirated software available everywhere.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I are joined by Dave Wolf from Cynergy Systems, a firm that specializing in RIA development. We spend most of the time talking about Dave's take and Cynergy's involvement in the RIA space, but we get to a handful of news items at the end:

• Last week we mentioned a "working with RIAs" report they did with Forrester. We go over the suggestions and tips - small teams, rich experiences don't come from cubical farms, but open places where you can "smear monitors," getting designers and developers to work together. Moving beyond the "isolationist" phase of J2EE and web app driven development. Using mutual-respect and tooling.
• Grooming developers and designers to fit into this milieu, applying the usual cultural fits for tech-people. Also, "you only use full-time employees" - talent becomes a competitive advantage for Cynergy.
• We talk about the kinds of things they work on: telcom expense management, retail banking, fleet management, hip-hop site. Also, software companies realizing they don't have to compete "feature-by-feature" as taught by the iPhone, growth in ISVs that is.
• Ryan asks if the iPhone is the best way to pitch RIA to "the boss." Pretty much, Dave says. It's a good example of how RIA tricks and whatnot can be powerful and useful.
• What kind of interest are you seeing with Microsoft Surface?
• "Desperately trying to get away from The Mouse." 60 years later, we're still using the same input device - "Mouses are strange."
• How do you choose the RIA framework to use, out of Flash, Flex, Silverlight, WPF, etc? We ask Dave to go over the types of applications and audiences ("users") that each technology works well with and doesn't work well with. The IDEs on both sides are good.
• Ryan draws out more of Dave's negatives about each platform - this is all an attempt to get back to the desktop - Flash Platform struggles a little bit with the designer/developer workflow, the life-cycle for the software between the designers (with PSDs) and the developers (with Flex and other code). Microsoft's difficulty is player penetration, learning through the difficulties very quickly - catching up with Adobe/Macromedia's 10 years in 2 years - "the ability to chase tail-lights."
• All that said, Dave says, we believe they'll be a duopoly in our work in the future.
• We discuss the old idea of having one UI instead of many: moving beyond "least" in "least common denominator" - applying the multi-screen, multi-modal thinking to applications - making it OK to have 5 UIs, for example.
• What's the experience been like with maintenance, across many versions of years of the RIA-based software?
• Moonlight 2.0 Preview - see some other coverage from Mary-Jo Foley and Tim Anderson.
• Don't forget to leave a note in the Flex Builder for Linux "bug" listing.
• Ryan mentioned the New Your Times AIR app write-up, the Times Reader 2.0, which talks about how the Times used and RIA for their readers and why.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Microsoft is a client as well, as is Sun.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

Both of us being back from our travels to the other side of the world, Ryan and I finally get back together to catch up on the RIA news:

• I was off in Korea - thanks to Ryan, I met up with Jung-woong Lee (Kevin), of SundayToz, while I was in Seoul. He was an excellent host taking me out to dinner and some drinks. I also tell about the open source talk I was there to give and seeing Koreans watch TV while driving!
• AIR used for the Tesla.
• Harping on Evernote needing an AIR or something interface - they got APIs, man!
• RIA's in New Zealand, where Ryan was for awhile.
• Right before this recording, Ryan was a guest on enterpriseGeeks. This leads us into a discussion of RIAs in the SAP world, wherein I point out the upcoming Inside Track in in Lima, Peru.
• Flash runtime for TV - this leads into a discussion of the Adobe Open Screens project being about a year old now. Recently, I talked with a reporter on that topic, so I looked through all the news to catch up. Also connected to Open Screens, Adobe and Nokia announcement some cash-money winners.
• The new GMail interface for the iPhone is pretty nice.
• Snorkle - Oracle's on track to buy Sun, so we discuss how JavaFX fits in or falls out of this, in addition to general Oracle buying Sun talk.
• Link dump: Mark Monster's series on Silverlight RIA Servers (1 and 2), Forrester/Cynergy write-up, Apache Pivot.
• Microsoft NAB announcements, like Smooth Streaming.

As a side note, if you want Flex Builder on Linux, go leave a comment on the bug/feature report for it 'fore it's too late.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Microsoft and Sun are clients as well.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, while Ryan was living in the future (or, "down under" if you prefer), I had on a guest co-host, Charles Lowell. You may know him from one of my other podcasts, DrunkAndRetired.com. I had Charles on because he's something of a UI specialist and has done much work with Swing, Ajax, and dabbled plenty in Flex and JavaFX. I wanted to take this chance to get one developer's perspective on building rich user interfaces and, as you'll see, some specific RIA frameworks and issues as well. Here's roughly what we discussed:

• Charles tells us his development history, esp. with respect to to UI's, like Swing and Ajax
• He tells us how his passion for ruby was translated into his current passion for JavaScript and the different UI glue-work he's been doing over the recent users.
• I ask Charles to detail the work he did at is company, The Front Side, with Freestyle, the Ajax UI->web server protocols and state sharing. We discuss the problems with the framework they developed, particularly with storing state on both the client and server side and how that makes garbage collecting a pain.
• Now an indie-programmer, Charles works with several different clients developing UI's. Recently, he tried to pitch using JavaFX to a client and he tells us how that went - not too well.
• This gets us into a discussion of JavaFX and the technical and business reasons to use or not use it. He likes focusing on JavaFX as a way to do Swing better.
• More generally, we talk about The Market's desires when it comes to RIAs and rich-UI functionality. Charles is see a lot of pull for UI functionality that's difficult to deliver in Ajax, but easier in more traditional desktop GUIs or, we hope, RIAs.
• Getting to the only, major, even slightly-related RIA news of the week, I ask Charles how Oracle buying Sun purchase effects his view of JavaFX.

One items we didn't cover was Adobe's "Strobe" project. If you're interested, I gave a small amount of commentary in this week's Numbers post. Ryan has a small write-up as well.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Sun and Microsoft are clients as well.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I got over lots of mobile related news, sprinkled with some social networking items:

• Adobe/Facebook deal - somehow I missed the MySpace Silverlight SDK - Cf. Tim Anderson's commentary.
• Silverlight Mobile talk over at Silverlight Hack - Good round-up of the history of Silverlight Mobile from TechEd 2007. Sounds like release is a year away. Speculation about it taking longer. Nice discussion in the comments.
• Also, .Net Services demo from MIX09 up. See also the Steven Martin overview.
• CrunchGear Palm Pre Demos - several nice videos demo'ing applications like Pandora. Notice the background running, notifications bar, etc.
• PhoneGap wins a Web 2.0 Launchpad award.
  
• RIM App World - Blackberry app store - I have no Blackberry, so I have no idea. "RIM expects about 1,000 applications to be available this week, with more in the future. App World is initially available for BlackBerry users in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. Users have to first download a smartphone application to connect to the App World Web site, via cellular or Wi-Fi links."
• RIA Download sizes from Mike Chambers - how much does this matter? Ryan says that Adobe does studies on completed downloads, and there is a significant drop-off at some point.
• Any Korea RIA action in Seoul? Ryan says that Korea is way ahead of everyone else.
  
• Ryan's last post on ZDNet.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe sponsors this podcast and is a client, Microsoft is a client as well, as is Sun.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

Ryan and I have been traveling around frequently these past two weeks: SXSW, MIX09, and EclipseCon. While I was traveling back to Austin from EclipseCon, we finally pinned down to record a recap. It's heavy on the Silverlight and MIX09 coverage, but there's plenty of other RIA news as well.

• First of, as always, David Tucker over at InsideRIA does a good job rounding up the RIA news. For Silverlight, it's hard to beat Dave Campbell's Silverlight Cream link-ups over at WynApse.
• While we missed talking about it, check out some of our SXSW commentary and info: see Profiles in Courage interview with Mando Escamilla for a discussion of desktop RIA/Ajax and check out the two RIA Weekly specials from SXSW: JavaFX with Josh & Ryan with Augmented Reality.
• Silverlight 3.0 - (Tim Heuer's overview is great) deep linking, graphics improvements, more expansion of APIs and UI controls/widgets. Media: H.264 and AAC (moving out of an encoding ghetto mentality)
• .Net RIA Services - uses LINQ to connect stuff up together. A middle-man for access between the front-end and back-end (or "data-tier").
• SketchFlow in Expression Blend - "SketchFlow is a fun, informal, flexible, quick and powerful way to sketch and prototype rich, dynamic interactivity with Expression Blend." - Christian Schormann. See Christian's Blend 3 write-up and also another quick take on Blend 3 updates.
  
• Sorting out the Expression brand: what is Blend vs. Expression vs. Expression Blend? ...vs. Expression Design.
• Soyatec Silverlight on the Mac, Eclipse4SL.
• Out of browser support - Ryan answers the big question, how is this different than AIR.
• $25,000 JavaFX Coding Challenge. Develop an app with JavaFX 1.1 and NetBeans 6.5.
• Web standards wrangling - Ryan, then Dion.
• Ryan points out Tim Sneath's post on Windows Azure as a good source for understanding how Azure fits into the RIA world. This gets us to discussing the role cloud computing might play as the back-end for RIAs.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Microsoft, Adobe, and Sun are clients, as is Eclipse. Adobe sponsors this podcast.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I are joined by Appcelerator's Jeff Haynie.

Here are some highlights and show notes:

• Jeff being on, we start out talking about the Appcelerator SDK and their desktop application framework, Titanium.
• SOA become dominate on the server, but with RIAs and "connected applications" on the desktop, it seems like SOA (if only in the simple version) is mattering on the desktop more and more.
• I ask Jeff what kind of usage are you seeing for desktop RIA stuff? Rather than look at the question as one about SOA's, he starts suggesting that desktop RIAs are just desktop applications frameworks and platforms. Jeff uses Skype as an example of something that'd do well there. Going after a real, cross-platform GUI toolkit, application development stack. Titanium example: gaming, video surveillance. Also, bringing the web developer skills to desktop development.
• Ryan asks how Jeff deals with complaints about native UI vs. cross-platform UI? Historic example: Java GUIs looking the same everywhere. But then, there's web-native apps that look like GUI apps, like Miro the video player. Also 280 North Atlas stuff.
• Titanium supports several web-languages on for desktop programming, like PHP, most interestingly.
• Appcelerator's business model - yes, there is one. "Open Source 2.0." Goal is later this year to introduce some cloud-based services.
• This cloud-based service model prompts us to talk about Acquia's cloud-based services announcements this week: hosting drupal, search services, etc.
• Ryan mentions Todd Biske's further discussion of RIAs and portal.
• Jeff gives us a nice, pat wrap-up quote on what desktop RIAs are: "building desktop applications with web applications."
• HBO with Flash? Ryan and Coté asked for more info, but there was not really any forth-coming. We each hope this means we can watch HBO shows on-demand, even if we have to pay for them.
• Ryan asks about video support for Appcelerator, more generally, for open source. Jeff says that right now, it's Silverlight and Flash. They'd like to see OGG/Theoria as the container/format.
• It being next week, we go over SXSW: Adobe Awards panel, Ryan's panels & session, all 3 of them! Chris Bernard's curated SXSW lists; Coté recommendations, namely the free meat party. As we did last year, we'll try to get a few video episodes of RIA Weekly out.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Appcelerator, Microsoft, and Acquia are clients as well.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I are joined by Intuit's Alex Barnett. We spend most of the time talking about Intuit related topics in the RIA space, but get to the week's general RIA news as well.

We discuss:

• Alex Barnett and the Intuit Partner Platform
• Intuit moving to "Connected Services" to evolve into the future where being only the desktop isn't such a good idea. Moving into the cloud, that is.
• AIR and Flex layering on-top the Intuit Partner Platform - accessing QuickBooks data and process. Examples: Universal Mind mapping application to see where your customers are. They've got 12 applications in IPP so far: people waiting for full transactional data in QuickBooks.
• Marketplace Intuit takes 20% revenue-share, collects the money, and pays the develop.
• Are internal Intuit folks using IPP? Or, at least RIAs? Indeed, quit a bit, Alex says. For example an Intuit project called "view my pay check," on workplace.intuit.com... 400 small businesses using it for over 4,000 employees.
• What would people charge for these "mini-applications"? How does this change the procurement cycle. Monthly cycles, 10's of dollars a month.
• What types of things do people use AIR, or "occasionally connected" applications for? One of their theories is that AIR is a good transition app for moving people comfortably from the desktop to a purer SaaS.
• How does RIA UX play into the appeal here? "Simple" things like drag-and-dropping are astonishingly handy for users.
• QuickBase's offer to take on Coghead users.
• Appcelerator Titanium PR2 - we're getting an Appcelerator guest on next week for more details.
• Bespin - pure open web based IDE that's, as Alex puts it "astonishing."
• Brandon Wiley's p2p data-sharing thing, service, Ringlight

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client - as is Appcelerator - and sponsored this podcast.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan Stewart and I are joined by Sun's Joshua Marinacci. We discuss several topics:

• JavaFX update from Josh. JavaFX 1.1 with Mobile Support.
• Partners for JavaFX Mobile. Ryan asks about the types of applications people are doing: games, cloud things, things for looking up movies, and other geo-location things.
• Coté asks what the story for existing hand-sets is. You can get Over-the-Air updates for some existing version of Java ME, this is one of the options that Sun sells. They also build the embedded JavaFX runtime.
• Sun will be selling developer phones with JavaFX during JavaOne.
• We talk about design-oriented tool use that Josh has done in the JavaFX world. Also, they'll show a designer-centric tool at JavaOne.
• JavaFX downloaded 100M times already.
• Ryan asks about the media and video codecs in JavaFX to clarify that story.
• Coghead shuts down - we liked Bob Warfield's coverage.
• What's this GridIron Software dev/designer workflow stuff? The product is called Flow. It seems track relationships between different Creative Suite files and do version control. Is this ALM for the dev/design workflow? Also a sort of "asset management" and browsing thing, kind of like Bridge scaled down to a project. See screencast. It's $249.
• The FX is out of the FlexSDK kerfuffle.
• Microsoft's research project, Social Desktop. Treating your desktop applications like a web site, with a URL.
• Josh and friends launched JFXstudio.org

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Sun and Microsoft are clients as well.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week there was a ton of mobile news from most major RIA communities due to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We saw the release of JavaFX Mobile, a laundry list of Adobe announcements, and lots of marketplace/app store news including from Microsoft. Ryan and I spend a good deal of time talking about the Kindle, the culture of GPS trail tracking, and our hopes for more open "app stores" in the mobile world. Here are the details:

• Kindle 2 - how much of a platform is the Kindle? Is it a cul de sac, or something that can augment Web 2.0 info-junkie shakes?
• "Everybody has an App Store" - Microsoft App Store - Retail stores
• Adobe Marketplace - still no buying, but link to buying.
• JavaFX Mobile - in addition to launching, Sun announced several partners: Sony Ericsson, LG Electronics, carriers like Orange and Sprint.
• JavaFX momentum: in month of Dec. had record downloads of 50M Java SE 6 Update 11. There's not a lot of sizzle beyond JavaFX executing on plan.
• Adobe Mobile Congress Announcements - Palm joining Open Screen (means: they'll work with the Adobe tool-chain and runtime), $10M Adobe/Nokia fund (how can you get that cash?), Flash Lite runtime for Nokia and Windows Mobile phones. Scoble has a good summary.
• Check out the list of current Adobe Open Screen partners.
• Trail GPS tracking - what's up with this culture?
• Moonlight 1.0 GA - we're interested to see what the open source world does with this and encouraged by the open source angle this brings to the RIA world.
• March Madness On Demand with Silverlight: "Today, CBSSports.com, in partnership with CBS Sports and the NCAA, announced that they have selected Microsoft Silverlight to deliver live and on-demand high-quality video coverage of the 2009 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball March Madness Tournament, starting Thursday, March 19. Broadcast via CBSSports.com’s NCAA March Madness on Demand service, Silverlight will power a hi-definition quality video player that will deliver an enhanced video stream to online tournament viewers. After downloading the Silverlight plug-in, viewers can upgrade their March Madness experience from the standard player, which streams 550 kb/s, to the Silverlight player, which delivers up to 1.5 mb/s of enhanced tournament action. Both video options will be offered free of charge. The NCAA March Madness on Demand service will launch on Tuesday, March 10, and feature historical highlights from past tournaments until the first day of action on March 19. For more information, and to download the Silverlight plug-in, users can visit ncaa.com/mmod." (quote from an email I received on the topic.)

As always, if you want to keep up with things we're looking at between the week, check out the "riaweekly" tag in del.icio.us, feel free to add your own!

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as are Microsoft and Sun.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan is back (yay!) and we've got some exciting items to cover, just for you, dear listeners:

• Snow-shoeing in Japan; Adobe MAX Tokyo; Spark project
• NTT DoCoMo project with location-based stuff.
• What'd the Japanese think of Catalyst.
• Josh says JavaFX Mobile coming out soon- what's the Java ME relation?
• preDevCamp - coming to 60+ cities near you! More from whurley as well.
• Netbooks!
• What's RIA development like (or what would it be like) on Netbooks, like SproutCore. We've got Photoshop online, picnik in flickr...so it seems like you could do some pretty good RIA development.
• Flash on the iPhone stories...again.
• Yammering about Yammer, they have an AIR app. RedMonk started using it, and Adobe folks have been using it.
• Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 3 & 4 (Ars story, El Reg story): H.264 video, cool 3D graphics using GPU, better UI framework stuff.
• This week's Poken give-away.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as is Microsoft.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Coté joined by special guest host James Ward while Ryan continues week two of his Japan journey.

Here are the topics we cover:

• Update on James and Bruce Eckel's bookFirst Steps in Flex
• Omaha Steaks - James lives in Omaha.
• Portals and RIAs; Anvil.
• What kinds of applications are portals being used for?
• Do we even call these things portal? Lotus Expeditor seems like an interesting examples of Portal-meets-RIA.
• "The case against Web apps."
• Titanium number: "We've had over 5k developers give it a try and well over 20K+ downloads in the past 30 days." -Jeff Haynie
• Revisiting why desktop integration is nice.
• GMail has offline support.
• Offloading performance intensive stuff to the cloud for desktop RIAs, like searching Coté's email.
• TweetDeck gets funding
  
• Flex in new versions of enterprise software: WorkDay, ZipTie, others.
• The Flex SDK open source hoopla (here & here), and, see the recorded webinar on the topic.
• The Poken Give-away. Free Pokens for lucky listeners! (Listen in on how to try and get a free Poken.)

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as are Microsoft, Appcelerator, and IBM.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

Ryan is on vacation this week, but returning guest Bill Higgins was kind enough to step in as guest co-host. Bill, as you may recall works at IBM on the Rational Jazz platform. Much of his work focuses on the UI layer thereof so it was a nice chance to talk with someone who day-to-day thinks about, designs, and develops in the UI layer.

Bill and I discuss:

• An update on Jazz
• Comparing GUI 1.0 concepts to GUI 2.0, in the Ajax space
• Silverlight for videos from the inauguration to the XBox
• IBM and RIAs
• WebKit
• What does "desktop integration" really mean for RIAs?
• Adobe open ups RTMP

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe sponsored this podcast and is a client, as is IBM. See the RedMonk client list for other clients mentioned.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

In this week's episode, Ryan and I start out by picking up a conversation about Evernote (see screenshot of the OS X client above) we'd been having before recording. Aside from explaining what Evernote is - and taking a trip down memory lane on tablets and Microsoft OneNote - I talk about how it seems like it'd be perfect for being and RIA. We then go onto news about:

• Spout Builder
• Ryan trying out Windows 7
• Silverlight for the inauguration
• Overlay.tv
• Brightcove
• The role RIAs could play in the portal world
• LiveCycle ES in Amazon EC2 announcement.

Also, here are the shared notes, in Evernote, that I mention at the beginning.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Overlay.tv is a RedMonk client as well, as is Microsoft.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I wrap up the news from the Holiday break. We spend a lot of time talking about non-computer "screens" for RIAs: Netbooks, GPS units, and XBoxes. We also cover and comment on Curl's use of AMF and a handful of other RIA related stories.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe sponsored this podcast. See the RedMonk client list for other clients mentioned.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week Ryan and I cover the RIA news items of the week and discuss the discussion around the word "workflow" in the phrase "design/developer workflow." Before getting to the second item, we cover and comment on the news:

• A short review of Bruce Eckel's and James Ward's First Steps in Flex (which I think we incorrectly referred to as Thinking in Flex).
• AIR 1.5 was released for Linux, but there's an annoying hiccup.
• Seadragon Mobile - use Deep Zoom on your iPhone. Coté thinks it's pretty cool: check out the screenshots.
• Ryan asks if there's been any JavaFX news since it's been out, which there hasn't been, but putting on the apologist hat, hey, it's the holidays. He also points out a nice piece briefly summarizing the RIA landscape at the moment from Redmond Developer.

Finally, we end up talking about a point James Governor has been making: that word "workflow" is pretty terrible, it's more like "designer/developer collaboration." This leads to a discussion of user experience in RIAs (or the lack thereof).

Happy holidays!

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun are clients. Adobe sponsored this podcast. See the RedMonk client list for other clients mentioned.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

In this episode, Ryan and I are joined by Sun's Danny "The Janitor" Coward to follow-up on last week's JavaFX news (be sure to check out Danny's excellent The Planetarium for fine Java client news).

As you can imagine, we talk about JavaFX for the first part of the show. As Danny is at Devoxx (née Javapolis) we ask him about the RIA talk going on there as well. We then briefly talk about what's going in on Java 7, the next major version of Java.

In this context, I talk again about one of my favorite emerging RIAs, Bluray add-ons and networked applications, like those found on Disney's Sleeping Beauty Bluray release which I saw a talk about at this week's Cisco C-Scape.

In the news portion of the show we go over:

• Appcelerator's release of Titanium, an AIR competitor.
• The Adobe/SpringSource partnership around hooking up AMF to the Java would via the Spring Framework.
• Google Native Client of which Ryan and I are a bit perplexed by, but then Danny (I believe) helps us out by pointing out it's just another platform for application deployment.
• Microsoft MIX is tragically scheduled to over-lap over SXSW Music this year. That said, as I advice, you should start working on your justifications to expense a trip to SXSW interactive this year to hang out with - I mean, "network" with - the round-corner cool kids who do all your RIA thought leadership and use. Feel free to contact me if you need some advice - really!

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Appcelerator and Microsoft are clients as well. See the RedMonk client list for other RedMonk clients.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

I finally nab our man Ryan Stewart for this episode. We catch up on all of the Adobe MAX news, getting Ryan's takes and highlights. For example, we spend a lot of time talking about Alchemy and how it should/could be used to extend the Flash Player. I also ask Ryan about companies like Cynergy, Universal Mind, and EffectiveUI - the sort of the third-party consulting shops building up in the Adobe RIA ecosystem.

We then talk about the release/GA of JavaFX 1.0, due out this week sometime. Both of us are actually impressed with the technology itself and potential developer-base that Adobe has.

Finally, we close out talking about Zoho CloudSQL. Interesting in it's own right, I point out how it's a new back-end for RIAs to build on-top of, in addition to all the existing PaaSes of course.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsor this podcast. Sun is a client as well.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

For this special episode, Coté is joined by fellow RedMonker James Governor to talk about James' take on Adobe MAX EU, in Milan, Italy. There weren't any new announcements, but it's good to get James' unique take on what Adobe is up to. For example, we spend the first part of the episode talking about ColdFusion and how Adobe is and could be giving it a second-wind. We also talk about the speech to text functionality in CS4 Premier Pro and pull back to some old software development theory with Conway's Law.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

(Photo from Ben Ostrowsky.)

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, I go it solo and cover the highlights of last week's Adobe MAX. As usual, more than just the announcements themselves, I get into plenty of commentary and "analysis," if you will of the different offerings. For example, there's an interesting cloud/SaaS under-current running through several MAX items, notable Adobe Wave, CoCoMo, and MeerMeer.

First, I talk about the "Flash Platform" brand round-up, product level announcements ("Thermo" to Catalyst, FlexBuilder Gumbo, AIR 1.5, CoCoMo, and Flash Player 10). Then I get into my development releated highlight from the Sneaks, MeerMeer: a nice looking service for testing cross-browser compatibility problems. Finally, using Alchemy (which allows running/using C/C++ in the Flash Player) as a pivot, I think out-loud about allowing plugins to the Flash Player: is there even a reason to do that?

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsors this podcast.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

While Adobe MAX was this week, Ryan and I have yet to figure out the magic of schedule alignment to sit down and give MAX it's due coverage. We'll get that figured out for next week - there's a lot to talk about. In the meantime, this week's episode is an interview with Andre Charland of Nitobi.

Not only are Andre and the rest of the Nitobi guys are regulars in the RIA scene, they actually make a good business in the RIA space by developing and sells RIA components and related services, so I take the chance to not only get the info on the company itself, but a get a sense for the types of customers they sell to. That is, we try to get to the idea of who's using RIAs now, even behind the firewall.

We wrap-up by talking about Nitobi's hometown, Vancoover, as I try to ferret out what the tech-scene is like there.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as is Microsoft.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

While I was at Sun's Menlo Park campus, I had the chance to talk with Sun's Jeet Kaul and Ken Russell. In part one, Jeet talked about spreading client-side Java across non-traditional devices. In this second part, Ken tells us about the Java applet re-write in Java 6 Update 10 and how that helps lay the foundation for JavaFX.

I get asked a lot about this aspect of Java, namely, "have they fixed applets yet?" so it was great to get the skinny from Ken. If you're interested in this, you'd probably also like the recent interview with Danny Coward.

Disclosure: Sun is a client and sponsored this episode.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

While I was at Sun's Menlo Park campus, I had the chance to talk with Sun's Jeet Kaul and Ken Russell. I started out taking with Jeet about the evolution of client-side Java, namely, Sun's plans to firm up client-side Java after a long run paying primarily attention to server-side Java. Jeet tells us about the spread of software in all sorts of new systems - like your car dashboard - and speaks to spreading Java into those deployment scenarios.

The RIA angle here, of course, is that JavaFX is a large part of this re-doubled client-side effort. As we've discussed on RIA Weekly several times, it's common to see things that feel like RIAs on non-standard devices, be they the obvious of phones or the more esoteric like Chumbys.

Also, check out the second part where Ken tells us about changes to the Java applet plugin that help lay the foundation for JavaFX.

Disclosure: Sun is a client and sponsored this episode.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I lucky to be joined by Mozilla's Dion Almaer. As such, we start out talking about his recent move to Mozilla to work on open web developer tools.

I ask Dion to tell us what he means by "open web," which gets us into a fun way of defining that term: not so much technologically bound, but more in the ease of use for such technologies by developers. This mind-set is more expansive than "web development" and you can start to imagine that open, non-traditional web-UI layers like RIA technologies could be cajoled into this pool.

Dion then tells us his impressions of Microsoft's PDC conference this week, which he was lucky enough to attend. As usual, conversations around Microsoft revolve around Microsoft's challenge of expanding beyond their current base; we discuss the great appeal of the "the blue pill."

We then talk about one of Ryan's recent "finds," that (of course, being open source) Flex 4 source code changes are available to the public. Thus, you can watch the development of Flex 4, teasing out new features and fixes.

From there, we have a slight diversion into Java threaded programming, and then discuss the release of the G1/Android phone of which both Ryan and Dion have had the chance to play around with.

Some items we didn't cover, but are worth checking on are: Netflix using Silverlight for it's on-demand video and the popular RIA application SlideRocket opening up to the public.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Microsoft and Adobe are clients, as is Sun. Adobe sponsored this episode, as noted above.

You can download this episode directly directly and it'll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I discuss the major news item of the week, namely:

• Silverlight 2.0's release and the Eclipse/Java tie-in. We'll have more for you next week when with a special edition of RIA Weekly with Microsoft's Brad Beckler.
• Adobe's release of Creative Suite 4, including Flash Player 10 and support for Linux out of the gate.
• Sun's release of Java SE 6 Update 10 which does much to lay the foundation for JavaFX.
• Mozilla's Open Web Labs.
• Android should have shiped today.

Sponsorship

As mentioned at the end, this Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this episode. Sun is a client as well, as is Microsoft. See the RedMonk client list for other clients mentioned.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RIA Weekly RSS feed for automatic downloads of each episode.

While the big-time news was light this week, Ryan and I found plenty to talk about. We spend a fair amount of time talking about ZoHo mail and the ZoHo marketplace, the curious case of the missing RIA email client, Pandora on the Chumby, Google ads in Flash games, conferences (like PDC), and then close out by pointing out two RIA-based (or at least using) enterprise applications I recently did screencasts for, myCMDB and ZipTie.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as are Microsoft, Managed Objects, and AlterPoint.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RIA Weekly RSS feed for automatic downloads of each episode.

While at the Adobe MAX judging pow-wow this week, I pulled fellow judge Andre Charland (of Nitobi) aside to see what was going on his neck of the RIA woods.

We start out discussing the Ajax conference scene where there seems to be a division between tech-focused conference and business-focused conferences. Then we discuss PhoneGap: an iPhone App framework for writing native iPhone apps with JavaScript and HTML, that is, Ajax. As Andre says, they're working on Blackberry and Android versions as well.

On that note, I ask Andre what he thinks about Google Android's future. As we both say, we'd lust after something as great as the iPhone that was more open. We spend sometime bemoaning the non-open nature of the iPhone when it comes to app selection.

Andre rounds out by commenting on Microsoft's addition of jQuery in Visual Studio.

And, keep your eyes peeled for a short video I did with Andre on Nitobi.

(We recorded on a tarrace at Adobe HQ, so you can hear the street in the background and planes from time to time: how nice is it be outside, though?)

Disclosure: Adobe and Microsoft are clients.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RIA Weekly RSS feed for automatic downloads of each episode.

Recently, I had the chance to sit down with Sun's Jacob Lehrbaum. We start out discussing the larger context that RIA technologies are finding themselves in and then narrow down to JavaFX in particular.

On that topic I ask Jacob to clear up the what and how questions around JavaFX and open source, we discuss how the JavaFX Preview release has been fairing, and then get into some of the future road-map for JavaFX.

If you're interested in more about JavaFX, be sure to check out the two videos I also did on the topic with Sun's Nandini Ramani.

Disclosure: this episode of RIA Weekly is sponsored by Sun, who's also a client.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RIA Weekly RSS feed for automatic downloads of each episode.

In this episode Ryan joins from his tour of Asia (see above), calling in from Korea. We start out talking about Ryan's observations of Japanese and Korean RIA developers and then move into a discussion of the recent announcements around jQuery.

Recapping some news of the past month, we talk about the after-glow usage of Google Chrome: while there was large initial interest, of course, we've just anecdotally seen people (like Managed Objects) suggesting its use for speed increases in using web applications.

After a few more news items - like Silverlight 2.0 -- Ryan asks me how RIAs fit into the cloud computing hype that's been going on: the answer revolves around RIAs trying to make this round of client/server computing better.

As an admin note, you've probably noticed that I've moved the podcast to it's own URL at http://www.RIAWeekly.com. The feed is the same, so you shouldn't have to change anything on the subscription front.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as are Microsoft and Managed Objects.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RIA Weekly RSS feed for automatic downloads of each episode.

In addition to talking with Zend's Andi Gutmans about the PHP/Flex announcement this morning at ZendCon, I had the chance to talk with Mike Potter of Adobe to hear their side of the story. In addition to going over the basics of the announcements - see the episode with Andi for a quick wrap-up - as you can guess, we spend more time talking about what AMF is and how it fits into the overall Flex and AIR world. Mike also gives us more detail on the tooling integration.

Additionally, we talk about new uses of Flex Mike has seen of late and talk about how appeal to the PHP community relates to the Java community relations Adobe has been doing for sometime.

Finally, having discovered that Mike is a big curling fan, I ask him to explain the game and some of the culture around it: you'll be pretty up to speed on the basics of curling once you're through with this episode ;>

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as is Zend.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RIA Weekly RSS feed for automatic downloads of each episode.

Andi Gutmans tells us about the RIA related announcements at ZendCon this morning. First, he goes through the announcements:

• making the Zend Studio and Flex Builder work together in the present and targeting better integration, like debugging in the future
• Adobe's work and contribution to link up AMF to Zend-land
• And then ongoing education and evangelizing around PHP and Flex

Check out Andi's write-up on his blog as well.

We then discuss how PHP is primarily used in the RIA world, namely, as a gateway to the back-end for the UI layer. Along those lines, we discuss the existing use of PHP by Flex developers - Andi says Adobe told him 25% of Flex users are using PHP.

I ask Andi to talk about the types of applications that might benefit from this Adobe/Zend partnership: he cites intranet business applications, those that include multi-media interfaces, and also the Automotive Computer Services customer example cited in the press release around the announcement.

Finally, Andi being a self-proclaimed open source person, I ask him how he resolves the closed nature of Flex, namely, the Flash player. As we discus, while Adobe has opened up so much more of Flex, there's still that closed core. Bouncing of the idea of "if it works for you use it" we talk about other UI technologies, like Silverlight, that Zend may be interested in partnering more closely with if interests arises in the PHP community.

And, the previous episode we reference at the begining was indeed, from Microsoft MIX, episode #009b to be exact.

Disclosure: Zend and Adobe are clients, as are Microsoft and IBM.

While I was away on vacation, James was good enough to record an RIA Weekly episode with SAP's Craig Cmehil.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the RIA Weekly RSS feed for automatic downloads of each episode.

James and Craig start out talking about the upcoming SAP TechEd RIA hacker night (sponsored by RedMonk, among others). They then discuss Google Chrome and Craig's down-beat view on it, along with App Engine. James asks Craig about Silverlight uses he's seen in the field, and then they get into talking about wikis used as development platforms. Finally, they wrap-up talking about how RIAs have been used to make applications feel more human and collaborative.

Disclosure: SAP is a client, as are Adobe and Microsoft. See the RedMonk client list for other clients mentioned.

Download the episode directly or subscribe to the feed in iTunes or other podcatcher.

JavaFX Preview SDK

In this week's episode, Ryan and I got to talk with Sun's Josh Marinacci about the JavaFX Preview SDK release today. We went over the basics in the SDK and Josh gave us his view of the workflows and different features in the JavaFX SDK. See here for the interview and demo videos I mention in the podcast.

RIA News

After wrapping up the JavaFX portion of the show, we get on to talking about the patent mine-field of video encoding, SVG vs. FXD, the next Flex SDK version ("Gumbo"), and then my theory that we'll eventually see desktop web servers to better work with desktop RIAs.

Sponsor: RIAjobs.org - Listener Deals

As mentioned at the beginning of this episode, we have a new sponsor: RIAjobs.org. And, even better, we have two specials for you, dear RIA Weekly listeners. Go over to http://RIAjobs.org/riaweekly/ and you can get discounts for listing a job and posting ads. If you're looking for an RIA job or looking to hire someone, go check it out ;>

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as is Sun. See the RedMonk client list for other clients mentioned.

Download the episode directly or subscribe to the feed in iTunes or other podcatcher.

New Sponsor: RIAjobs.org - Listener Deals

As mentioned at the beginning of this episode, we have a new sponsor: RIAjobs.org. And, even better, we have two specials for you, dear RIA Weekly listeners. Go over to http://RIAjobs.org/riaweekly/ and you can get discounts for listing a job and posting ads. If you're looking for an RIA job or looking to hire someone, go check it out ;>

We're Joined by RMH

In this episode, we're joined by Curl's Richard Monson-Haefel. As you would expect, we open up the episode talking about Curl in detail. We go over some recent news, then delve into Curl's history, and then finally end up taking about the enterprise and business applications for Curl and features that help there.

Also, we spend sometime comparing the Japanese vs the American IT market, I topic I always enjoy dipping into. Richard and I have a bit of a Java Good Ol' Boys chit-chat as we compare the days of EJBs and JSF to RIA-land.

Launching into the news, we talk about Adobe providing Yahoo! and Google a special version of the Flash Player that "plays" SWF files, helping those search engines pull out more searchable text. We briefly touch on WordPress using Gears to boost their admin interface.

And, if you're interested in the free webinar on RIA, cloud, and data integration I mention at the end, check out more details here.

Disclaimer: Adobe and Microsoft are clients. See the RedMonk client list for other clients mentioned.

Download the episode directly or subscribe to the feed in iTunes or other podcatcher.

This week, Ryan and I finally get back together for a brief but packed episode. The title pretty much covers the topics. We don't spend a lot of time detailing news - as there's not a whole lot of it - spending most of time talking about geographic concerns and getting back to a discussion from episode 14, we talk about Google Gear's aspirations to be the new web standards work-horse, supplanting the W3C or any other standards body.

Disclaimer: Adobe is a client, as is Microsoft. See the RedMonk clients list for other clients mentioned.

Download the episode directly or subscribe to the feed in iTunes or other podcatcher.

Coté and Ryan start off with some bumpy introductions and then Dion Almaer, our special guest for the week, introduces himself. Dion and Ryan were at Web 2.0 Expo and gave a combined talk about Google Gears and Adobe AIR (slides).

The conversation starts with Web 2.0 Expo. Dion says that the highlight of the event was Fake Steve Jobs. Dion notes that there haven't been any really standout applications and Ryan concurs saying he thought it was "regular Web 2.0 stuff". Ryan asks Dion what his favorite session is and Dion correctly responds that it was the combined session they did. Dion gives an overview of the session and talking about how he and Ryan covered some of the APIs and where the browser is going. Dion says his goal is to get more people involved in advancing the browser.

Coté asks about whether Google Gears is open source (it is) and then asks about external contributers and Dion says that they have started getting external people in on the project. We get into the topic of open source and Coté says he'd like to see a diagram that makes it very obvious what is open source and what isn't from a variety of companies.

One of the things that comes up is offline access and what that means even when you have an internet connection. Dion gives the example of Buxfer which uses Google Gears to store banking information on the hard drive of the user in the SQLite database and none of it is ever stored on the startups servers. Dion describes Gears as an "open source way to teach browsers to do new tricks". Dion follows up by saying that if HTML5 implemented all the new features and Gears was no longer needed, it would be a win. The group discusses the evolution of HTML 5 and where Gears will eventually fit.

Coté asks Dion "What's the deal with WebKit" because there's been a ton of interest around WebKit. Dion says the biggest thing with WebKit is that the code is cleaner than Gecko (Firefox) and that entices more people to jump into the WebKit community. The clean code also helps people iterate faster and add important features.

We then get into what's coming down the pipe at JavaOne. Dion brings up the point that Java has had a lot of really cool stuff for a long time and if they could bring their pieces together to do things like Mesh and EC2, Sun could have been doing this a while ago.

Dion and Ryan both stopped by the Curl booth and chatted with them so Ryan picks Dion's brain on Curl. Dion noted that the demos were kind of ugly and suggested that if you're competing against Adobe and Microsoft you've got to have good looking demos. We all agree that the technology is great but that the web has a certain way to develop things and it's better to fit with that model. Coté wonders out loud about getting involved in the middleware side of RIAs instead of focusing on the client plugin.

Coté brings up OpenLaszlo and we talk about what they're up to. Dion says he really likes them because they went "meta" and did a combination of Flash and Ajax. We also talk about Intuit's QuickBase and get into the development platforms as a service.

Disclaimer: see the RedMonk client list for a clients mentioned.

See detailed show notes.

Included in the feed is the audio of the video:

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the feed in iTunes or other podcatcher to have them automatically downloaded.

In the second part of our MIX '08 coverage, Ryan and I talk with Zend's Andi Gutmans about the role of PHP in the RIA world, his involvement in two panels (one on Microsoft and open source, the other on mashups), and then we talk about what you might call "enterprise RIA" using the recent iPhone SDK and enterprise hookups announcement as a spring-board.

Disclaimer: Adobe and Microsoft are clients, as is Sun. See the RedMonk client list for other RedMonk clients mentioned.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the podcast feed to have it downloaded automatically in iTunes or other podcatcher.

In this special edition of RIA Weekly, I talk with co-host Ryan Stewart who's at MIX08. We recap the announcements of the first day, discuss Apple's recent comments that Flash doesn't cut it for the iPhone, and then get all giddy for this weekend's SXSW.

See Ryan's writeup and TechCrunch's live blogging for more on today's MIX08 keynote.

Disclaimer: Adobe, Sun, and Microsoft are clients. See the RedMonk client list for other RedMonk clients mentions.

Download the episode directly, or subscribe to the feed to have episodes auto-magically downloaded in iTunes or other podcasther.

This week, Ryan and myself talk with Appcelerator's Nolan Wright and Matt Quinlan.

I'll type up more detail notes later, but here's the summary.

We talk about Appcelerator's offering, drilling down into the middleware, or "glass bus" like functionality it provides. Being open source - and GPLv3 at that! - I ask Nolan and Matt why this matters both for their internal development and for their users.

We then jump into some news talk:

• MIX '08 rumors about Silverlight 2.0 and Silverlight on the desktop.
• SXSWi coming up - while I say it'll mostly be the round-corner cool kids, there'll be plenty of RIA stuff sprinkled through-out.
• Adobe Engage 2008 - both Ryan and I were there so we give a little sum-up.
• Chumby's are now available to the public.
• DRM in Flash
• ...and more

Disclaimer: Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun are clients. See the RedMonk client list for more clients that are mentioned.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the feed to have episodes auto-magically downloaded in iTunes or other podcasther.

Ryan was kind enough to edit this episode write up these notes - yuh! - so the "I" refers to him ;>

Coté and I introduce ourselves and Bill Higgins, a front end developer for Jazz. Bill starts by explaining what Jazz is and says it started a couple of years ago with the goal being to create a collaborative development platform. Since the idea is focused around collaboration so one of the main parts is being able to support multiple interfaces. It was primarily done in Eclipse and when Bill came on he started to work on the web interface for Jazz. Coté contrasts the current quick development process with larger cycle projects and Bill says that Jazz is actually on a pretty quick turnaround time.

Coté asks if when they were building Jazz in Ajax if they looked at other technologies. At first they started with a Java server side application according to Bill and after 3-4 months it wasn't going to work. They got permission to choose whatever technology they wanted and it was right around the time Ajax was starting to take off. Bill reminisces about a Joel Spolsky talking about the Google auto suggest app from before Ajax really took off. Bill says that one of the biggest barriers initially was that there weren't a lot of resources. They looked at a lot of the original platforms and eventually chose Dojo. He says that currently it's about 40% Dojo and 60% custom code. Coté asks if it was a good idea to turn Ajax based on the info they had now and Bill thinks it is. Ryan asks what the other options were and Bill talks about some of the other server side technologies they looked at. Ryan asks about the Eclipse RAP project and whether or not they looked at that since the project's rich client is based on Eclipse. Bill responds that since it was very early they looked at it but didn't go with it.

Coté wonders how big a deal it is to have two separate interfaces for things and what the challenges have been to keep up. Bill says that one of the things they wanted to do was make the back end sophisticated so that they could specialize on each and make both interfaces high quality. Bill talks about it being difficult to have good UIs on every level if you try to reuse code and methodologies. Bill talks about their server side and how they started with EMF but eventually moved to REST because it made it much easier for both clients to talk to the back end. Reuse of the services made it easy to reuse code and one of the benefits of REST is that you can easily use it within multiple clients. Coté asks Ryan about BlazeDS and whether or not BlazeDS could be used as a REST layer. Ryan isn't really sure how that would work and wonders if you could use BlazeDS on a rich client like Eclipse.

Ryan mentions Bill's Uncanny Valley post and asks Bill how he thinks about the converging of a web interface and a desktop interface and how you plan for that. He talks about his experience on Jazz and how it's not a good idea to steal user interface elements from other platforms. It looks out of place. Ryan asks about how a platform can build user interfaces that look great everywhere and notes that some AIR interfaces look out of place on some platforms. Coté calls it the "WinAmp" problem because you could re-skin the application and the user interface was always so out of place and bad. Bill says the cool design shouldn't stand out, the content should be front and center. Bill brings up the example of Cloverfield as using visual effects in a background way to enhance the experience.

Coté asks the question is it better to have really good functionality and a crappy UI or a really good UI or crappy functionality. Bill says it depends on what you're trying to do and gives the example of an application that you'll be using in your jobs for a very long time and says capabilities are very important. We come up with the idea of the "F8 people" and discuss when those simple, low-fidelity interfaces are beneficial. Coté notes that we don't have a "civilian user" and a "power user" in the RIA world. Ryan agrees and says that he believes it's just because RIAs don't have power users. Bill notes that those interfaces are perfect and people know them so you don't want to mess with that. Ryan says that he thinks there might be a UI that could make them more productive but Bill notes that people don't want to learn new things and change can be bad.

Coté mentions that he and Ryan have switched from Google Reader to using NetNewsWire and what that means for interfaces. Bill still uses Google Reader and Ryan noted that his big requirement was that he could get access to the feeds from anywhere. We compare feeds and talk about the Newsgator guys.

We dive into a talk about the Blu-Ray and HDDVD wars as Coté informs us that part of the Bu-Ray spec requires Java to be on every player. He says it's a JavaME implementation. Since most of the players are supposed to be networked enabled, that opens up some interesting possibilities for building applications. As an example he gives the Alien v. Predator movie which has a Java game on the Blu-Ray disc and you can create a character which then might move around based on where you're watching the movie. It's a cool idea for RIAs on non-traditional devices.

Finally we talk about the differences between the web and the rich client space and how the functionality is starting to converge. Coté brings up the HTML5 spec and the new features that have been added to the spec but haven't been implemented quite yet. Bill talks about the fact that a lot of the standards innovation comes from other companies creating proprietary system that pushes the boundaries. He mentions Alex Russell's post about innovation as a good read.

In the news we talk about Flash on the iPhone, and the some of the new browsers that are coming out including Firefox 3 Beta 3 and the new WebKit versions.

Disclaimer: Both Adobe and IBM are clients. See the RedMonk clients list for other RedMonk clients mentioned.

Download the episode directly here, or subscribe to the feed in iTunes and other podcatchers for auto-magic delivery.

Ryan Stewart and I start by reviewing the fun of the RedMonk 5th birthday party, but then jump right into a brief discussion of Kevin Lynch getting promoted to the new Adobe CTO. Kevin Lynch came from the Macromedia effort and had been heading the "platform group" at Adobe, Flash, Flex, and AIR. As I note, this is a nice signaling from Adobe about the importance of RIA's in their future: rather than promoting someone from the Creative or PDF side, the Flash family was given an executive role. As Ryan says, the Flash family of products are core to Adobe's future.

Then we jump into a JavaFX update. I was at the Sun Analyst Event this past week. But, the interesting news of JavaFX was mentioned by The Register and picked up by the Java Posse: the JavaFX folks are going to use, or integrate with, the Adobe toolchain. As we discuss, I don't know what this means and the Sun Java client folks wouldn't tell me. But the intention is to work with the Adobe creative tools rather than build up the equivilent in the NetBeans world.

Ryan, of course, likes this idea being an Adobe person. He notes that Adobe has been trying to figure out and refine the designer/developer tool-flow themselves, coming out with Thermo in response to Microsoft's Blend and Expression. On this topic, I mention a post by Jesse Warden on how much he hates "code-behind" in Microsoft world. I wasn't sure what this code-behind stuff was, so Ryan explains that it's a way of separating out code from the UI layer. This sounds like the kind of thing a more purely developer mindsetted person would love, but a quick-and-fast designer would think was overly complicated. If you're never going to progress beyond "1.0" of a project, why worry about keeping your project "clean."

Our further discussing gets to an interesting point of a potential conflict between developers and designers: developers assume there's a lot more stability in your code base, putting out dependencies to all sorts of parts of the project. Designers, perhaps, are a bit looser with keeping things stable.

Ryan asks for more details from the Sun Analyst Event, and it turns out I don't have much but happy talk to give him: they've got a team of high paid people working on JavaFX, so it's not just a last minute after thought to compete in the RIA world.

Pulling one of the points from my Sun Gambling on Utopia post, I note that part of the overall Sun for success is an opening of the American telcos to have less locked-down handsets. Obviously, JavaFX fits into this scenario as a money-maker, as it does for Adobe who's recently into mobile as a growth platform. Until that time, though, we've just got the web.

While on the topic of handsets, Ryan throws in a Google Android mention, raising the clarification question from me "does Android have a UI layer?" The answer is no. Both of us aren't sure if you could, for example, port the Flash Player to Android, or if the platform is locked down like the iPhone to such options. This raises a review of the seeming opening up of Apple's mind about an "iPhone SDK": the message started as "web applications are all you need, why would you need an SDK" and slowly evolved to promises for something else...which we haven't seen yet.

Ryan than asks for my thoughts on the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal. As I warn, I give terrible answers to questions like this because I tend to think optimistically. That said, I paint the negative scenario first: Microsoft buys Yahoo! and kills the potential goodness by converting Yahoo! "from PHP to ASP." That is, Microsoft imposes their technology platform on Yahoo!, the assumption there being that Yahoo! is everything buy a Microsoft shop.

This is the natural - bad - thing you'd expect from Microsoft as an "Elder Company." They've built up their own software stack and their core-belief, along with the promises they make to customers, is that this Microsoft stack is best possible way to do software. So, naturally, they'd want to convert people over to The Best Stack.

As the more positive track, I note that we've all been waiting for Microsoft to deliver on the whole Ray Ozzie vision of SaaS. Though Microsoft never uses that term, they led us on to believe via Ozzie's memos and notes that something more web-native was coming. So far, not much there, at least that's stuck. So, buying Yahoo! is perhaps delivering on that strategy.

See this week's The Gang for more on the "Microhoo" topic. Also, RedMonk's own James Governor hit up the developer angle quite well when it comes to Microsoft and Yahoo!.

I then try to hit Ryan back by asking what he thinks about Oracle buying BEA. But, being a front-end guy, he rightly doesn't get too excited about middleware. That said, as we've discussed in previous episodes, Oracle has been using Flex a lot recently. Ryan asks me what BEA gets Oracle.

I say that Oracle is quick moving into being a middleware holding company, and BEA brings some assets that are worth holding: Tuxedo, WebLogic, and their whole SOA/Portal screed. While RedMonk hasn't figured out "an in" at Oracle - though, we've tried, we keep hitting a brick wall of un-interest - from our experience with a former client who was acquired by Oracle, Sleepycat, they seem to acquire companies and at the very least just keep that company going with minimal "mucking around" with the company. There was that whole Fusion Middleware vs. Fusion Architecture hoopla which seems to have been deftly swept under the rung in favor of keeping the PeopleSoft, Siebel, and Oracle Financials people happy rather than re-writing - Fusing, if you will - those three mega-products into one stack.

Getting back to Microsoft and Yahoo!, we note that Microsoft buying Yahoo! would be kind of awkward for Silverlight: Yahoo! is one of the high-posting users of Flash and friends, so owning one of the primary successful customers cases for a Silverlight competitor would be, you know, weird. Once again, the negative path is to assume that Microsoft would go through the pain of converting Yahoo! over to Silverlight. As I noted in a recent FiveRuns TakeFive interview, I have a dim view of re-write success.

We wrap up with a review of future guests we're working on: Alex Russell from Dojo, Alex Barnett from Bungee Labs, and Bill Higgins, the Ajax man from IBM Rational Jazz.

Disclaimer: Sun, Adobe, IBM, and Microsoft are clients. See the RedMonk clients list for other RedMonk clients mentioned.

This week, Ryan and I have "Silverlight/WPF Rock-star" Robby Ingebretsen, Director of Interactive Development, at IdentityMine.

In the fourth episode of RIA Weekly we have two guests: Chuck Freedman from Ribbit and Tony MacDonell of Teknision. We talk about Ribbit, "Silicon Valley's first phone company" and then dive into some of the RIA-related CES talk with Tony.

Ribbit

Ribbit is billed as Silicon Valley's first phone company and it allows developers to make and receive phone calls right from the browser in their applications. We discuss a little bit about Grand Central and innovation and how it relates to voice on the internet. Chuck explains how Ribbit works. Developers can download a component and drop it into their applications. That component connects to the Ribbit back end to make or receive the call based on the API call. We then talk about how audio/video capabilities tie into RIAs. Chuck says that right now a lot of people are using Ribbit in the enterprise with big applications like adding email to voice. On the consumer side they're seeing it in widgets and some smaller browser applications.

Coté mentions how something like Ribbit and treating voice like text is light years ahead of what the phone companies offer right now. He also asks Chuck about how Ribbit is playing the larger space. Chuck responds that their goal right now is to build the developer community and they are looking at hooking into a number of services like IM, Twitter, and Facebook. One application they're working on is an application for disabled veterans who have trouble picking up the phone to dial when they do fund drives. The veterans can use Ribbit to make the call from an application.

Coté asks what the ultimate business model is and how Ribbit makes money. Chuck says there are some things in the works around notification services and transcription services. On the topic of voicemail Coté wonders if things like Ribbit makes it easier to "switch mediums" between voice and IM and email. We talk to Tony about the value of voice on the web. He really likes the idea of being able to use Ribbit to do things your phone doesn't normally do. Being able to leave voice messages on Web 2.0 sites; using the phone as an input. Tony says it would be great to incorporate the Finetune service and these new web based voice applications.

Coté asks Chuck about whether or not Ribbit will have a Silverlight version and expand outside of Flash. Chuck says that right now Flash is the only technology that can handle the voice as well as they need it to. But he adds that they're hoping they can incorporate it better into Ajax and other RIA technologies as they add features.

Teknision and CES

Tony tells us about some of the applications they were involved with at CES. They worked on an application with Intel on ultra mobile computers (UMPCs). Tony said a lot of these UMPCs run Windows or Linux, so they're meant to be full blown operating systems. Intel approached Teknision to create an application that would be intuitive and fun on those small form factors. They took Finetune and the AIR runtime to create a UMPC application on the new Intel devices.

Coté asks about whether these RIA technologies are getting demand on tiny devices. Tony says that there is a lot of interest and that Teknision is doing a lot of mobile. He talks about Flash Lite 3 and some of the Chumby applications that he's seeing. He and Coté talk about different ways to use the accelerometer and integrating it with applications. Tony says that he thinks the Chumby really appeals to a lot of different kinds of people.

Tony talks about Finetune on the Nokia N95 and how people can now play video and audio right from their phones. We then discuss Flash on the iPhone. Tony and Ryan both provide their own antedates of Flash on the iPhone. Coté asks Tony about Teknisions broader RIA technology and what they're doing with Silverlight. Tony says that they don't do "flash code" but that they focus on interface design. He says that Flash is more of a customer driven reqiurement because Flash is everywhere. Ryan mentions that Microsoft has a lot of diverse properties they can use to leverage Silverlight including Xbox, Zune along with all of their servers and media properties. Tony says one problem with Silverlight is that there isn't a lot of incentive for people to use it right now. Coté corroborates that with his analyst experience and how important the designer developer workflow is to RIAs.

Silverlight News

We discuss one of the big news items from last week, that the Olympics will be exclusively stream video online using Silverlight. Tony mentions that TSN.ca showed the World Junior Hockey championships and required Silverlight. He noted that Silverlight worked well and that the streaming was perfect but that there had been some install issues for some people. Coté and Tony also get into Windows Media Format video and how pervasive that is on the internet. We get into how that will affect Silverlight adoption.

Rumor News

Ryan talks about a rumor (since proved false) that Microsoft is buying Limelight technology. We talk about the role CDNs play in rich Internet applications and Coté mentions how data storage companies could be in a great position to capitalize on the surge in heavy media and applications on the web.

Disclaimer: Microsoft and Adobe are RedMonk clients.

This week Ryan Stewart and I talk with André Charland of Nitobi. We cover some brief RIA news from the past few weeks and then get into RIA predictions for 2008. Thanks to Kurt Brockett for the predictions suggestion.

You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the podcast feed.

Who's André

Well, exciting and stressful are synonyms, right?

André starts out telling us about Nitobi's business in Ajax widgets, their hosted web usage service Robot Replay, and then their book Enterprise Ajax along with upcoming training videos.

André and friends have been on several past podcasts of mine here, here, here, and here.

Usability, User Experience, and RIAs

After a brief note on the holiday vacations we each had, André mentions the recent 60 Minutes piece on software usability which leads into a discussion of what usability and user experience people are or aren't doing in the RIA space. While Microsoft put out a recent white-paper on the topic (sort of), Ryan says he hasn't seen many UX people taking up RIA concerns, for example on the IXDA list. We talk about what might be differences for usability concerns with RIAs: André mentions the low switching cost between applications and then we discuss the usability of data portability.

Designer/Developer

We then discuss my old hobby-horse: will this while designer/developer theory really pan out, or will it just be more of the same? The classic problem of the UI designers and the programmers not getting along is the one to get over here, and past attempts like JSPs in J2EE loom as not too successful attempts to harmonize the two. Ryan and André point out that this time, the initiative is lead more by designers than developers, and that they're seeing more developers who are actually a merging of the two. (James and Dan McWeeney spoke on this topic on RedMonkTV sometime back.)

BlazeDS

In contrast to the front-end concerns of the designer/developer question, we then talk about Adobe's open sourcing of BlazeDS, a sub-set of their LiveCycle Services. BlazeDS, boiled down, is a messaging framework and protocol between the server and the browser, intended to be used, of course with Flex.

Using Anne Zelenka's new book on web working as a launching point, we talk about the role of collaboration in RIA's in 2008. I ask what this often over-loaded term "collaboration" means in the context of RIAs. The answer is essentially boils down to sharing artifacts (like a document or spreadsheet) in group rather than passing them around in email or other forms. More importantly, as we touch on in much of the rest of the episode, we're looking for "unified collaboration" that better integrates together all the existing tools we use into one place, like IM, document sharing, desktop sharing, etc.

2008 RIA Predictions

After talking about ways of coping with inboxes overflowing from vacation, we move on to RIA predictions for 2008.

Silverlight 2.0

Ryan starts out saying that Silverlight 2.0 is going to be a big deal. André agrees, saying that once they formalize the generic user interface elements - like buttons - it will indeed be something to watch, not to mention the ability for Microsoft to spread runtimes.

JavaFX?

I mention that 2008 will be the year for JavaFX to get finalized. But then move quickly back to Adobe and layout my hope to see Adobe complete their move to providing applications in the form of a hosted Office contender: they've already got Buzzword, Share, and Connect, just lacking spreadsheets and presentations.

Rails' Effect on RIA-land

On the more industry-wide perspective, I outline the scenario where Zed Shaw's rant kicks off (or is just an early indication of) rails disenchantment, pulling rails developers into the RIA world. Or, on the other hand, if rails gains in popularity, pulling attention from the RIA world.

Integration

André returns to the topic of RIA integration, reaching back to the collaboration integration topic and explains how that could become a big deal in 2008.

RIA Code-generation Frameworks

We then talk about frameworks that spit out RIA's for you, like GWT, RAP (see our screencasts on RAP), and the recently announced Microsoft Volta. André has seen some interesting anecdotal uptake of these "spits out RIAs" tools.

JavaScript Updates?

As if reading my mind, Ryan then asks about ECMA4 and JavaScript. As I say, I like to ask every year "who's minding the JavaScript store?" It seems like development in JavaScript is more around frameworks and monkey-patch updated rather than aggressively updating the technology itself.

Apple

We raise everyone's favorite RIA dark-horse, Apple. Ryan and André seem to share my dim-outlook that they'd do much in the area of RIA as we know it. Instead, and I joke, they'd probably say they already have a good tool-chain for user interfaces: just buy a Mac! On the other hand, as Ryan says, with webkit and QuickTime, it seems like they've gotta be up to something.

Amazon Web Services & Component-services for RIAs

We close out with a question from Ryan about how things like Amazon Web Services will play with RIAs. André notes that Nitobi has uses AWS to great success for their Robot Replay site and imagines that RIA people will see much use and good from AWS. I agree, noting that while other companies make claims to have similar capabilities, Amazon is the only one who makes it drop dead simple to use. Pulling up a layer from the infrastructure AWS provides, André notes that it'd be great if other services - like Buzzword - were broken up into services and components that could be re-used. For example, why write you're own rich editor when you could use a Buzzword component?

...thanks again to André for calling in!

Disclaimer: Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun are clients.

In this episode, Ryan and I talk with James Ward, Adobe Technical Evangelist for Flex with plenty of Java connections. Topics include: a better Oracle OpenWorld update; the Java/Flex stacks James has seen; charts and dashboards as RIA foot-holds in enterprise/business software; whatever happened to the widget-madness of the last year or so?; what's up with ZoHo? ZoHo and Buzzword releases; and Silverlight 2.0.

Disclaimer: Adobe is a RedMonk client, as are Sun and parts of Microsoft.

In this first episode of RIA Weekly, Ryan Stewart, Charles Lowell, and I talk about a wide swath of topics:

• Ryan asks Charles what how his company, The Front Side decided how "dressed up" their UIs should be. Charles says the major limit is time and skill.
• We talk about James Ward's Flex sightings at Oracle OpenWorld (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), which moves into Flex in enterprise development
• I ask Ryan about the current state of Silverlight and how much video plays into it.
• We also talk about the Chumby I recently got and how that fits into the idea of RIAs.

There're probably some things I missed, but that's the gist of it.

If all goes as planned, Ryan and I will be back next week for another episode. Feel free to leave comments below.

To subscribe, add in the plain old RedMonk Radio feed, where RIA Weekly will be posted (for now?) as well.

Disclaimer: Adobe is a client (though they're not involved in the podcast, beyond Ryan's participation), Sun, SAP, and the Microsoft STB unit.