John Dowdell has a post about Widget neutrality and he links to a Yahoo Widget Blog post that went around this week and was billed as a pretty good comparison between the various widget platforms. However as Tony noted in JD’s comments, SpringWidgets and WidgetBox are two biggies that weren’t mentioned.

Widgets have been really taking off in the past few months, and I think partly it’s because they’re new, but also because there’s a lot of value in bringing important data right to the users screen where they can easily access it. yourminis has started a pretty impressive widget platform, Niall Kennedy had a widget conference, WidgetsLive, last fall, and Apollo is often talked about as a technology that would enable powerful desktop widgets.

All of the excitement is more than justified. I have to believe that part of it stems from the ability to “web enable” your desktop with important information. But in the end, I think the most successful widgets will tie back to bigger properties and they will be an important part of any Rich Internet Application strategy. Desktop widgets keep the application right in front of users even while they aren’t watching it and web widgets allow users to share a small part of the application with their friends on blogs or MySpace pages. The reason I think widgets are so important is because I think they’ve helped speed the adoption of Rich Internet Applications. People are seeing how great the widgets can be and are taking the next step and using those applications. As a result, the better widgets (which often tend to come from Flash-based RIAs) are getting more users and helping all the parent application grow. Rich Widgets draw users to rich applications.

[tags]Widgets, Rich Internet Applications, Flash, Yahoo, yourminis, WidgetBox, WidgetsLife, SpringWidgets[/tags]

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this. Apparently Adobe has acquired a little company called Antepo:

Adobe is pleased to announce that it has acquired Antepo, Inc. Antepo is a technology company that developed the Antepo Open Presence Network (OPN) System — an award-winning platform for Enterprise Instant Messaging and Presence capabilities — enabling real-time communication and collaboration while meeting critical business requirements for control, security, integration, and compliance.

You can tell they’re pleased to announce it because they issued the smallest press release ever. The Antepo website? Redirects to said smallest press release ever. The chatter for this seems to have just started today and Mike has some good information (he also seems to have been following the story) but there is a post from back in early January with the news and it lists an acquisition price of $7 million. Their blog has been silent for a while.

From what I can tell, Antepo had some interesting technology in SIP, XMPP, and VoIP. Adobe’s VoIP goals have been known for some time, and Acrobat Connect is based on this type of technology. But from the commentary, Antepo seems to focus more on straight messaging which makes me wonder if Adobe is planning something above and beyond Breeze that might compete head on with Microsoft Office Communicator.

[tags]Antepo, Adobe, VoIP[/tags]

Tim Sneath showcased a Windows Presentation Foundation app today over on his blog for the British Library. This thing is absolutely awesome and shows why 3D interfaces are not just frivolous eye candy. In this case, the books really seem to come alive. Tim has all the info on the application, so I’ll just steal one of his screenshots and post a link to the XBAP. You’ll need to be running Internet Explorer with the .NET 3.0 Framework installed. Interestingly, there is also a Shockwave version but I thought the WPF version was much better.

[tags]WPF, British Library, Turning the Page[/tags]

Vista Launched today and I wrote a bunch of nice things about it on my ZDNet blog. I thought we were friends. Then I brought home my new cell phone, a Motorola Q and Vista and I had a falling out.

I love the phone. I’ve been hearing great things about the BlackJack, but I’m on Verizon and so I went with the Q. It’s slim, it feels pretty good in my hands and after a bit of playing with it I got the hang of the keyboard. I’m also addicted to having email on my phone and it’s only been 5 hours. I’m not sure what exactly that says about me, but I think it’s going to mean a lot more email.

Unfortunately I can’t figure out how to get to to do anything BUT email because I can’t sync it with my computer. Vista doesn’t support ActiveSync 4.2, which comes with my phone, but instead it’s using some stupid Windows Mobile Device Center which is only in Beta 3 despite the fact that Vista shipped today. But I would even be okay with running beta software if it actually worked with my phone. When I plug my phone into the USB port it just sits there and this fancy new Windows Mobile Device Center doesn’t realize it is supposed to talk to my phone. So that means no contacts, no calendar items and an unhappy Ryan. But I am enjoying mail, the phone is really cool, and it’s much easier to Twitter now.

[tags]Microsoft, Windows Vista, Vista, Motorola Q, Verizon[/tags]

I saw an interview by Eric Peterson with Megan Burns, a Forrester Analyst and noticed that Megan is going to be presenting a teleconference on Measuring Rich Internet Applications.

This is going to be a HUGE topic as more and more companies adopt Rich Internet Applications. The page view model is dead, but it leaves a huge void behind and a conversation about how to evaluate what users are doing while inside your application is long overdue. According to the description, this should be an interesting presentation:

Rich Internet applications (RIAs) are a hot topic these days, but most RIA owners have more questions than answers when it comes to understanding how users actually interact with these applications and what impact they have on business results. Learn which measurement techniques are best for evaluating RIAs and how to design a measurement program that provides the information your organization needs to prove and improve the value of RIAs.

It is on February 5th and seems like it’s worth it for $250 bucks and they’ll be talking about a lot of companies we’ve all heard of: Adobe, Allurent, Coremetrics, Effective UI, Laszlo Systems, Omniture, WebSideStory/Visual Sciences, and WebTrends.

[tags]Forrester, RIA, Rich Internet Application, Adobe, Allurent, Coremetrics, Effective UI, Laszlo Systems, Omniture, WebSideStory/Visual Sciences, WebTrends, Metrics[/tags]

John Carroll over on ZDNet has a post about some of the European Commission’s statements about XAML and WPF trying to take over HTML. That’s a discussion for another day but I think the EC is making itself look bad. XAML and WPF aren’t going to replace HTML.

But in an article he linked to there was an interesting quote from Daniel Glazman who is part of the CSS Working Group:

“With dozens of Mozilla milestones in the wild, and almost in sync with [Internet Explorer 7], the W3C finally discovers the whole browser world uses XML-based UI languages,” Glazman wrote. Citing a W3C document, he continued, “The future W3C format will ‘be based on an existing application/UI format, such as Mozilla’s XUL, Microsoft’s XAML, Macromedia’s MXML or Laszlo Systems’ LZX, provided the owners of the format are willing to contribute.”

I hadn’t really thought of a “standardized” W3C XML-based UI language before, though I suppose it’s possible. There is a Web Application Formats Working Group which looks like its goal is to standardize these things:

This deliverable should be based on an existing application/UI format, such as Mozilla’s XUL, Microsoft’s XAML, Macromedia’s MXML or Laszlo Systems’ LZX, provided the owners of the format are willing to contribute. The format should allow embedded program code. This format, combined with the deliverables below and existing technologies including XHTML, CSS, XForms, SVG and SMIL, should provide a strong basis for rich client application development.

This is actually making me think a lot more about XAML and HTML. I mean are we in some ways replacing HTML with Rich Internet Applications? Obviously HTML won’t go away, but it’s also too limited for what the web has become.

[tags]W3C, Rich Internet Applications, UI[/tags]

I caught a post over on Rock and Roll SEO about RIAs and the revitalized desktop that prompted me to put down my thoughts on the evolution of web applications. As I think about it, there are 5-6 pure web applications that I use every day. There are other that I like to try, but I would consider myself a “power user” of only 5-6. So when I think about how those 5-6 applications could do more for me, the obvious conclusion is the desktop. I’d love to have my email synchronized so I can use it offline, I’d like to be able to download and save my news feeds so I can read through them on trips, ect. In essence, I would love to have those 5-6 applications running as desktop apps for me because it would make my workflow easier.

Then again, the reason that people (myself included) love web applications so much is because I can go to almost any computer, browse to the site, and instantly have access to my data. It isn’t tied to one computer and I don’t have to worry about installing anything. The ubiquity and easy of access for web applications has been a huge driving force in their adoption.

So how do we reconcile these? In some ways, they fit perfectly with what I consider the two classes of Rich Internet Applications: Rich Web Applications and Rich Desktop Applications. In order for web applications to make the leap, they are going to have to become more robust and use a different deployment model while keeping the web presence alive. The “power users” may be the only people who will download a desktop client, but in some ways that helps you segment your user base into more valuable distinctions. We’re seeing some of this with web properties adopting widgets that reside on the desktop and give users access to information from their web account. Full Rich Desktop Applications are the next step and as more people become comfortable with the idea of downloading a client to access their data, there will be pressure on the web applications to become richer. This is where technologies like Flash and WPF/E can come along and help make the transition between web and desktop almost invisible for both users and developers. Assets can be reused and the look and feel of the desktop application and the web application will remain the same.

A lot of people are still figuring out where desktop applications fit into the new world of Web 2.0 and it’s something we should all be thinking about as users. I’m willing to trade some of my universal access for features that make my life easier. But I’m not willing to give that access up completely, so the need for a web presence is still very important. Companies that use both models correctly will have a huge head start.

[tags]Web Applications, Web 2.0, Rich Internet Applications[/tags]

Mike Arrington let me put together a guest post about Apollo that he ran today and the biggest value for me has been in the comments. While there do seem to be a lot of incorrect perceptions a big issue is going to be security, and rightly so. As Brian noted there aren’t really any documents about security or how Apollo is going to handle it. That’s something I hope Adobe remedies because the issue is only going to get bigger.

I did like a post by Marshall Sponder over at WebMetricsGuru on how Apollo could help the issue of RIA metrics. With the page view quickly becoming worthless, we need to find a way to measure RIAs. Apollo provides new hooks that might be well suited for that. I wonder how we measure RIAs in Apollo. It’s a good question.

Big thanks again to Mike for letting me talk to his users about a technology I’m excited about. Hopefully this leads to more talk about RIAs.

Oh, it’s also been submitted to digg, so if you thought the article was good, digg away.

[tags]Adobe, Apollo, TechCrunch[/tags]