Anthony Franco, who I don’t believe is aggregated on MXNA and seems to work for effectiveUI has a really good post about The Future of Rich Internet Applications. What I like best about it is that it isn’t coming from the viewpoint of either Adobe or Microsoft but rather a company that is creating applications for customers. In the end, the customers decide what technology best suits their needs. There are definitely going to be contrasts between how Microsoft and Adobe go about solving those problems, but it doesn’t mean one is “better” than the other. I like Andy’s Anthony’s (sorry mate) look at things.

[tags]Rich Internet Applications[/tags]

I saw this via Rob Relyea but it looks like Andrew Eick is putting together revolUXion, a podcast around Microsoft’s UX technologies. It looks interesting and I wonder if there is going to be some more general user experience content that applies to the Flash world. No idea when they’re planning to launch.

[tags]WPF/E, revolUXion, podcast[/tags]

Jeff put up our second episode of The Flex Show which is part 1 of a 2 part series with Simeon Bateman talking about Flex and ColdFusion and focusing more specifically on frameworks.

The podcast runs 22 minutes and I say “umm” or “uhh” approximately 7,281 times. I’ll work on that for the next episode. Simeon gives a lot of good info about Flex 2 training, certification and frameworks, so hopefully my verbalized brain farts aren’t too distracting. I also set up a channel on Pluggd, so if you use that service (which is awesome), subscribe away.

[tags]The Flex Show, Podcasting, Flex, Pluggd[/tags]

I have a guest post over at CenterNetworks regarding Where Rich Internet Applications fit into Web 2.0. It focuses mostly on the Flash platform and how it enables a much greater experience and really more powerful web applications. I remain convinced that while Ajax has brought us ahead by leaps and bounds, the developers and users are going to need more powerful tools and platforms to build the next generation of web 2.0 applications. For the web, Flash is the biggets and most mature game in town, which makes it ideal for Web 2.0 applications that are ready to make the jump to the next level.

Thanks to Campbell for looking over the post and helping me refine it. I’m hoping to do more posts like this tha tie RIAs back to wider topics and help show how all of these technologies are relevant to what’s happening on the web right now. If you have any suggestions, drop me a line.

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

Seems like today is the first day people are starting to talk about Flex 3. Ted Patrick had a big post about Flex 3′s most important feature and now Ben Forta has blogged about getting on the Flex 3 Prerelease program. From Ben’s post:

Adobe is looking for experienced developers (including ColdFusion developers specifically) to join an advisory panel dedicated to the next major version of Flex and beyond…Selected panel respondents will have the opportunity to provide feedback on future versions of Flex, and will get to test early releases of Adobe software.

It makes me wonder what kind of release date we’re looking at for Flex 3. Could it be this year? Ted is demoing Flex 3 at 360 Flex in March, so we may know more then.

[tags]Flex 3, Adobe, Prerelease[/tags]

Interesting post over on TUAW about how Mac Book Pro sales are lower than expected. The reason? Adobe hasn’t released a universal binary version of CS3. I always forget how much clout Adobe really has. People are putting off entire computer purchases because of lack of availability of Adobe software. And they’re doing so in large enough numbers to have an impact on Apple’s bottom line (good thing they’re selling all of those iPods).

Now when I think of how this affects their merger with Macromedia and their strategy going forward with Flex and Flash, I see nothing but good signs. No one is better than Adobe at catering to the design market. I think competition from Microsoft is great, and I don’t think Microsoft’s offerings can just be brushed aside, but an awoken Adobe is going to be able to build some fantastic solutions. People trust Adobe, they’ve spent a huge amount of time learning Adobe products, and getting Flex and Flash to tap into that cult-like market can only be good for Rich Internet Applications.

Adobe sometimes struggles with developers, but even that’s changing. Ted Patrick has done a kick ass job of getting a lot of developers interested in Flex and getting the message out to a new crowd. I look at what Adobe has been able to do with designers and I have high hopes that they can bring the same results to Flex and Rich Internet Applications. It’s starting to happen, and excitement continues to build around both Flex and Apollo.  If Adobe’s mammoth presence in design can be parlayed into RIAs? Watch out.

Update: I want to be clear about one thing. Adobe already has a massive presence in RIAs (just look at Flash and Flex). What I mean is if they can do what they’ve done to the design market to RIAs, then we’ll all be better off. They’ve helped grow the design market to the point that hordes of designers are refusing to upgrade computers until Adobe moves. I want to see that kind of impact for Rich Internet Applications in general.

Update 2: Dave corrected me in the comments, it’s Mac Pro, not Mac Book Pro. Not quite as earth shattering/interesting and my use of F**K in the title now looks even less warranted. Sorry.

[tags]Adobe, TUAW, CS3, Flex, Flash, Apollo[/tags]

Lee Brimlow is my hero. He has had theFlashBlog for a long time and as part of it the fanstastic gotoAndLearn which has helped many a budding Flashers. Then recently he jumped into Windows Presentation Foundation and created theWPFBlog which got a TON of attention in the Microsoft community. Now he’s decided to forego sleep entirely and created theFlexBlog. He’s even got gotoAndLearn built in Flex. Lee, you are going to love Flex.

[tags]Flex, Lee Brimlow[/tags]

Tariq over at CFlex has put together a Community Pulse Survey for Flex that aims to gauge where the Flex community is. After looking at the questions, I think it’s a great idea. He wants to get a feel for how advanced the community is, what technology backgrounds we come from and how our companies are using Flex. This information is something we could all benefit from, and Tariq is planning on releasing all the data to the public. It’s entirely anonymous and you have until the end of the month, so take a couple of minutes and fill it out.

[tags]CFlex, Flex, Community[/tags]

Because my birthday is so close to the New Year, I’ve always done the “year review” today instead of on the 1st. Normally I’m not a big fan of my birthday, what’s the point of getting older? And today I’m still not totally feeling the birthday vibe, but it’s been a pretty amazing year so it’s fun to look back. Some of the highlights:

• I moved out to Seattle and then this year started working for Threecast, a web startup that I’m really excited about.
• I climbed Mount Rainier over the 4th of July (hopefully the first of many more trips)
• I started blogging for ZDNet in March (my first post was about Vista)
• I got to meet Bill Gates, which was still amazing when I go back and think about it.
• I got to visit Adobe’s offices in San Francisco for the first time and talk with a lot of the people whose blogs I read on a regular basis.
• I had season tickets for the Seahawks which was a blast.
• Ciara and I spent a weekend in Paris which was a lot of fun.
• I got to meet a lot of fun people who are building applications that show off the power of Rich Internet Applications.

I’m excited about what this year is going to hold. I want to thank all of you who keep reading the things I write about here. It’s been a lot of fun to meet and interact with you guys this year and I really appreciate all of the feedback that I get.

[tags]Personal, Blogging, Ryan Stewart[/tags]

Wow, what a day. It was long, suprising and overall very good. I’m sitting at the airport so I’ll have more details later but I had a great time at Expression Session. I didn’t get to attend many of the talks, but I chatted with a lot of people about RIAs and learned a ton (which is the point, right?). The highlights:

•  Finally met Lee Brimlow and he was really cool. I was expecting him to actually be a robot because the guy never seems to sleep and pumps out new examples like crazy, but he’s human and he seems like a very fun guy.
• Meeting Tim Sneath, the WPF evangelist. He’s also a cool guy and he has a lot of good thoughts about Apollo, WPF and how all of these things are going to fall into place. He’s also the manager for the WPF/E evangelist team, which I didn’t realize, so it was fun to chat with him about WPF/E.
• Metaliq‘s WPF demo. Metaliq wrote a WPF application that was demoed at the keynote and I thought it was quite good. I’ll describe it in more detail over on ZDNet after I’ve had a chance to play with it in person, but I think it was a good example of a valuable desktop application.

All in all, great fun. I’ll have more when I get home.

[tags]WPF, Expression Session, Expression Studio[/tags]