We have some cool stuff on labs today and as an RIA evangelist I’m really, really stoked because I think BlazeDS and AIR are going to let people create new classes of applications in a lot of different verticals. BlazeDS is an open source version of our LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS) product. It doesn’t have all of the features of LCDS including synchronization or conflict management (two things that are important for online/offine applications) but it does include the underlying architecture for creating engaging, real time RIAs.

AIR has helped reinvigorate the desktop by helping web developers port applications or create new ones that persistently live on the users machine. And the Flash Platform has helped make the web richer with more media, engaging user interfaces and very interactive experiences. But the core of the web has always been communication. That’s where BlazeDS hits. Prior to BlazeDS doing real time communication or connecting clients together was tough and expensive. As a result, people weren’t able to add those pieces to their applications. Now that BlazeDS is free and open, any developer can download it and add that communication functionality to their apps.

Think of the impact on social networking; being able to *really* connect with friends. Think about being able to easily create multiplayer games on Flash and AIR. For your business applications imagine having the ability to quickly add real time collaboration amongst team members. The web has been about a page requesting something, waiting, and then rendering the response. With BlazeDS we can change that and start helping the entire web talk in real time (Look at James Ward’s benchmarks). I’ve seen examples of it working with Ajax, so this truly is a web thing and not just a Flash thing.

[tags]BlazeDS, AIR, Flash[/tags]

So think about the power of the desktop with the power of fast, small, real-time data transfer and how you create applications in this new sandbox.