Read/WriteWeb had a post about Mahalo, a people-powered search engine that I’d looked at in the past but hadn’t paid a lot of attention to. Supposedly it’s traffic is growing so I decided to check out Rich Internet Applications and then Adobe AIR. The Adobe AIR entry is actually pretty good. They cover all the biggies and even have a good rundown of “fast facts”. Their results for rich Internet application are non existent, so it isn’t an entirely perfect system but maybe there is something to this humanized search thing.

[tags]Mahalo, Adobe, AIR, Search[/tags]

Seesmic seems to be the darling of the tech world right now. Michael Arrington has invested and Loic Le Meur is a likeable and saavy promoter. But long before Seesmic came along there was EyeJot which at first billed itself as an online video messaging service and has since started to branch out to more features. They recently released a pro version of the account which gives users unlimited mailbox storage, lets them increase the message length from 30 seconds to 5 minutes and gives access to a mobile mailbox.

They’ve got an “EyeJot This” bookmarklet that lets you take any page and send it out to friends with a video message. They also added a blog widget that lets you show all of your public videos and one that lets people send you a video message right from your blog. Both EyeJot and Seesmic use Flex so it’s really exciting to see these two Flex applications add features and turn heads in the process. DemoGirl has a good screencast with a roundup of the features.

[tags]Seesmic, Flex, EyeJot, Video Messaging[/tags]

There’s a really interesting article in CrossTalk about the drop in the number of computer science students in school. I spent a year as a CS major at Penn before transferring into the Economics department so I’m not as qualified to talk about this as I’d like to be. The CrossTalk argues that part of the problem is Java being the programing language everyone learns first but I really liked Joel Spolsky’s solution to the problem; creating a brand new kind of curriculum around computer science that is more liberal arts based.

I’m an average programmer, but even I know that there is an art to programming. Mathematics is still extremely important, especially for solving computer science problems, but there’s a lot of other knowledge that goes into creating an application. Creating a web application is arguably even more liberal-arts slanted because you’re much closer to the design part of the application so you have to think about what the user will see.

Maybe the language we teach is the problem but I’m with Joel, I think it’s more of a mentality. His idea of a Bachelor of Fine arts for programming seems crazy at first but as you think about it more, it makes a lot of sense. Rich internet applications would be a perfect fit in an educational program like that. You could take interactive design classes alongside more traditional comp sci curriculum. You’d get a much fuller picture of the art of programming.

[tags]Programming, Courses, Education[/tags]

When I said I wanted to talk about cool stuff it was both companies and just things that are going to be game changing. One of those is Degrafa, a declarative graphics framework built by some very talented guys that opens up a ton of new functionality in Flex. I won’t give anything away, but the Degrafa guys are doing some very interesting things and they’re opening up Flex to a more creative class. As anyone who has seen the Thermo video knows, building great looking Flex applications is really hard. The best example I’ve seen is Juan Sanchez’s awesome skins.

Degrafa allows you to add some sophisticated stylistic elements to your Flex application in a way that makes sense from a development standpoint. The samples page shows you the kinds of things that are possible. They’ve completely overhauled the types of graphics and assets that are available in Flex and developers can now use those to get very creative in their Flex applications.

So why is this so important? Because Flex 3 made a lot of strides in adding very design heavy elements to your Flex application but it still isn’t quite there. Flex applications shouldn’t always have to look like Flex applications. Being able to declaratively define graphical assets in your application is going to make it MUCH easier to create a very custom experience for your users. Once word gets out about this and people figure out how it works I think this could be a big driver of Flex adoption and help the whole platform evolve.

[tags]Flex, Degrafa, Thermo[/tags]

Costa Rica was awesome…mostly. It was kind of an “outdoors Disneyland” so I felt a little cheap and touristy but it was great to detach, hike, ride a zipline, drink pretty good beer and stay away from electronics. But I still thought a lot about work. I thought about ways I can make myself a better evangelist and more valuable to Adobe. I thought about how I can make my blog less boring and I thought about how I can make RIAs the talk of techtown.

I actually took a bit of a hit when I joined Adobe in terms of “influence”. I was never an A-lister or anything close to it but I had a bit of geek cred in the wider Web 2.0 world and every once in a while I’d get links/attention/questions about rich Internet applications from the movers and shakers of the tech news world (not to be confused with the actual doers in technology). But when I joined Adobe I think I was viewed as selling out a bit and the attention didn’t come quite as often. I’d argue I still know more about RIAs and its community than almost anyone but I chose a side, so I’m impartial and I’m fine with the ramifications of that.

In the process my blog kind of got boring. It was watered down a bit with Adobe news and how “pumped” I was about what Adobe was doing. That stuff sucks for readers if that’s all there is and there’s no context to our announcements. Of course I’m excited about it but I work for the company, so it’s a no brainer. YOU guys are the ones doing the really cool stuff. You’re building applications, arguing about user interfaces, talking about designer developer workflow and building companies that *gasp* actually make money. Adobe does some cool stuff but it doesn’t become really interesting until you do something with it. Adobe is the clay and you are the artists. My goal this year is to help you get the attention of the digerati. I want to show off what you’re doing and help show how it’s going to impact users and change the way people communicate/work/play. That’s what excites me about RIAs and all of you are living and breathing it every day.

So please, drop me an email if something is cool. I want to get you on TechCrunch and Read/WriteWeb, I want Scoble to do a really long video with you, I want Hugh McLeod to do a funny little drawing about you. I want Dave Winer to make a post about you with those little red hashmarks that I don’t entirely understand. Eventually I want the New York Times to write about you and the Wall Street Journal or The Register to talk about what you’re doing.

There’s no doubt that bloggers can be overrated and full of themselves. But when you get them excited about something it starts the ball rolling and can turn into something very valuable for you regardless of how you define value. There’s so much going on within the AXNA bubble that people don’t get to see. I hope I can help you draw it out and if you have any ideas on how I can do that, I’m all ears. Now get back to sculpting.

[tags]Adobe, personal, blogging, AXNA[/tags]