Adobe AIR (Apollo) is available on Labs

Well, Apollo has moved out of alpha and the new beta has a new name, presumably what it will now be called for release - Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). AIR is now available for download from Adobe Labs and should continue to give developers tools to press claims for the desktop space. No more mention about how this might eventually cross onto the mobile space through.

Some quick eyes and wits on various lists have already pointed out that a) AIR is RIA backwards (oohhh spooky!), b) Adobe has moved into the holy grail of software sales, where they really do make money from selling "air".

Ahh IT professionals, so hillarious, so insightful. No wonder we spend too much time on Twitter and not enough time with real people :)

webDU Day Two and all done

So webDU is done for another year, and I can say that it was again a very successful conference. Geoff, Julie, Vanessa and the rest of the Daemon team should be very proud and their efforts are very much appreciated by all attendees, speakers and sponsors.

So Day Two started off not as dusty as previous years ... the previous evening was the annual conference banquet with it's regular highlights of great food, casual conversation amongst everyone and some fun entertainment. This year saw the Kath and Kim show come to webDU, and the two foxy ladies from Fountain Lakes did their level best to embarress as many of the visiting US Adobe folks as possible. Only problem was that when Kim tried to throw herself at who she thought was Tim Buntel, she instead had Andrew Spaulding (and don't tell me you didn't enjoy it Andrew!). They also thought that Ted Patrick was the Adobe guy with the dog who went everywhere ... James Talbot was beside me saying "Don't tell them it's me ... don't you say a word!".

The Microsoft party this year was handled by none other than our own Scott Barnes, who cut quite the dashing figure in his new MS Expression jacket. Free jackets and copies of Expression Web also sweetened the deal for many party goers ... but I think we all knew most were there for the drinks :)

But everyone pulled up very well I thought the next day, and the scond day keynote with Tim Buntel (ColdFusion Scorpio preview) and Ted Patrick (Flex). Sessions were also well attended, with Jesse showing off his awesome work on Flash Lite 2.x component framework called Shuriken. The day ended with a roundtable with all attendees and the Adobe guys doing their best to answer questions, but as always most of the answers involved a healthy dose of "no comment" :)

So, just the speaker party to go tonight before I head home on Sunday. It's been a great time this year and I was pleased to find so much positive energy for Moket and what we're trying to achieve. Most believe that Flash Lite WILL evetually fulfill the promises we've had over the past 2-3 years, and hopefully Moket is still well placed when it does.

So from webDU 2007 ... good night!

Touchdown at webDU

webDU is officially underway for me. I got the red-eye out of Brisbane this morning at 5.30am to get down to Sydney in time for the Day Zero training course I was running for Flash Lite. Got to meet up with James and Kai again which was cool, and gave 6 or so guys a total deep-end experience in Flash Lite 2,x development :) I think they're heads are still spinning, and I'm just catching up to the fact as to how little sleep I got last night! Off to the annual ANZ User Group Managers meeting tonight to catch up some more ... keynote tomorrow is Apolllo with Mike Chambers and Mie Downey (always a hoot), then my FL session first up. Rock on!

Apollo Video from Mike Chambers

For those who have had their heads under a rock somehwere for the past 12 months or so, Adobe are really gearing up for their new product called Apollo. The merging of Flash, Flex, HTML, etc into a desktop environment is very much a priority for them right now, getting loads of airtime at the recent MAX conference and I'm sure will be shown in more depth at the upcoming webDU 2007. Mike Chambers from Adobe posted this video online showing Christian Cantrell and a few Apollo apps he's been working on. A good watch if you want to see exactly what they're talking about.