Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The Shape of Things To Come?

A lot of us have heard about RIA's (Rich Internet Applications). They are the way of the future, though even with broad band speeds I think the responsiveness of RIAs needs to be as snappy as desktop applications for RIAs to really take off. They are getting close.

We now have Silverlight, Flash/Flex, and improvements in Javascript/Javascript Frameworks to make things start to happen. Many visionaries have invested a lot of time in Flash/Flex/Actionscript because they see this as the way of the future. Here is one minor example or a RIA that just came online.

http://www.windowshop.com/ (Amazon run shopping site that uses Flex I believe).

Another trend is the blending between the desktop and the web. Adobe Air is an example, and now Yahoo has come out with their own plaform.

http://browserplus.yahoo.com/

Grrr...I swore off yahoo 'cause they pissed me off, but I guess I will have to check it out.

Some even argue that RIAs are Web 2.0, and that Web 3.0 will be the "game web" (virtual reality, game like interfaces, big use of 3D, increased responsiveness). This is where I'd like to be developing, but just like VRML in the 90ies (which still lives, kinda) user acceptance of this type of stuff isn't quiet there yet, and probably won't be for a long time. Too bad, because developing these technologies could be actually easier. Hacking out websites using a combination of HTML/JavaScript/Server Script/Action Script etc... tend to be complex and take a lot of time. Gametech, though complex, could produce through competition some really good Web 3.0 tools. There are some great start ups working on this (I can't for the life of me right now remember my favorite one, which right now is Mac only on the dev side, I was going to post a link to it), so I keep watching and hoping.

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