So why the big deal?

Software is moving from being packaged, where you develop for a particular operating system and put it in a box, to being developed and distributed over the internet and being designed to run across operating systems. That’s where all the innovation has moved to. Software isn’t as OS-specific anymore, it’s moving to rich internet applications. It’s a sea change in how software in general is being built.

Adobe’s Kevin Lynch on AIR’s Open-Source Road to the Desktop.

What is Adobe offering?

Adobe hasn’t developed a cohesive online suite like Google Docs and Zoho, but they are developing a series of applications that will, given time, challenge for position.

Buzzword

Buzzword, originally developed by Virtual Ubiquity, is a web-based, highly collaborative word processor built on Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash platform. This online editor really excels in “what you see is what you print” (WYSIWYP) functionality. Unlike the slightly clunky Google Docs and Zoho Writer, using Flash allows Buzzword to handle page layout in a way that is not possible with HTML. Buzzword also offers online collaboration via its sharing feature, which, like Google Docs, allows users to invite others to read, edit or comment on documents in realtime. Buzzword stores files online so that they are available in a single repository for document collaboration. Work is underway to support Adobe AIR to allow for offline work.

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You can find more information about Buzzword on the Adobe Labs website.

Share

Share is a free web-based service that makes it easy to share, publish and organize your important documents. Each document you upload to your Share account is assigned a unique website address. To share a document with someone, select the document you want to share, enter the person’s email address and an optional message, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted only to the recipients. Recipients will get an email with a link they can click on to download the document. You can also link to your documents, or embed flash previews on your own website, blog or wiki. This concept is not new, with Scribd and Issuu being an alternatives.

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You can find more information about Share on the Adobe Labs website.

Photoshop Express

Adobe Photoshop Express is an online Rich Internet Application (RIA) where you can polish, sort, store, and show off up to 2GB of photos. Furthermore, you can crop, rotate, smudge, tweak, twirl, pinch, correct — or any combination you like — the images. The tool isn’t like its more powerful offline sister, it is more like the photo editing website Picnik. What’s interesting about the Adobe offering, is the fact that Photoshop Express comes with 2GB of free storage for your photos, which makes it less of just an online tool, and more of an online service. The 2GB trumps Picassa‘s current 1GB.

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You can find more information about Photoshop Express on the Adobe Labs website.

Brio

Brio, currently in Beta, is a personal web-conferenceing service that enables you to instantly communicate and collaborate using your own online meeting room. Brio offers screen-sharing, full multi-party video, VoIP, teleconferencing, whiteboarding, chat and shared notes; all via the browser.

To start a meeting, just go to your meeting room and invite others to join you at the same URL. As the host, you will need to download a small Brio add-in in order to share your screen. Meeting attendees will not need to download any software unless they will also be sharing their screen. There is no need to schedule meetings in advance.

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You can find more information about Brio on the Adobe Labs website.

Integration and Offline Access

Although each of these tools work independently of one another, using different sign-ons, it is a very real possibility that Adobe will adopt a similar route to that of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Zoho and integrate their online products into a single cohesive unit with one sign-on; the Adobe ID.

Plans are already afoot to integrate the Buzzword and Share tools, both of which sit naturally together. What would be more interesting would be the integration of Photoshop Express with these tools so that you can, for example, edit images embedded in a Buzzword document.

The Future

Adobe has stiff competion from the offline, desktop applications. This is where AIR enters the picture. Adobe said, as far back as September 2007, that they would create a version of Buzzword in AIR. This has yet to be envisaged, but the rumblings from Adobe suggest that this development is still in the works. Bringing Buzzword to the desktop would be an extremely significant step, making it a very real alternative to desktop word processors.

All that is required now for Adobe is to implement a spreadsheet and presentation application. Whether they buy in these tools, or use their existing skill set is the question. On current form, and if the acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity and its Buzzword product is an indication, Adobe are likely to be keeping a keen eye on existing technologies being developed by third parties. For example SlideRocket is a viable contender for presentations – built in Flash and with an AIR client; the user interface even looks similar to the above products. Or there is blist for spreadsheets that again is built on Flex/Flash technology.

Keep an eye on Adobe Labs for their latest developments. You will notice developments in areas such as RSS with myFeedz, colour theming with Kuler, and a competitor to Microsoft’s Sharepoint and Google’s Sites called JamJar.

So what is the big deal? The Adobe marketing team state that:

The Adobe AIR runtime lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems. Adobe AIR offers an exciting new way to engage customers with innovative, branded desktop applications, without requiring changes to existing technology, people, or processes.

What AIR applications should you check out?

What is intriguing is that all the tools I have chosen are generally useful tools for the developer or designer, with the exception of twhirl, which is a social-interaction tool. I’m looking forward to when other, less developer-centric tools become freely available. AgileAgenda has taken the lead with this respect, albeit not freely available, as has eBay desktop, but I would like to see examples from the BBC in the form of a desktop BBC iPlayer or maybe a Flickr image browser, del.icio.us bookmark reader, RSS aggregator and a Picnik image editor.

Analytics Reporting Suite

The Analytics Reporting Suite, by Nicolas Lierman, brings Google Analytics to the desktop. It uses it’s own custom API to interact with Google and nearly implements all the features of Analytics.

For website owners this is a must-have application. Like the twhirl AIR application below, it is a fantastic example of what can be achieved with Flex and AIR. Measuring visitor trends and traffic are essential tasks to managing and improving a websites performance. The Analytics Reporting Suite allows you to configure multiple Google’s Analytics accounts and access the web-based suite’s plethora of features via a desktop application. The application displays integrated graphs and animations via a tabbed interface, which allows you switch between a number of reports. These reports can then be saved as a PDF, Excel or XMLdocument, or printed.

You can download and install the application from the About Nico website.

twhirl twitter Client

twhirl, by Marco Kaiser, is probably the most popular desktop client for the twitter micro-blogging service. Most of the features available on the twitter website are accessible through twhirl, plus, a lot of usability enhancements have been added to make it easier to manage multiple accounts. This is great for those who want to separate business and personal accounts they may have.

The twhirl application is a great example of how AIR can bring web applications to the desktop; it can dock to the system tray, display message alerts and you can configure the applications opacity when not focused (great if you like Mac and Vista-styled themes). The application allows you to search twitter users, view their timelines, add friends, view followers, delete tweets and much much more. Twhirl automatically fetches your friends’ status updates, direct messages and replies, whilst also colour coding different types of messages and alerting you to messages both audibly and visually.

The twhirl application is skinnable and comes with several built in skins with which you can customise the application. All-in-all twhirl is not only one of the best twitter clients, but AIR applications.

You can download and install the application from the twhirl website.

Kuler Desktop

Adobe kuler is the first web-hosted application from Adobe Labs designed both to stand alone and to complement Adobe Creative Suite software. Built using Adobe Flash and ActionScript 3.0, kuler is all about colour: colour for exploration, inspiration, experimentation and sharing. Kuler is clearly targeted at the designer, but anyone interested in colour will benefit from its use.

You can download and install the application from the Adobe Labs website.

WebKut

WebKut is a web screenshot tool that allows you to capture web pages, or parts of them in a very simple way. It provides you with 3 capture options: the entire page, the current view, or only a selection. This little application proves particularly handy for those presentations or projects that need great visuals from the web.

You can download and install the application from the WebKut website.

RichFLV

RichFLV, by Benjamin Dobler, lets you edit FLV files. The key features include reading FLV metadata, read and edit cuepoints, cut FLV files, convert the sound from an FLV to MP3 format, convert an FLV to an SWF … and much more.

You can download and install the application from the Adobe AIR Marketplace website.

SearchCoders Dashboard

This Flex-based chat widget is designed with programmers in mind. The code input feature allows developers to chat about code without disrupting the conversation.

You can download and install the application from the SearchCoders website.

Pownce

Much like twhirl in look, feel and ease-of-use, but with a slant towards productivity rather than micro-blogging, Pownce is a way to keep in touch and share things with your friends or colleagues. You can send people files, links, events, and messages and then have real conversations with the recipients. This is a great collaboration tool and was one of the first services to really embrace AIR as an application architecture, which could realise their service as a desktop client. Everything that is available via the Pownce website is also available via the client application, except and possibly importantly, the ability for the user to amend their account settings and add friends to your network; this still has to be done via the website.

For a small annual amount, Pownce offers a paid-for service which will eliminate adverts from your profile and allow you to send huge file sizes (100MB) and customise the theme of your Pownce.

Pownce also offers Drupal integration and a mobile application, which works with the iPhone, BlackBerries and many more ‘internet-ready’ mobile devices.

You can download and install the application from the Pownce website.