The Universal Desktop

July 7th, 2008

OpenLaszlo 4.1 relased with DHTML support

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 11:35 am

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, OpenLaszlo

Tags: DHTML, AJAX, Scripting Languages, Internet, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Web 2.0, Ryan Stewart

I completely missed this but it looks like OpenLaszlo 4.1 has been released and it includes full support for DHTML/Ajax as well as SWF/Flash. In addition there are a number of bug fixes and overhauled documentation.

Back when OpenLaszlo started showing being able to create either DHML/Ajax or Flash content with the same codebase it got a lot of people talking about bridging the gap between Ajax and Flash. I’m not quite sure it does that, but it does provide developers with a more nimble way to deploy applications. You can now write OpenLaszlo and then choose which platform to compile to. And you can change it up as you go if you need to take advantages of one platform or the other. I was also always a fan of OpenLaszlo UIs and so having those effects available in DHTML/Ajax makes this a pretty compelling way to create those applications.

In addition to DHTML support they’ve also added early support for SWF 9 features in this release. If you’re interested in participating you can head over to the Wiki, the JIRA bug tracking system, or the mailing lists and forums.

July 2nd, 2008

LineRider releases a Silverlight 2 version

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:55 pm

Categories: Microsoft, Cynergy, Silverlight

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, LineRider, Games, Personal Technology, Ryan Stewart

Silverlight games are starting to appear. Today a press release went out announcing that Cynergy had worked on a Silverlight version of LineRider. A couple of notable things. The game is very popular. During the beta stage the game got a lot of traction and had over 46 million page views. It was featured in a couple of McDonald’s commercials and seems to be king in the casual games market. Time.com said that “Line Rider is becoming one of the most popular flash games on the web.” Which brings me to the second interesting thing. The original beta was a Flash game but Cynergy did the work to convert it to Silverlight 2. It’s cool to see more Silverlight 2 applications out there ahead of the Olympics, and in my testing it seemed to work pretty well, but I’m not sure why it was ported from Flash to Silverlight. (Disclaimer: I work for Adobe). No mention in the press release although it sounds like they’ll be porting the game to Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 so they’re aiming for a lot of platforms.

Update: A commenter pointed out this news post that explains the switch.

The new version represents a technological overhaul of the game and will provide users with a faster, smoother version of the game that is available free on the web at the official Line Rider Web site…

It’s a pretty cool game and it seems like a lot of fun. Most importantly it’s a very good showcase for Silverlight. Hopefully you’ll have more luck with the game than I did. I keep killing my poor LineRider guy. Well, either killing him or sending him into a big empty void.

July 2nd, 2008

WordPress, Gears, and the converging browser/desktop

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:19 pm

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Google, Ajax

Tags: Wordpress, Blogging, Web Browser, Desktops, Web Browsers, Hardware, Internet, Ryan Stewart

I had a good conversation today about the browser/desktop hybrid and where the converging is going to happen. Will it be more on the desktop side or will it be more on the browser side? I think we’ve seen the original browser-based development model win out as more and more people are learning HTML and JavaScript to build applications. But what about how the actual applications behave? Well today on the WordPress blog they explained to their users how they’re converging - by using Gears.

They’re using Gears to enable their “Turbo” link. What the Turbo link does is stores some data from the admin console - things like the images and HTML data - on the local machine so it’s accessible right off the hard drive instead of having to download it over and over again. It’s a small difference but it can have a big impact on the end user experience by speeding things up and providing more instant feedback. WordPress is basically making part of the internet faster by storing it on a local machine.

I think blogging is one of the more interesting examples of the browser/desktop melding. There are still a ton of desktop-based blog editors out there. People use them for all kinds of reasons including it’s easier to edit posts, they can craft posts offline, and it’s easier to drag and drop files/images/videos onto a desktop application. But I’d imagine that most people use the web-based blogging admin interface and find it perfectly adequate (I do). So can browsers evolve enough to remove the “market” for desktop blogging software or will there always be something better about using a full-fledged desktop client for some people?

July 2nd, 2008

Brian Goldfarb talks about Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom with Michael Coté

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 11:54 am

Categories: Microsoft, Silverlight

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Ryan Stewart

Coté just published a video of he and James interviewing Brian Goldfarb, Product Manager in Microsoft Developer division, about Silverlight 2 and the Deep Zoom functionality. Coté got the interview while at TechEd and there’s some good stuff inside about possible use cases for the Deep Zoom technology.

July 1st, 2008

Search-ability in Flash

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:03 am

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Adobe, Flash

Tags: Search Engine Optimization, Google Inc., Search Engine, Flash, Search, Marketing Research, Marketing, Ryan Stewart

Last night Adobe announced that we’ve given a special version of the Flash Player to Google and Yahoo that will more accurately let them crawl through Flash content. Even though Google has been indexing .SWF files for a while and even been able to pull out some text, they haven’t really been able to send their spiders through an application and pull out links and context. Flash applications are dynamic in nature, so having the special player means that Google will be able to pull out more relevant information than it could before. But in our community there seems to be a lot of concern and questions about how this is going to work.

As I see it, not a whole lot changes for the Flash world over night. I think this puts Flash more on par with HTML and Ajax applications when it comes to search engine optimization. We still have a lot of basic issues with how searching an application even works. How do SEO Microsoft Word or Photoshop? This doesn’t address those issues and it is by no means a silver bullet for RIAs and search engines. What it does do is start to expose a ton of the data inside of Flash applications that just wasn’t accessible before. Kevin Merrit of blist had a great example. They use deep linking in their Flash application to let you dive into a specific blist. Now, in theory, Google can index the content of that blist as well as the fact that it has a unique URL associated with it. That wasn’t possible before.

Show me the money
From an Adobe side, it sucks not to be able to tell our community more about what’s going to happen or how things will get indexed. But we just don’t know. We’ve simply given Google a better look into Flash movies and they’ll decide how that plays into their algorithm. There’s so much energy and time going into figuring out the secrets of SEO and now the Flash community has a horse in that game. Smart, entrepreneurial people are going to quickly figure out what exactly is being indexed by Google and what the best ways to expose Flash content to the search engines are. It happened with HTML and it now, finally, it can happen with Flash. But my hope is that this will help tie RIAs and Flash/Flex applications into the wider ecosystem of what Google does. Could we see AdSense for Flex apps? What about Google Analytics? As Google gets better at crawling Flash movies and we start to understand more what’s going on, developers should be able to expose content in the right way and tie into some of those advertising services.

Where’s Microsoft?
The one thing that I was disappointed in was that we didn’t offer this special player to more people. I get the sense that there was some work on both sides that had to go on to really fit the special Flash Player into the search ecosystem. The Register said we had discussions with the Live Search team but that they’re not currently active. I’m not sure of the state of things but I’m in the process of finding out. It would be great if this was open and anyone could use it. That’s been the direction Adobe has been going so hopefully it turns out that way soon.

In general, I think this is a big milestone for Flash and RIAs. It’s kind of confusing, kind of hard to wrap your head around, but developers are smart people, and there’s too much money at stake not to figure it out. I think what will happen is that over the next 6 months people will figure out exactly what is being indexed and how it affects search engine rankings. Then we can all start to create some best practices around SEO and Flash. Then I’m sure Google will change the algorithm again and we take a few steps back before moving forward. In the end, that’s what’s good about this. Flash can now play the same SEO game as HTML and all that it entails.

June 30th, 2008

Is designing for the small screen more fun?

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 9:29 am

Categories: Mobile-Web, Design, iPhone, Device Central

Tags: Apple iPhone, Desktop, Application, Mobile, Mobile World, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Ryan Stewart

I have completely fallen in love with my iPhone. As far as I can tell it comes as close to the perfectly designed device as possible and it seems like I’m discovering cool usability aspects all the time. Things like when you get a text message with a phone number or email address you get a little blue arrow that lets you email/call or add that to a contact. Doing that on my Blackjack is a pain. And it got me thinking. Is designing for the small screen more fun than designing full fledged applications on the desktop?

Part of me wonders if that was one of appealing things of first moving to the web browser. Creating desktop applications was always kind of tough but customizing them was VERY tough. You were basically stuck with the same component set that everyone else was. But in the browser you could do whatever you wanted. You could get creative with new kinds of UIs and you could basically make components and applications look however you wanted them to look. The browser had a lot more freedom than desktop applications.

On devices it seems like we have even more power to get creative and less room to work with. Instead of thinking about how an application is going to look on a gigantic monitor we only have a small screen. Which means we have to focus on the user interface. We have to design applications that fit a bunch of information into a tiny screen. It’s kind of a fun design problem. The iPhone software nailed it and I think the plethora of iPhone applications out there do a pretty good job as well. My favorites are the Facebook application and the Brightkite application.

As mobile platforms become more mature, I think the payoff (gigantic numbers) and intrigue is going to make them a first class design environment. More designers are going to want to work in the small space because of the freedom and creativity it provides. That means we’re going to need good, solid design tools for the mobile world. Adobe has been doing some of this with Device Central but I think there’s still a long way to go and that it’s anyone’s game. Designers tend to be very sticky and it’s hard to get them to switch from what they know, but a really good design tool targeted at the mobile world could possibly do that. I think in some ways the mobile world is the Wild West of design and there’s no sheriff in town yet. In fact, I’d say we’ve barley got a town. That means there’s lots of opportunity for money in these parts.

June 24th, 2008

Mobile RIAs - getting more exciting thanks to Nokia and Symbian

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:40 pm

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Mobile-Web

Tags: Nokia Corp., Mobile, Open Source, Rich Internet Application, Symbian Inc., Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Ryan Stewart

Big news today for those following mobile RIAs closely. Nokia is buying the remaining 52% of Symbian that it doesn’t own and making the mobile platform open source. As Steve O’Hear said, the move is “bold to say the least“. At a time when everyone is trying to make a play to unify the mobile world around one platform (Android, the iPhone, the Open Screen Project, Windows Mobile), having the platform which already has a lot of reach and momentum become an open source player is a big, big deal.

The list of companies making up the new “Symbian Foundation” is significant. It includes carriers like AT&T and NTT DOCOMO, handset manufacturers like LG Electronics and Motorola, and Samsung, and other parties like Texas Instruments and Vodafone. In general it’s a wide array of companies that has broad coverage of the market. And any company can join.

Right now the Symbian operating system has about 60% marketshare, which is a huge number in the fragmented world of mobile devices. For developers, this is very significant. Right now for people creating mobile RIAs it’s kind of a toss up as far as which platform to go with. Do you build for the hot new iPhone and stay locked into Apple, do you bank on Adobe getting Flash up to par with the desktop player and getting penetration on a bunch of phones, do you go with the unproven Android platform, or do you go with the open source technology that has 60% of the market. Seems like kind of a no brainer to me, and I think a lot of people building mobile RIAs will agree.

I’m not sure what the development model - especially for user interfaces - looks like on Symbian but I’ve heard stories that it’s not ideal. Currently there are a lot of different implementations of the Symbian platform which is another reason it’s been difficult to build for. This will unite those into one platform which will make it more appealing for developers - which is the end goal.

If you’re building mobile RIAs then you’ve got a lot to choose from. On one hand, it may be frustrating, but on the other hand, you’ve never been a hotter commodity. Everyone wants what you’re creating so you can leverage that to get feature requests implemented, get better documentation, better SDKs, or whatever it is you want. Go to town and have fun - you’re on the cutting edge.

June 19th, 2008

Practice Fusion shows off “Google Apps” for doctors

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 1:51 pm

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Advertising

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, Patient, Practice Management App, Ryan Stewart

Practice Fusion, a SaaS and ad-driven set of applications targeted at the medical market has just released a a suite of applications that they’re billing as “Google Apps” for doctors. I’ve written about Practice Fusion before and how it’s a really great example of an RIA that’s aimed at the field of medicine. As part of the suite today they’re releasing a Practice Management app, a Scheduling app, Secure Email, and Patient Management. Four tools that are indispensable for doctors.

The practice management app seems to be the hub of the suite. It’s what the doctor first sees and allows them to control and manage most part of their jobs. They can view patient data, communicate between staff, and look at a list of who has paid their bills. The scheduler is a pretty standard scheduling application but it provides automatic notifications to patients and lets you view the schedules for everyone in the office in one screen. The secure email lets doctors send messages to staff without having to go through typical email channels which can be subject to spam or other nonsense. Finally, the patient management lets you see all of your patient data in one place where you can adjust and make changes to any record which then occurs across the system - even with other doctors who are looking at that patient. It lets you quickly collaborate and add information to patients in a way that’s valuable.

I continue to like Practice Fusion’s business model. I think the medical field is one of the more lucrative areas that can benefit heavily from a dose of RIA. The fact that Practice Fusion uses Flex is also cool for me as an Adobe evangelist but I think the stuff they’re doing goes beyond any one technology. They’re showing how you can offer a free, valuable service to an industry in need of a solution. They’ve wrapped that solution in a great rich Internet application with quality user interface, good deployment, and easy access.

June 18th, 2008

Analytics in rich Internet applications and measuring success

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 11:35 am

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Advertising

Tags: Advertisement, Analytics, Rich Internet Application, Site, Financial Planning, Finance, Ryan Stewart

Via InsideRIA I found a blog post by Robert Hoekman Jr talking about some of the common myths of analytics today. It’s a pretty good look at what people really want to accomplish when it comes to “success” on the web. If you’re a news site then page views is a perfectly fine metric by which to judge whether or not you’re doing a good job. But if you’re building a web application, as Robert notes, that’s not always the best measuring stick:

If your site is a web application, the number of page views might be completely irrelevant because 50% of the actions on the site are performed on a single screen. In that case, information on individual files and data requests and click patterns will be more meaningful.

So what are the legions of statistic minded technologists to do now that RIA technologies have taken away the page view as a metric, how do we measure success on the web? Steve Rubel wrote the most poignant post about how we need to move beyond the page view ad figure out something else. He nails it at the end of his post:

As the page view platform crumbles, there’s going to be a shake out. Everyone is going to scramble to find a metric that helps them compete for ad dollars. Enjoy the show.

I’m not sure there is one “right answer” for metrics in the RIA world. I feel like the economics of the problem require that there be one: everyone has to be able to compete on the same playing field as everyone else. You have to be able to equally compare two properties. But in the end I think it comes down to a mix of users and time spent on a site. Both have their drawbacks. Users aren’t always “active” and time spent on a site means that people probably aren’t clicking on ads.

In the end, I think one of the more interesting aspects of the online ad business is that no one has ANY clue how to really figure out analytics for the ever-growing number of RIAs out there. Frankly, what we need, is a way to track how valuable an individual user is to advertisers. What are they doing while on your site. Are they consuming the ads? Are they clicking through? Some kind of standardized way to track that would blow the world wide open.

June 17th, 2008

Apple finally goes RIA

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 7:41 am

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Ajax, Apple

Tags: Rich Internet Application, Apple Inc., SproutCore, Ryan Stewart

I shouldn’t say finally. The writing has been on the wall forever but most people couldn’t figure out what the writing said. It turns out it has a name, SproutCore, an open source Javascript framework that has been getting some buzz because it may be powering the Mobile Me suite of applications from Apple soon.

There’s a big, long, sometimes hard to read post on RoughlyDrafted that dives into a bunch of Apple vs Adobe vs Microsoft vs Sun vs Google scenarios with the central topic being that SproutCore is Apple’s Flash killer. So what is SproutCore?

There are a couple of demos that actually ran pretty terribly on my Mac in Camino. Most of the news and following blog posts seem to come from a single session at WWDC that talked about SproutCore. The RoughlyDrafted post seems to imply that Apple will be supporting the SproutCore project. Could we see something like we have with WebKit? The SproutCore blog doesn’t mention anything like that which I can see. But the creator, Charles Jolley, was hired as part of the .Mac team so I guess that means that Apple has acquired the framework.

So Apple now has a bunch of pieces to put together a real HTML/Javascript RIA push. They have the platform: Safari (Mac/iPhone/Windows), the framework: SproutCore, the multimedia: Quicktime/H.264, and the tools. If you want to start delivering RIAs and you want people to start building RIAs on your platform, that’s pretty much what you need. But I’m not fully convinced this is a platform play for Apple. They don’t seem to want massive developer adoption (note the miniscule 1.5% acceptance rate for the iPhone dev program) but rather a way to deploy online applications that can mesh with the Apple brand.

I think we’re at a very interesting time in RIA. I’ve long considered Javascript and HTML a part of the RIA stack, but the places we’re seeing Javascript and HTML have become more prevalent. I think we’re reaching a point where the issue isn’t so much “who wins the RIA war” as “who can deliver the best stuff on their platform”. RIA is a big, big deal. It’s arguably the future of application deployment. Flash used to be the only technology that could really meet user expectation as we moved from the desktop to the browser. But it’s scary for companies like Microsoft, Google, or Apple to be tied to a technology like Flash that they don’t own. So everyone saw the end goal - RIAs - and took different paths. There’s still some wrestling for developer mindshare but we’re quickly moving into a world of “what can I build” which I think is a great state to be in for RIA enthusiasts everywhere.