The Universal Desktop

May 8th, 2008

KinetiCast - online presentation and promotional tracking

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:41 pm

Categories: Flex

Tags: Presentation, Presentation Creator, Productivity, AJAX, Web 2.0, Microsoft Office, Internet, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Office Suites

With the meme about presentation tools and SlideShare yesterday I thought now was as good a time as ever to cover KinetiCast, a company in the online presentation space that I chatted with a couple of weeks ago. One of the things that mkes KenitCast unique is that they very consciously didn’t target the Web 2.0 world and instead started going after paying customers in areas like real estate, and the financial industry. I don’t know what their revenue numbers look like but there seem to be a number of paying customers.

The application is based on Flex and has some good features that revolve around managing a lot of presentations and tracking how well they do. You can set up email campaigns with a link back to the presentation and then analytical tools let you track how many people viewed the presentations and when they stopped looking at them. It includes the ability to save contacts and a hook into Salesforce would be good here.

The actual presentation creator is interesting but it isn’t quite as full featured as Ajax or Flash counterparts like Zoho Show or Sliderocket. It has most of the basics that you’d expect including the ability to add video, upload images, etc. Transition editing or any kind of advanced editing is limited. I also didn’t see an easy way to embed PowerPoint files which is a must-have feature. You can upload PowerPoints and share them, but you can’t turn them into KinetiCast presentations just yet.

Overall it’s a good tool. The shortcomings in the editor are mitigated a bit by the fact that they have a lot of good tracking and managing of presentations. When taken as a whole, this is a quality way to promote your product and see how well it’s doing. As a standalone presentation creator it falls short. You can check out a demo here and they allow you to try it free for 15 days.

May 7th, 2008

JavaFX’s day in the Sun

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 12:22 am

Categories: Microsoft, Adobe, Java, Sun Microsystems, JavaFX

Tags: Sun Microsystems Inc., Rich Internet Application, JavaFX, Dan Farber, Programming Languages, Java, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Ryan Stewart

Dan Farber has some information about JavaFX from the JavaOne keynote today. It sounds like it wasn’t a great day for demos but that we’re starting to get a better picture of JavaFX and what the plans are. Michael Coté has some additional information about Sun’s plans around Java as a whole and JavaFX. In our podcast with Joshua Marinacci before JavaOne, I was able to learn a lot about what the plans for JavaFX are and how it fits into the greater ecosystem of Java. It’s not a replacement for Swing (a UI framework for Java) and it’s also not entirely correct to say it competes with Flash, Silverlight, AIR, or any other technology.

JavaFX is just one part (albeit a very snazzy part) of many enhancements to the Java runtime which includes the Java Update 10 browser plugin that would enable JavaFX developers to target the browser with animations and vector art. But JavaFX is part of a larger Java ecosystem and is in some ways a lynchpin to allow developers and designers to create RIA experiences across a lot of devices. As Coté mentions, this is a lot like Adobe’s Open Screen Project and I think it shows an industry trend of moving towards a more cohesive multi-demensional platform.

Java has been down this road before so anyone counting them out isn’t giving them enough credit. They have a LONG way to go especially when you look at Adobe’s RIA strengths and Microsoft’s very enthusiastic entry into the space. But I think JavaFX will be a breath of fresh air for people and will help in expanding the RIA footprint further.

Update: Dion Almaer posted a video (embedded below) from the JavaFX demo:

And here’s a ZDNet video of Sun executives Rich Green and Nandini Ramani showing the JavaFX environment at the JavaOne Conference in San Francisco:

May 6th, 2008

Popfly Game Creator

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:39 am

Categories: Microsoft, Silverlight

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Popfly Site, Games, Personal Technology, Ryan Stewart

Last week Microsoft released the Popfly Game Creator and I spent some time with it today. Built on Silverlight 1.0, it’s a good move by Microsoft and while you won’t be creating anything revolutionary with it, it’s fairly simple to use and it hits a market that Flash has had cornered for years. The most diverse example I saw was a game called The Adventures of Noodle Girl (pictured) which showed off a bunch of interactions and behaviors. You can also go into the editor and “tweak” the game to see how it works.

The editor is pretty straight forward and fairly easy to use. They’ve got a lot of stock artwork and behaviors that make it pretty easy to start building a game. Along with the ability to tweak some of the other games and start from a template, anyone interested in browser-based game development should find it fun. As Webware notes, there is currently no integration between the Popfly mashup tool and the game which would be a really cool twist. After you create a game you can take it and embed it on a blog or Facebook page as you’d expect.

So is it a good Silverlight showcase? Sort of. I had some small performance issues on my Vista machine and the fact that it’s Silverlight 1.0 and not Silverlight 2 is somewhat limiting. The Popfly site has really evolved into an interesting portal for letting anyone create interesting Silverlight content so as they upgrade the site to Silverlight 2 I think you’ll see more meaningful examples and applications. But it’s a step in the right direction and casual games are a great way to get viral penetration.

May 1st, 2008

Microsoft releases Expression Studio 2

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 12:18 pm

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Microsoft, Expression Studio

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Corp., Corporate Communications, Scripting Languages, Marketing, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Ryan Stewart

Microsoft has released the next version of its Expression Studio, their set of design tool for building applications on the web, which includes Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design, Expression Media, and Expression Encoder. Most of the RIA designers and developers I talk to have been using the beat of Expression Studio 2 for a long time largely because of the Silverlight support in Expression Blend 2.

Expression Studio was released about a year and a half ago as a partial answer to Adobe’s Creative Suite. In addition to Microsoft’s developer push towards RIAs (including Silverlight, ASP.NET Ajax, and WPF) they needed creative tools to enable designers to build on their platform and Expression Studio was born. It’s largely targeted at web technologies so it doesn’t have quite the reach of Adobe’s design tools but each tool in Expression Studio fills a need for Microsoft’s platform. Expression Web supports HTML/Ajax design, Expression Design and Expression Blend support XAML, Microsoft’s declarative graphic language, while Expression Media and Encoder are targeted at creating and managing Windows Media content. Some of the other notable features in the products include PHP and Adobe Photoshop import in Expression Web, support for RAW and the ability to geotag in Expression Media 2 and the addition of Expression Encoder 2 as a separate product as part of the suite.

In general, I think the biggest part of the release is Expression Web. I’m a big fan of the Blend product line but if you’re looking to build Silverlight 2 applicaitions, Blend 2 won’t help you as it only targets Silverlight 1 content. I’m also happy to see Expression Encoder be fully added to the suite. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Encoder and it makes it really easy to publish content right to the Silverlight Streaming service. In general I think more video is always good and Encoder looks like a solid product.

I am curious what they’ll do with Blend 2.5 which allows you create content for Silverlight 2. It’s currently in public preview mode and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it added as an update later on to Expression Studio 2. I’m not sure if the other Expression Studio products have 2.5 versions.

April 30th, 2008

Adobe Open Screen Project

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 9:20 pm

Categories: Adobe, Flash

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Macromedia Flash Player, Specification, Ryan Stewart

Adobe is making a couple of big announcements today that relate to our openness and the openness of the Flash Player. Starting today, there will be no restrictions on the use of the SWF specification or the FLV and F4V specifications that make up video in Flash. Previously, in order to look at the SWF specification you had to sign a licensing agreement not to use it to create competing players but in the interest of expanding the reach of the Flash Player we’re removing all of those restrictions as part of what’s called the Open Screen Project.

The goal of the Open Screen Project is to enable a consistent runtime environment across a wide variety of devices and desktops. As part of the project, the next major versions of the Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices will have no licensing fees meaning you can distribute and deploy them anywhere. As part of this, Adobe is also publishing the device porting layer APIs. The device porting layer APIs are what Adobe uses to take the core of the Flash Player and make it work on different operating systems and devices. With that published, anyone can more easily customize and port the Flash Player for their specific device.

We’ve seen a lot of growth in the Flash Player ecosystem over the years and we’ve lined up a lot of companies as part of the Open Screen Project that are interested in helping bring that consistent experience to their devices. Bill Perry (an Adobe employee) has a full list of the partners as well as the mobile implications.

As an employee, I’m glad to see Adobe continue to move in a more open direction. Removing the restrictions on the SWF specification is something that people have been wanting for a long time and I’m glad we’re doing it. As a company, we want to enable Flash Player everywhere whether that’s devices, operating systems, or refrigerators. The Open Screen Project gives developers and companies a stake in where the Flash Player goes and a way to help get it there. Hopefully this means a bigger RIA ecosystem.

April 30th, 2008

Tibco planning to use Silverlight

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 1:50 pm

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Ajax, Silverlight

Tags: TIBCO Software Inc., Microsoft Silverlight, Rich Internet Application, Dojo, AJAX, Internet, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Web 2.0, Ryan Stewart

Tibco Software is planning to support Silverlight according to an announcement at TUCON, the Tibco User Conference, in San Francisco today. The guts of the announcement mean that Tibco will use Silverlight where customers require audio, video, or other rich user experience elements where Ajax can’t be used. I’m not fully up on what differentiates Tibco from a host of other JavaScript vendors out there but I think this is a very interesting trend.

As demand for richer user experience grows are we going to see more Ajax-centric companies align with a RIA framework that enables more functionality? According to Tibco they chose Silverlight because they could leverage existing skills in C# and that Microsoft and Tibco have a lot of joint customers.

We’re seeing a lot of RIA adoption across a number of verticals including the enterprise, where I think Tibco has a lot of strength. Dojo has been pushing the envelope for animations in it’s Framework and added some support for Silverlight recently.

I’m not sure how significant the Tibco announcement is by itself, but it may be the start of a trend. Getting the RIA vendors closer to a number of Ajax frameworks is always a good thing because I think it gets the communities talking and sharing ideas which makes all RIA platforms, Ajaxy and not, better.

April 29th, 2008

Silverlight going to be all over the Democratic National Convention

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:35 am

Categories: Microsoft, Rich Media, Silverlight

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Content Provider, Rich Internet Application, Microsoft Corp., Democratic National Convention, Ryan Stewart

Yesterday Microsoft became the “official software and HD web content provider” for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. I’m not entirely sure what the software part entails, but the HD web content provider means that we’ll be seeing a lot of Silverlight content coming out of the DNC. In fact, Silverlight will help provide live coverage of the event, one which I think should be well viewed considering the state of the Democratic race. As Larry notes, Google is the official “innovation provider” for the Republican National Convention in February.

One cool bit which I haven’t been able to get a lot of extra information on is the fact that Microsoft is providing the technology behind real-time online voting systems. Is that going to be a WPF application? Will it be using Windows Communication Foundation?

One thing Microsoft does a pretty good job of is showing off good looking rich media demos. The DNC will be a good place to do that. I’ll update the post but I’m really curious which agency will be working on the end user application. As an RIA fan, I think this could be a good way to show of a high quality RIA experience to mainstream users. Maybe even more so than the Olympics because of the data involved in a political convention.

April 28th, 2008

Unknown Vector now has browser-based version of uvLayer

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 2:50 pm

Categories: Flash, Rich Media

Tags:

A couple of weeks ago uvLayer (original writeup), one of my favorite AIR applications because of the visual effects and collaborative features, released an in-browser version that anyone can go and use. uvLayer is an interesting case because it started out as a desktop application and then they took that code and created the in-browser version of it to make it more accessible to a wider range of folks. You get most of the functionality from the AIR version but the AIR application incorporates native windows and allows you to “pop out” the video experience very easily.

In addition, uvLayer has been translated into 13 languages. When you log in, if you’re not a fan of Flashy sites, you probably won’t be too fond of uvLayer. It’s a visual plethora of video and it can seem a bit overwhelming at first but they have a lot of features that I really like. It integrates instantly with Facebook so you can pull all of your Facebook friends using uvLayer and get an instant community. Once you’ve got the instant community set up uvLayer makes the entire video experience interactive and collaborative. You can create sets and then share them with friends. Then you can see what your friends are watching as it happens so you can quickly jump to videos. With a lot of friends you can be the first to get a sense of when a video is getting a lot of viral interest.

For media junkies, this is a great application and it’s a fun way to watch video over the web. It definitely isn’t for everyone but I think the YouTube crowd will appreciate the subtleties enough to give it some traction.

April 28th, 2008

Bungee integrates with the power of Amazon EC2

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 9:41 am

Categories: Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Developer, IDE, Application, PaaS, Amazon.com Inc., Bungee, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Ryan Stewart

I’m still catching up on Web 2.0 news but one of the interesting bits was that Bungee (my coverage), the platform as a service company which lets you build, test, deploy, and track Ajax applications from a browser-based application, is now leveraging EC2 so that Bungee developers can deploy their applications on Amazon’s EC2. Previously when you deployed a Bungee application it was deployed on top of Bungee’s architecture. This new move provides a really great way to scale and could possibly open up a larger community of Bungee developers who come to the platform via Amazon.

Along similar lines, Bungee is now allowing developers to deploy Bungee-powered applications on top of their own server, something called Bunge Application Server, which uses VMWare technology. Both of these are going to be available in June.

I don’t believe either one of these lets you actually host the IDE, so you’ll still be doing all of your development on Bungee’s servers, but with the new deploy options integrated directly into the IDE, it should be very easy to take your creation and use EC2 or your own server. I think it’s a great move that keeps Bungee’s core assets (like the IDE and platform) at the forefront and allows them to use other services to actually scale the applications. As Bungee gets more popular I don’t know if they wanted to eat the cost of storing all those apps themselves. Now they can keep on trucking with Amazon as the hardware backbone.

April 22nd, 2008

Silverlight and the future core of Microsoft

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 9:57 pm

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Microsoft, Silverlight

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Corp., Web Browser, Microsoft Live Mesh, Microsoft Windows, Web Browsers, Operating Systems, Software, Internet, Ryan Stewart

Today Microsoft is unveiling Ray Ozzie’s project, Microsoft Live Mesh, which can best be summed up in the words of Mary Jo Foley - “a Software + Services platform for synchronization and collaboration.” In simple terms, I think it’s being able to interact with your data anywhere you go across a number of devices. And it’s a vision of the web that I really, really like. I think Adobe helps with that vision and empowers developers to help create it but Microsoft as a company singularly has the clout and the brand equity to pull it off. And Live Mesh looks like the first stab.

I don’t have an invite yet so I don’t know how well it works. Reviews seem mixed, but it’s Microsoft, so the first version is kind of a dry run. But this is Ray’s baby and it’s going to be a core, core part of Microsoft. But in order to make it work, Live Mesh does have to have genuine access points across operating systems and the browser. When you’re working with the web you need to be as universal as possible and even though Microsoft still has the lion’s share of the market, cross platform is important to the long term success of Live Mesh. So how do you provide a very expressive, Windows-like experience across multiple platforms and operating systems? Silverlight.

I think this is going to be Silverlight’s big, big driver. With Silverlight 2.0 and I assume future versions, they’re trying to make it more like Windows Presentation Foundation. They’re looking to support a bigger subset of the XAML and controls that WPF has. It seems like they’re working very hard to bring the development experience and the UI possibilities of Windows to a cross-platform runtime. Why do that if you make all of your money on the operating system? Because Live Mesh is the future and you’ve got to be able to provide part of that great Windows experience (don’t laugh, I love Vista) on many platforms. Live Mesh is cool because it supports so many technologies (including Flash) so it’s very platform agnostic, but to appeal to Microsoft developers, they need to provide Microsoft technology and tools. Silverlight will be a great way to let those Microsoft developers quickly start building into the Live Mesh Ecosystem.

I think Live Mesh is a big, interesting step for RIAs. Creating that back end infrastructure to handle collaboration, synchronization, and the cloud means we can start building user interfaces around them. As an RIA fan boy, I’m excited to see what people build on top of Live Mesh because I think it tries to solve the right problem. We should just have access to our data. It shouldn’t matter if we’re in the browser, on the desktop, or on a device. That’s a goal I think both Adobe and Microsoft share and I think the next couple of years are going to be great in unifying the web and getting rid of “web application” versus “browser applications”. They’re just going to be applications when all is said and done.