January 8th, 2007

Rich Internet Applications at CES

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:43 pm

Categories: CES, Microsoft, Mobile-Web, Rich Internet Applications, Yahoo

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I'm not at CES and I wasn't anticipating much in the way of Rich Internet Application news to come out of it so I haven't been rabidly following it today but a couple of things caught my eye that I thought you might be interested in.

The first is the item that has been on top of Techmeme all day today, the announcement of Windows Home Server. Microsoft continues its march into the living room and in doing so helps bolster the case for Rich Internet Applications to be built on their platform. While Microsoft has never been a huge supporter of cross platform (WPF/E is the most recent technology to support the Mac but others haven't survived to tell the tale) they have the largest reach when it comes to delivery points. Mary Jo Foley has some good info about Windows Home Server here and here but this seems like Microsoft is going to work very hard to tie into their other properties. Nathan Weinberg has some excellent coverage and puts the picture in perspective. The idea is that Home Server can act as the cloud for you in your own home giving you access to data wherever you are and storing it locally on your home server. This has some pretty neat implications for media and for companies looking to take advantage of Microsoft technologies to build rich media applications. It isn't cross platform but Microsoft has a pretty wide net here.

The other thing that caught my eye was the Yahoo Mobile announcement over at Read/Write Web. Not ready to concede mobile search to Google, Yahoo created a branded mobile experience (using Java) that enables its users to access the Yahoo network from their devices. It's a perfect example of how RIA technologies can be used to extract the important content and present it in a form that is usable. The mobile world continues to do exciting things and espouses the RIA ideal by demanding rich, tailored experiences. Whether in a web browser, a mobile phone or the desktop, these rich branded experiences that bring content front and center are the future of applications.