Posts Tagged ‘Adobe AIR’

« Older Entries

Testing Out the Adobe Packager for iPhone

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Packager for iPhone

With the changes to the iPhone developer agreement a few weeks back, the Adobe Packager for iPhone gained new life. The packager, which is a feature of Adobe Flash Professional CS5 software and the Adobe AIR SDK, offers a way to use existing Flash code to create native applications for the iPhone and iPad. We’ve been working on native iPhone and iPad development for some time now, so we were curious as to how this application could be used to port over some of our existing Flex-developed client applications. We took a sampling of applications we’ve built over the past few months, some simple and some more complex, and used the Adobe Packager for iPhone to convert them. What we discovered is that there are some significant limitations with this tool. (more…)

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Rich Internet Applications, Trends and Technology | 2 Comments »

Improved Printing for ePublishing with Adobe AIR 2

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Since the original beta launch of Adobe AIR almost two years ago, one of the key features missing for making it a really useful tool for companies looking to leverage it for ePublishing applications was the limited functionality offered for local printing. We had looked into using Adobe AIR as a way to create a truly online and offline ePublishing solution for delivering PDFs through the browser, like we do today with our INM Reach product online. However, the lack of control in the initial beta version of Adobe AIR meant a lot of workarounds and customizations.

The new AIR beta 2 release now makes this much more feasible. This release provides developers with tighter integration with the desktop, including much more control over local printers and improved support for cross-platform printing. In addition, it also offers support for detection of mass storage devices, added support for secure socket layer communication and even the ability to open a file with its default application.

Tags: , ,
Posted in ePublishing, Rich Internet Applications | No Comments »

INM Presenting at Webcom Montréal

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Next Thursday October 22 at 2:10 pm, I will be speaking at Webcom 2009 on the topic of “Repairing the Broken Shopping Cart” in collaboration with Stephane Lesieur from Adobe Canada. I will illustrate my point with a highly demanding consumer application, show an elegant solution using Adobe technologies such as Flex, Air and LiveCycle DS, and discuss best practices to implement such a solution.

Full details at: http://www.webcom-montreal.com

My colleague Benoit David and myself will spend most of the day at Webcom and will be delighted to meet you there. Please let me know if you plan on attending too.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in eCommerce, Rich Internet Applications | 9 Comments »

RIAs hit Hollywood

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Universal Pictures have launched an Adobe AIR widget to allow film-goers to get all the information they’ll need in order to keep up to date on the upcoming movie ‘Fast and Furious’. The application offers breaking news related to the film, exclusive content, a countdown timer to the launch date, easy access to view trailers and video clips, wallpaper images, polls, and a chat feature to allow users to connect with other fans.

The widget is a solid piece of marketing and is a must-have for anyone who is passionate about this film. It is one of the first examples of the use of an RIA by Hollywood in the promotion of a film and demonstrates a creative execution which enables fans to connect with each other and discover the information they are seeking all from one desktop-based application. Universal Pictures was able to repurpose existing content and package it within a high-octane looking package, ensuring that they are creating a dynamic user experience with materials already on hand. It’ll be interesting to see the results of how many users downloaded the application as well as if this has any impact on the box-office receipts.

Click here to download the ‘Fast and Furious’ RIA.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Rich Internet Applications | No Comments »

Over 100 Million Installations of Adobe AIR!

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Adobe has recently announced that AIR has been installed over 100 million times and credit applications such as: Adobe Media Player, AOL Top 100, eBay Desktop, TweetDeck and Twirhl in helping to generate this number.

You can read more about this announcement and find details as to how this figure was calculated on the Adobe AIR Blog.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Rich Internet Applications, Trends and Technology | No Comments »

One Year Later – Looking Back over the Last 12 Months

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

In preparing for the one year anniversary of Impact, I decided to write two posts – this one, which looks back over what’s happened in the past year, and a second post which will go up tomorrow that will look forward to what we can expect in the coming twelve months.

Since July 2007, there have been a number of big changes in our space. Here are my thoughts and comments on a few of the key ones:

  • RIAs – This was a banner year for progress on the RIA front. Adoption catapulted forward, new tools and technologies like Adobe AIR, and Silverlight were introduced, barriers were broken in terms of content indexing, and many new tools for development were introduced. We also started to see RIAs adopted by enterprise for mission critical business applications like dashboards. The improved user experience and productivity benefits are being recognized and embraced by early adopters.
  • SaaS – In the past year, there has been a huge increase in acceptance of SaaS by enterprises and their users. Decision makers are starting to realize that flying from New York to London does not require the purchase of an aircraft, but just the “licensing” of a seat for the duration of the flight. We’ve even seen the emergence of PaaS.
  • Mobile – Few can doubt the impact of the iPhone, but it alone is not responsible for the growth in mobile browsing. According to AdMob, the number of internet web users in the US grew by 10 million, to reach 40 million, and mobile web usage has grown by over 100% in the past year.

On a more personal note, we’ve seen many changes here at INM as well. Over the past year, we’ve really beefed up our team and have added a number of key resources. We’ve created an in-house team for User Experience Design and have encouraged a number of our developers to pursue industry certifications. We’ve gained significant experience in working on ground-breaking RIAs, and have brought in a number of really exciting new clients.

Stay tuned tomorrow for my predictions on the year to come.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Rich Internet Applications, Trends and Technology | No Comments »

Webinar: Understanding Adobe AIR

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Since the launch of Adobe AIR nearly a month ago, we’ve had a number of questions about how this new technology can be used for building stronger relationships with clients. In order to help organizations better understand Adobe AIR and how it can be used, we are offering a free webinar entitled, Understanding the Potential of Adobe Integrated Runtime (Adobe AIR). Join us on Wednesday, April 2nd or April 9th at 11:00 am Eastern for this online session.

This introductory session is unique, as it is not designed for programmers. Instead, it is geared to educate communications professionals on the impact that Adobe AIR can have on their customer relationships.

Session content includes:

  • An introduction to rich Internet applications (RIAs) and the role of Adobe AIR
  • The opportunities introduced with Adobe AIR
  • Key benefits and examples
  • Factors to consider
  • Information on how to move forward with an Adobe AIR project

For more information or to register, please visit http://www.INM.com/webinars/.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Rich Internet Applications | No Comments »

The Pendulum Swings Back

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

Back in September, I wrote about an interesting article in Dr. Dobb’s Journal about how the pendulum is swinging back toward the delivery of desktop-like experiences. With Adobe’s official announcement of its new Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) yesterday, the pendulum has picked up even more momentum. AIR allows application designers to think beyond the browser to cost-effectively add desktop support into their clients’ web interactions and deliver RIAs in a partially connected environment.

Even though AIR is just out, there are already a number of early deployments that range from consumer-facing media players, games, personal shopping assistants and product configurators, through to business-oriented data-entry and dashboard tools. Big name brands like eBay, Nickelodeon, and NASDAQ are already delivering applications that leverage AIR.

The biggest hurdle toward adoption is helping those responsible for client communications understand the potential of AIR and how to leverage it within the scope of client interactions.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Rich Internet Applications, Trends and Technology | No Comments »

What 2008 May Bring

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

As the year comes to a close, it’s always an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened in the past 12 months and to look at what’s on the horizon.

This past year was an active one, with major shifts in a number of areas. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), which have been on the radar since 2002, finally started to garner attention and gain traction with organizations. Major announcements from technology leaders like Adobe, Microsoft and Curl have made friendly and stable development technologies available. As well, consumers have responded positively to early applications making RIAs a viable next step, even for enterprises.

Software as a Service (SaaS), has also made significant in-roads this year and is stacking up to be a “technology to watch” for 2008. The concept of loosely coupled technologies behind the scenes, some of which are delivered as services, is a smart model that provides organizations with the economies of scale to be competitive and the flexibility to grow.

For 2008, I’m looking forward to seeing new versions of Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight. Both of which seem to be promising technology to keep an eye on. It will also be interesting to see what happens with AJAX and Java in this mix too.

Finally, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen with the mobile industry. For years now it’s been ready to explode. Maybe 2008 is the year?

We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year!

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Trends and Technology | No Comments »

New Public Betas of Adobe Flex and AIR

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

Today, Adobe released the Beta 3 versions of both Adobe Flex and AIR. You may ask “Why should I care about beta software”? Well, both of these applications will be impactful if you are building, or considering building, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). While not the only solution on the market, Flex is one of the most widely used technologies for enterprises RIAs.

What makes this release interesting? It delivers:

  • Great tools for data aggregation and for visually presenting metrics that will contribute to decision making.
  • More freedom for end-users to access tools and information without necessarily being connected to the internet.
  • Great economies of scale in creating online and offline applications in from a single effort.

We suspect that this release is a feature-complete version of what we will see in the final on which is anticipated to be available in early February 2008. If you are looking for a copy, it’s available on the Adobe Labs site.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Rich Internet Applications, Software Engineering | No Comments »

« Older Entries