flex

Sun just lost the CTO of its desktop division, Hans Muller. Not to worry, though, the open-source world gets to keep him as he's heading down the road to increasingly open-source friendly Adobe to work on Flex. Muller apparently wasn't part of the Sun layoffs, and remained a good employee to the last, clearing up loose ends in the very same breath that he announced his resignation.

What does this mean for Adobe? A great new technical lead for open-source Flex. And for Sun? Probably not much, but I'm sure Sun would have preferred to keep Muller.… Read more

Adobe Systems on Monday is set to finally release Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) software, which is on the leading edge of a movement to make Web applications act more like traditional desktop applications.

At the company's Engage event in San Francisco on rich Internet application design, executives will announce the availability of AIR 1.0, a free download for Windows and Macintosh.

Also on Monday, Adobe will release Flex 3.0, its application development tool that is now free and open-source. Another development tool, called BlazeDS, for linking Flex applications to back-end business applications, will also be released into open source as planned. … Read more

There are invitations to Phoenix, the new app discussed in this post, set aside for Webware readers. Read on to learn how to get yours.

As I reported from Demo 2008, new Flash- and Flex-based Web apps are putting traditional desktop apps to shame. The database Blist, the widget maker Sprout, and the photo manager Joggle are all Web-based apps that give up almost nothing to run inside a browser.

Flash-based applications are inherently cross-platform, because there are Flash runtimes that work in Internet Explorer and Firefox; on Macs, Windows, and Linux. (There are even Flash runtimes for mobile phones … Read more

Adobe Systems brought the chief technology officer title out of retirement Tuesday and applied it to Kevin Lynch.

Lynch, previously chief software architect and senior vice president of Adobe's platform business unit, joined Adobe in 2005 when it acquired Macromedia, where he led product development.

At Adobe, he'll lead work with Adobe's Flash Player, Flex development tools, and Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). Those products are gaining in importance at the San Jose, Calif.-based company.

"Adobe has transformed itself through several technology waves, from desktop publishing, to multimedia and to the Web," said Adobe's new chief executive, Shantanu Narayen, … Read more

Underlining the ever-converging automotive and electronic worlds, GM's boss Rick Wagoner arrived on stage here at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in GM's electric-powered Chevy Volt to deliver his keynote speech, marking the first time in the show's history that a leading automaker had addressed the convention. "If the automobile were invented today, I'm pretty sure it would debut here at CES," said Wagoner before launching into an overview of GM's technology, including details of the carmaker's alternative-fuel, telematics, and autonomous vehicle programs, and finally unveiling the latest concept vehicle in GM'… Read more

Doof, says company spokesman Devang Chouhan, is all about "playing games and meeting people" -- in other words: fun. The UK-based "social gaming" start-up aims to mesh aspects of multi-layer online gaming with social networking, providing a highly personalized and visually rich user experience based on the Flex technology.

Liad Shababo, founder of doof, explains: "When we came up with the idea for doof we quickly realised there was nothing like it in the market, and there was a real hunger among social networkers for something new. We have spent months working to perfect the … Read more

In yet another sign that the world's leading software companies are losing their inhibitions around open source, Adobe announced today the launch of the open-source BlazeDS project, high-performance remoting and messaging technology used to "connect back-end data sources to rich Internet applications written with its Flex development tool." This is very cool.

BlazeDS will be made available for free under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Adobe will initially hosts the open-source project and next year plans to create a separate site to host BlazeDS and its Flex developer tool which it intends to open source, said Phil Costa, director of product management for Adobe's Platform Business Unit.

The software is not meant to replace other messaging products, such as enterprise service buses, Costa said. Instead, it can get data from messaging software to move data between databases or enterprise applications and Flash clients, he said. … Read more

Adobe Systems on Thursday released the code for messaging software designed to connect back-end data sources to rich Internet applications written with its Flex development tool.

Called BlazeDS, the software is a subset of Adobe's full-featured LiveCycle Data Services ES, which it will continue to sell to its corporate customers.

BlazeDS will be made available for free under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Adobe will initially host the open-source project and next year plans to create a separate site to host BlazeDS and its Flex developer tool, which it intends to open-source, said Phil Costa, director of product … Read more

This is one of those random facts that, if true, makes one wonder why technology hasn't caught up with reality: More than 200 million people worldwide are thought to be colorblind, according to some estimates, with more than 10 million of them in the United States. If even part of those statistics are accurate, it makes sense that companies would step up efforts to market products for that population.

Although technologies for the colorblind have been developed in the past, Japan's Eizo believes it has come up with a unique system that will allow colorblind individuals to "… Read more