I attended Web 2.0 2009 here in San Francisco today.
Needless to say, it was a low key event compared to 2008. Total attendance, level of crowd, number of exhibitors and announcements all appeared subdued. Since I went all the way to the city, I put on a brave face and started covering the show.
I am sure there several other trends. However, one thing which I picked up was Web 2.0 and Social Networks are embracing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). This was apparent from two things.
Firstly, Adobe and FaceBook announced a Partnership. Adobe ActionScript 3 API has been made available for FaceBook. This will allow developers to deliver Rich social applications on the web using the Adobe Flash/Flex Platform. I attended the Adobe booth and indeed this was one of the key highlights with a FaceBook engineer showing off a Flex based game on Facebook. Looked really sleek! This was indeed interesting when I recalled that not too long ago (2007) Microsoft had bought a small piece of Facebook for $240M!
Well, wondering what the giant from Redmond was up to I went over to the Microsoft booth. No surprises, they were showing Windows 7, IE8, Azure and last but not the least SilverLight and ExpressionBlend. When asked about the Adobe and Facebook partnership, the presenter at the booth invited me to a joint session with MySpace later in the day.
I showed up for that session to learn that Microsoft has made a partnership with MySpace and developers can now use Silverlight to build rich media features into OpenSocial applications. The session had evangelists from both MySpace and Microsoft and they showed off the MySpace SilverLight SDK. The show was well attended and received. The key application shown was game to teach children on recycling and environment. Use of Expression Blend to develop RIA effects was very impressive!
Considering these two strong partnerships, I believe we will see a whole set of richer social applications in the near future.
Some links which may be helpful:
1. Adobe/FaceBook Partnership Details.
2. A Seminar to learn more about Adobe and Facebook.
3. Microsoft/MySpace partnership analysis
4. MySpace SilverLight SDK
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4 comments:
My take is that Microsoft is teaming up with MySpace because they have no other alternative. On the other hand, MySpace is also teaming up with Gogle to do the OpenSocial thingy.
Being the dominant #1, facebook wants to go it alone! No surprises here.
I can attest to the low key mood!
Saw some REALLY COOL things done with FLEX/AIR and Silverlight. THIS IS THE WAVE!
Also witnessed some amazing work done by effectiveUI which was done on the same platform.
At this moment in time Adobe sits atop of the hill with FLEX/AIR. However, what I heard from the Redmond camp is that they WANT to work with everyone on Silverlight.
Stay tuned.
I've attended a Microsoft TechNet show here in India and I was pretty interested in the Silverlight capabilities. Tied with WPF, Silverlight makes wonders when it comes to high end graphics based RIA. One thing that caught my eye popping out is the zooming level introduced by Silverlight Deep Zoom. It got a really big picture (around some giga pixels) and showed how it can be used very effectively. The demo they showed was none like you can implement in Adobe Flex / AIR for that matter.
You can see the Deep Zoom feature used in real-time at: http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/
Guess collaborations are the way to go..especially in current circumstances...Super informative blog especially for people like myself who are not really tuned into the on goings of the software business....
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