Is it just me, or is performance getting a LOT of attention these days?

Over the past decade, the web has flourished, fizzled a little with the dot-com bust, and re-invented itself with concepts such as Web 2.0 and social networking. Traditional browser limitations, such as the security sandbox, are perfectly acceptable for a broad category of web application, but sometimes you need more.

By allowing web developers to extend their applications beyond the browser, Adobe AIR is poised to become a springboard for innovation in the next chapter in the life of web technologies—the desktop.

The security sandbox of the browser is often one of the first lessons many of us learn when we begin developing projects for the web. You don’t have access to the local file system, and you have limited cross-domain support. We also learn that the fundamental system on which the web is constructed is entirely stateless.

Despite these seemingly critical limitations, web developers have persevered, and increasingly complex applications continue to appear, setting new precedents.

What would happen if these limitations were removed? What if we could use the same technologies the web is built on, but escape the security sandbox of the browser? When you develop a desktop application for Adobe AIR, you have exactly that option. The technologies employed are the same HTML, JavaScript, and CSS on which the web is built, but the deployment model is that of the desktop.

Desktop applications built with Adobe AIR can make requests across as many domains as they want. When good old XMLHttpRequest gets data returned, it can save directly to the user’s file system, or even store that data in a local relational database. Taking this even further, there’s support for new types of data exchange that include binary data and persistent socket connections.

Exploring this newfound freedom and combining these new abilities with the massive proliferation of services opens the door to an entirely new world of possibilities, such as media storage with YouTube or Flickr, data storage with Amazon S3, workflow and CRM infrastructure with Salesforce.com. The list goes on and on. Developers can manifest these services as features for their own applications with minimal investment.

Adobe AIR makes it possible to build the next generation of web-enabled desktop applications without the need for expensive infrastructure consistent with traditional web development. Developers can use the same skills and technologies, but deploy them without the traditional limitations. Web developers don’t just lose those limitations, they also lose something else—the browser chrome.

Why Adobe AIR?

Developing for the desktop usually means leaving your web skills behind, building a platform-specific application, or using an alternative of complex object-oriented technologies. Adobe AIR, however, enables web application developers to use their existing web development skills, tools, workflow, and even existing code base, to build and deploy desktop applications.

At a high level, Adobe AIR accomplishes this by taking the world-class WebKit browser engine (most notably used in Safari), and wrapping it alongside Flash and PDF technologies, as a cohesive desktop runtime. Adobe AIR doesn’t stop there, though; it also folds in a rich API that enables common desktop features such as file IO, network awareness, native drag-and-drop support, an embedded relational database (SQLite), and much more.

Did you know…

- That FACEBOOK was launched on February 2004 by the only 19 years old student Mark Zuckerberg. By the end of the month, more than half of the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.

- That FACEBOOK grows with around 250.000 people a day (autumn 2007) and has more than 300 employers.

- That FACEBOOK reserves every right to register and keep all kind of your private information and FACEBOOK activities – even though you eliminate your profile?” (see Facebook Privacy).

- That the FACEBOOK privacy claims any right to use all pictures uploaded on your profile?

- That Facebook leaves a cookie in your browser which enables other Internet sites to identify your identity.

- That thanks to the FACEBOOK BEACON system, FACEBOOK is informed about your activities from 44 big Internet sites that have partnered with Facebook.

- That the owner of FACEBOOK Mark Zuckerberg has rejected offers in the range of $975 million to hand over Facebook. If FACEBOOK is sold, all registered kind of private information will be handed over to the new owners – even though you at that time already have deleted your profile! It means, you have no control, who will end up having your personal data.

- October 24, 2007, Facebook has agreed to sell a 1.6% stake in the company to Microsoft for $240 million. This means Microsoft, as an exclusive third-party will get assess to every FACEBOOK information.

- Estimated price of FACEBOOK: $15 billion.

- Why? Because in cyberspace private information is hard value – and all kind of private data is recorded in FACEBOOK.

- Did you know that FACEBOOK is about to develop an intelligent system of information searching. The idea behind the system is that, while you’re using FACEBOOK, your personal information and cyberspace behavior will be categorized to maximize the value of your information.

- That the European Union is considering the Privacy topic.

- By using FACEBOOK you are an essential part of the global cyber data economy behavior will be categorized to maximize the value of your information.

- that the European Union is considering the FACEBOOK Privacy topic.

- By using FACEBOOK you are an essential part of the global cyber data economy.

I saw the following website:

WikipediaVision

It is wonderful to see in a more visual way the rythm and the dispersion of the articles enrichments of Wikipedia Encyclopedia.

I bet this is one of the most exciting result of the internet revolution…

In my oppinion: Wikipedia is one of the best Encyclopedia of the world. It is one of the 10 most visited websites in the world. Learn more about Wikipedia Foundation.

I was really shocked when I watched the speech of Steve Jobs.

I strongly advise everyone to watch that video. It may change the way you see life…

Watch the speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

I found this Javascript based image gallery really nice.

Asad Sheth is the creator of this script, which works with Prototype and Moo.fx.

One of the disadvantages I think is that it runs slow, specialy with firefox.

I visited London (7-11 of July).

Although I have visited London a dozen times in the past, it was the first time I was there on a summer period, it was really exciting walking down the St. James Park wearing just a t-shirt. The open-air clubs in Covent Garden is a must.
Also, I visited for the first time the area of Canary Wharf, it is a newly built business-area, the London’s hurt of business. The stock martek of London is there.

I had the chance to go to Ice Bar, a bar located in the center of London, near Piccadilli Circus. The temperature inside that bar is allways being kept at -5 C!. It was a nice experience, you had to wear special clothes and gloves in order to get in and you were not allowed to stay for more than 30min. The glasses where maden by ice, so ice cubes where unnecessary to your drinks. :d

Ice Bar Location: [GP:3]

I visited ITB-Belrin, and I confess that I had a really exiting time, the exhibition was huge; about 150 thousands square meters of stands and more than 10,000 exhibitors… I think that ITB-Berlin is by far one of the biggest exhibition events for the world’s Tourism markets.

Location in map: [GP:1]

I visited Antwerp, a northern Belgian city, in order to attend to the Javapolis 2005 Conference.

What really impressed me is the fact that there were so many sessions about the new AJAX technology, a new way to build fast & effective features on web pages. It is actually a new trend on web application developing.

You can update dynamically contents of a web page without having to refresh the whole page. This can be done using JavaScript sending XMLHttpRequests in order to load data from the server and push it back to the cache of the browser by updating only specific items/areas of the web page. This makes the web application faster and more responsive to user actions.

I really liked also the presentation of Waldo Smeets. The new Flex Enterprise Services of Adobe are really promising.

Some details about the conference:

• 2,100+ attendees from 43 countries
• 50% more attendees than last year
• Biggest Java event in Europe
• Second biggest Java event after JavaOne

Javapolis 2005 (Metropolis) Location in Map: [GP:2]