18th
October 2008
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As part of the FOWA experience, we were asked by Ryan Carson to join a discussion panel organized by Adobe to talk about the future of web apps and how Adobe Air fits in to the current market. We rocked up early to ExCel in East London and after walking into the wrong room, straight into the middle of a Carsonifed Workshop (the arrangements definitely said Room 7!!!), we eventually found our place.
The room was lightly flickered with industry illuminates that have gathered to chat. Simon Willison from Django, Stefan Magdalinski from Moo and the (brilliant!) Francisco of 280 Slides / ObjectiveJ fame. We talked about the internet and its current state. We explored browser technology and looked deeply at what role the desktop plays in the current industry and what role it will play in the future. We also looked at the mobile web and how things how mobile technology will progress internet platform technologies forward.
We also looked how the guys Howard Baines created Alert Thingy. They used Air to develop their app and disclosed how it stands up as a development environment and what advantages / disadvantages it gave them. Really interestingly, a lot of the discussion was geared towards the Installation Process of Air and the pitfalls it runs into.
Other Air Demos were also shown. The one that sparked everyones imagination was the The Sun’s Desktop Keeley.
Some really interesting quotes that I picked up were:
“I’m more towards View Source rather than Open Source”
“There’s a view that info that we have on the desktop is more important than on the net”
Future developments of BaseKit may well include desktop resources. How far we take that we don’t know yet. But it was an enlighting chat anyway.
Thanks for Adobe and Ryan Carson for inviting us down.
