May 6, 2008
Rockin’ in the RIA world
There is a race on to develop Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for the desktop between Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Sun Microsystems.
Those five are trying to wow us with examples of RIAs as cool widgets running inside or outside the browser, with some working when your PC or other device is offline.
Adobe’s technology is called AIR, Google has Gears, Microsoft has launched Silverlight and Mozilla plans Prism for its Firefox browser.
At Sun’s JavaOne conference in San Francisco today, the company touted JavaFX with three cool demos.
Connected Life is a widget that can exist as a Facebook or blog application or be dragged outside the browser. It combines feeds such as Twitter messages and Flickr photos to show you what your friends are up to. Photo Flocker allows Flickr users to search for photos by tags and throws up results in a 3D interface. Movie Cloud is a 3D sphere spinning around with dozens of high-definition videos that can be clicked on and played.
JavaFX apps were also shown working just as well on a mobile phone. Developers will be able to get their hands on a tool kit to build applications from July.
JavaOne also featured the rock star Neil Young. There was no performance of Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz’s favourite song, Rockin’ In the Free World, but a demonstration was given instead of how Java was helping to build the artist’s archive of his work on Blu-ray discs.
Young seems to have come up with the most imaginative use to date of Blu-ray’s new BD-Live interactive features. He has chronicled his life as an artist and plans to release the first period, 1963-1972, in the autumn.
That will take up 10 discs and at 50 gigabytes per dual-layer disc that could be 500GB of material, enough to satisfy even the most ardent fan. By the time he is finished, the life story could be a 50-disc collection.
The Blu-ray technology allows high-def audio to be played while listeners sift through relevant archival material such as photos, notes, videos and memorabilia such as concert tickets. The biography and timeline can also be updated by downloads and contributions from fans.
“Previously, there was no way to browse archival material on a disc and listen to a song in high resolution at the same time,” said Young.
“Previous technology required unacceptable quality compromises. I am glad we waited and got it right.”
Thanks for the massive waterfall of information about the latest in new solutions, but here in the USA the big mobile telcos,ATT,Verizon Wireless,Sprint and T-Mobile are “closed out from innovations “,in the case of Verizon Wireless and ATT, they have made an exclusive deal with Qualcomm to use MediaFlow for mobile TV services, so what are we,the consumers ,suppose to do for options ? glue a TV and antenna set to the mobile phone and put some wheels under it ? will we be able to use DVB-H in these devices? or will the USA consumers be denied access to DVB-H mobile TV ?
the fact that the TV Networks air waves belong to the taxpayers and consumers and are leased for free to the TV Networks for the common good seems gone with the wind.
most likely, these proprietary moves are the start of proprietary access, blogs, links,video send and receive , services, etc., so what are we supposed to do ?
in the new Clearwire-Sprint-Cable-Google-Intel alliance in the news today , will we be able to access any site and video source ? will we be able to video-conference using any other mobile device,like a laptop with AMD hardware ? or any other mobile phone ? ,Intel has created a near monopoly on certain sectors out of Wi-Max ,and the cable-TV’s are even worst in terms of choices for the consumers, luckily Google seems a door to open access by its own nature ,what is the expert’s view?
there was a Congress hearing the other day about
e-waste, computer products waste, and there was no mention about switching from petroleum based plastics to organic products, like cornstarch and others that are biodegradable and compostable and feel and look like plastic, per example plastic bags, is there any push to start using genetically modified corn - starch and other g.m. products for plastics instead of petroleum based plastics? ….after all, g.m. corn was intended from the start for fuels and plastics, never for human or animal consumption.
It seems that as long as we don’t have multi-standard-chipset devices, we won’t be able to have real open access , global video-conference and universal services, right?
Posted by: blogger | May 7th, 2008 at 7:49 pm | Report this comment