I’ve heard that Yahoo and others have started using Titanium as an alternative to AIR and WPF for desktop apps. With Titanium, you’ve got also got an easier port to Mobile too. It’s build on top of Webkit and Google Gears. Similar to AIR, you can develop using standard web technologies: HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby, Python. I’m just starting to check it out for a possible new project. So far, it’s looking pretty darn sick. 

Dang, I am so bad…have not updated my blog in a month! But, keep in mind that I was on vacation for nearly 3 weeks as well! (More on that later). Anyway, long before I left on my fancy Hawaiian vacation, we launched Nike Lab for the Summer Olympics. Features:

• Content for 58 athletes, 45 products in 22 languages
• High quality video, animation and graphics
• Content includes: athlete stories, product information, up-to-date Olympics news
• Launched in 22 languages

Technical details

• Single code base for all languages
• A custom, reusable Actionscript 3.0 application framework (based on MVC)
• Built-in support for deep linking down to the page, sub page and product level (great for directing online/offline advertising to specific parts of the site)
• Social bookmarking (for adding videos to user blogs, social sites, etc.)
• Dynamic resize of main flash within HTML page (resizes Flash stage within HTML based on content)
• Dynamic re-skin of site based on language selection (no page refresh)
• Custom font render to support double-byte characters
• Dynamic updating of the Title bar based on which “page” of the site the user is on)
• Technologies/tools: Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR(for CMS), Actionscript 3.0, HTML, Javascript, Adobe After Effects

For a more in-depth review of the technical details, please visit Antti’s blog. We then went on to create an iPhone Web App version. More on that in the next blog, I swear!

I don’t know about the new name? Apollo was so much cooler…AIR? What is Adobe thinking? Anyway, the Adobe AIR showcase has some interesting stuff – giving me some ideas:

MyMovieMatch. Filter over 50,000 films by genre, release status, keyword and your own personal preferences. Find just the right one, and add it to your Netflix queue or Amazon.com shopping cart with a single click.

Tweetr. Allows people using twitter.com to send and receive messages from their desktop in 140 characters or less.

Kuler Desktop. Search thousands of themes by tag, title, or creator ID. Browse the newest, highest rated, and most popular color themes. Easily copy hex values from any theme to your clipboard.

The power of web services allows us to access data from a client’s CRM database, marketing database, a custom database, maybe even an inventory database (NetFlix). The trends continue to be towards accessing this data, mixing and mashing it up, and presenting it back with easy and innovative user interfaces/experiences. Google Gadgets are another example of this specific for advertising and of course the gadgets/widgets for Windows and Mac.