Just this week, Adobe released their Adobe AIR™ 1.0 and Flex™ 3 to developers. Adobe AIR which was part of Adobe Labs is now available for developers to develop rich Internet applications (RIA). AIR 1.0 runs using HTML, Flash and AJAX. On the other hand, the Flex 3 is as well an open-source development tool delivering fast, bringing web applications to your desktops.

Companies like AOL, Amazon, FineTune, eBay, NASDAQ, Pownce, and Nickelodeon are just some of the early adopters of Adobe AIR technology. But still, I do not see any word processing tools or any office suites adopting this yet, and I hope soon there will.

As many are moving to develop more desktop rich Internet applications , will our traditional browsing frequencies, accessing different web services, be lessen? It is becoming the “IN” thing, desktop web applications… will it be the next best thing with regards to web technologies? Both will surely open doors to developers to produce desktop applications easily.

As the Adobe AIR technology is making some buzz over the web, AOL adapted the technology and offers a new Xdrive® Desktop Lite beta. Running with Adobe AIR, Xdrive now allows easy file management directly to your Xdrive accounts. And since, Adobe AIR platform supports Windows and Mac, both system now can interact to their Xdrive accounts directly with features like:

• Set up new folders to organize those pictures of your kids and friends.
• Make extra copies of those tax documents.
• Upload your music files so they’re available to you from anywhere, no more CD cases.

With this more robust and interactive web application over desktop, AOL is just making the right move of delivering a more Web 2.0 AOL service.

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