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March 29, 2007
Apollo surprises
Apollo surprises: Even though there's been so much discussion about what a "universal client" should do, it's only when lots of people toss it about that we really learn what it is. That first link goes to Tara Hunt, who describes how Scrapblog was a regular web app late Tuesday afternoon, and by Thursday morning a roomful of New York financiers saw it run from the Windows system tray, and the Macintosh dock... a full-fledged cross-platform standalone application. That's amazing. Grant Skinner came from the opposite direction, and needed to make a standalone time-tracking application, which could synch with the network when available, to aggregate a workgroup's reports for accurate billing. He developed his desktop applications using standard web techniques -- not packaging up a webpage as an app, but using web skills for application-building -- avoiding OS-specific coding languages, using only OS-neutral coding. That's amazing, too. The third link which surprised me this evening isn't about Apollo, but may show what's going on here... Spinlets is an OS-neutral, browser-neutral widget technology... their FAQ says it's just a web program, and all you need is a blog or place to host it... their press release says no odd plugins are required... only their overview mentions it runs atop the Adobe Flash Player, and is "completely based on browser technologies." The Player is just taken-for-granted background technology now, as predictable as the voltage in the socket, the water in the tap. The exciting stuff these days is happening above the layer of the operating system, able to reach people no matter what computer brand they have. The Scrapblog page became a standalone in a flash; Grant used his existing web skills to reach the desktop. There's something significant going on here.
Posted by JohnDowdell at March 29, 2007 10:41 PM
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Comments
Hi,jd
I saw you in OSFlash Mailing list.
I want to know that is the MXNA stop Aggregating any feed already?
What strange is, when submitting my feed, it says that "MXNA 2.0 already contains a site by this name."
Can you give me some instructions, thanks a lot:)
[jd sez: Sorry, I don't know the administration of the aggregator -- you might try checking the contact links on it instead.]
Posted by: awflasher at March 30, 2007 07:43 AM
A little heads up , something cool is going to be released by G-uniX Technologies on Apollo and Flex in this quarter. :)
Posted by: Darwin A at March 30, 2007 12:30 PM