[ Update : Mike added this post that I was unaware of when I wrote mine.. also helpful to clarify what's going on ]

Disclosure

• I am a Flex Developer
• I use Adobe products daily
• I work for an Adobe partner: Universal Mind
• I am a fan of the Adobe platform
• I worked on the eBay Desktop project
• I was co-creator of the Artemis Project (similar to Mike’s CommandProxy)
• I’ve also worked as a java and Microsoft developer in the past.

Add all this up and I think my background gives a bit of relevance to the conversation.

I’d like do discuss some of the real issues here and do it in an attack-free manner. But first, since the previous conversations escalated to attacking some of the people I know and projects I’ve been close to, I’d like to give some shout outs:

Mike

I’ve heard Mike speak several times, had a couple conversations with him, and read his blog pretty regularly. My impression of Mike has always been that he’s an extremely capable technologist who cares a lot about his product (AIR). I’ve had extremely brief discussions with him about competing technologies. There was never a time in the course of any of these discussions where he has bashed another product or an employe of a competing company.

Alan / eBay Desktop

I had the pleasure of working on the eBay Desktop application before the Alpha release in 2006 and for a time after that. Alan is a great guy to work with. Again, like Mike he also cares a lot about his product. As Alan stated, the eBay Desktop application is in beta (as is AIR). It’s hardly fair or relevant to criticize the user acceptance of an application that is in beta. For me, eBay Desktop isn’t about offline it’s about a better experience, but more on that would be off topic.

Adobe’s Developer Relations

I’ve had quite a bit of interaction with the Adobe evangelists, probably the most with Ryan Stewart, but also; Ted Patrick, Mike Chambers, Mike Downey and Kevin Hoyt. Ryan went out of his way to help me out with Artemis and other Flex related stuff even before he was an Adobe employe. All of the other guys I have listed have been more than reasonable in answering all of my questions or concerns. Quite frankly, it’s their job and they’re good at it.

Another place Adobe shines in developer relations is through their engineering team. I’ve had e-mails answered by engineers and product managers from the Flex team that have saved me a lot of time, and I know that I’m far from the exception in this case. In my opinion, this is stuff that they really don’t have to do and it’s very much appreciated.

None of this is meant to be an attack on Microsoft. It’s been over 3 years since I did any Microsoft development, so I really don’t know what they’re developer relations are like. It’s also not to try and get Adobe to buy me a house (although I wouldn’t turn it down). It’s just a chance to highlight the good things going on at Adobe in light of the criticisms raised. Now on to the real issues…

Scott brought up two points that were interesting to me. One was regarding security and the other was on the relevance (ie “what is being solved here?”).

On Security

As I understand it, there are two concerns regarding security. The first is data protection. In Mike’s proof of concept, as well as in the Artemis framework, the data that is exchanged between AIR and .NET/java is sent through a socket that is not encrypted. It is possible for another process to monitor this data and intercept it in the same way a sniffer process that inspects packets on an internet connection can retrieve sensitive data that is sent across the internet. This is a concern for someone building an application that might send sensitive data between AIR and .NET/java.

The second security risk is that another process might hijack the proxy process. It would be possible to build a malware AIR application that could connect to the proxy process and cause it to do very nasty things to the underlying system (like search the hard disk for credit card numbers, or just reformat it). To me, this is the bigger risk. An important question here is: Why is this different from a .NET application that might to the same nasty things? It is different because AIR is a platform that has a security model associated with it. This type of bridging gives a false impression of security to the user. The result is an AIR application to .NET or java that has taken on all of the security risks of the bridged platform as well as the risk of data protection in the transport.

So, Scott is correct, these are big risks and should not be taken lightly, however, where I disagree is that is that Mike as an Adobe employe has no right to explore these ideas publicly. The fact that he (and others at Adobe) work on projects like this make me even more interested in their platform as a developer. That’s not a claim that any of their products are better than the competition, which is arguably subjective claim from either side. What I appreciate is the philosophy at Adobe that allows for and perceives the value of this work. It’s work like this that showed us Quake running in the Flash Player at MAX.

If these kinds of methods were something that Adobe was interested in supporting, rest assured the security issues would be addressed.

On Relevance (What is solved here?)

When I presented Artemis at 360 Flex in August David Coletta asked a question on Artemis that went something like: “Pphilosophically is this a way to improve AIR or extend the capabilities of java?” This is really a similar question. So, why? My answer for that is one that companies selling platforms might not like, and that is: Ubiquity. As a developer I want ubiquity between APIs, frameworks, languages, OSes, and definitely platforms.

The idea for Artemis came from the desire to make the benefits of java (countless open source projects and many great language features) available to a Flex developer creating AIR applications. At the same time, providing the powerful UI capabilities of Flex to java developers. I’d rather stop thinking in terms of the dichotomy that either Flex / AIR or Silverlight / WPFE is better as a platform or for a particular project, and be able to use the great features of both technologies ubiquitously. Unfortunately, I think the days of building a Silverlight module and loading it into a Flex app (or vice versa) are far away.

To sum up…

This work is definitely not the kind of stuff you validate a platform on. It’s not a solution for most (if any) enterprise or consumer applications, but it’s fun, cool stuff. That’s what I love about this technology. It’s fun to create solutions with it and I love the challenge of pushing what it’s designed to do.

Mike, thanks for working on CommandProxy. It’s a great idea to get .NET devs excited about Flex and push what AIR can do. Scott, thanks for bringing your concerns, the real issues underneath all of the unnecessary comments from both sides are relevant and important.

Source: Hands On: eBay Desktop Opens to the Masses.

ADOBE MAX 2007, CHICAGO — October 3, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the winners of the 2007 MAX Awards. Now in its fifth year, the global awards program recognizes innovative applications of Adobe software for creating engaging experiences. Adobe received nearly 600 entries from 30 countries in seven categories. Finalists in these categories also competed for a People’s Choice Award selected by the MAX attendees.

“The MAX Awards recognize the incredibly innovative work our customers do with Adobe technologies,” said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect. “The awards not only highlight some of the best designers and developers around the world but their work also serves as inspiration for others in the community and teams here at Adobe, often pushing the edges of what’s possible in our software.”

Winners were announced last night at a ceremony at MAX 2007.

- The 2007 People’s Choice Award winner was eBay with EffectiveUI for eBay Desktop.

- In the Advertising and Branding category the winner was Interone Worldwide GmbH for Incredibly MINI The new MINI, and the finalist was Fuel Industries | Karbon Arc for The Passenger.

- In the Communication and Collaboration category the winner was MFG.com for its Online Marketplace for the Manufacturing Industry, and the finalist was Hong Kong Police Force for its Scenario-based Interactive Multi-player Simulation (SIMS).

- In the Enterprise category the winner was Wachovia Corporation with Cardinal Solutions Group, Inc. for Wachovia Corporation – Service Request Management (SRM) Workflow, and the finalist was GES Exposition Services with Four Point Solutions Ltd. for GES Intellikit(SM).

- In the Mobility and Devices category the winner was Shockwave & AddictingGames, a MTV Networks Company for Shockwave Minis, and the finalist was Dalrus Pte Ltd. for OwnTape.

- In the Public Sector category the winner was NASA for its International Space Station: An Interactive Reference Guide and the finalist was US Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security for its OASISS – Operation Against Smugglers Initiative on Safety and Security.

- In the Rich Internet Applications category the winner was eBay with EffectiveUI for eBay Desktop, and the finalist was BMC Software for its BMC Dashboards for BSM.

- In the Video category the winner was Big Spaceship with BBDO for HBO Voyeur, and the finalist was DHAP Digital, Inc. for Industrial Light & Magic’s The Show – The Visual Effects of Pirates of the Caribbean II.

Winners and finalists for the 2007 MAX Awards were selected by a team of Adobe judges. Selection criteria included innovation, application of technology, brand building and business impact and benefits. The winner of the People’s Choice Award was selected by Adobe MAX conference attendees. For more information on 2007 MAX Awards winners and finalists, visit http://adobemax2007.com/awards/2007/finalists/ .

Adobe – Adobe Press Room: For immediate release.

My colleage, Sean Christmann, lead developer on the eBay Desktop application I’ve been working on, was quoted several times in an InfoWorld article about Adobe’s new Apollo framework.

Original text from: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/03/01/HNadobeapollobeta_1.html

Adobe to launch Apollo beta later this month

Program would allow users to run Web apps while offline

Adobe Systems plans to launch the beta of a new runtime later this month that will allow rich Web-based applications to run offline, technology that could threaten the popularity of programming platforms such as Java and Microsoft’s .NET.

The release of a developer preview of the runtime, dubbed Apollo, will coincide roughly with an ApolloCamp event Adobe will hold in San Francisco on March 16, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. ApolloCamp will give developers a chance to kick the tires of the new runtime.

Apollo delivers on the promise of technology Macromedia originally introduced in 2003 called Macromedia Central. Adobe purchased Macromedia in December 2005. Macromedia Central was an environment that allowed Flash-based applications to run offline so they didn’t need to make continuous calls to servers on the back end, allowing them to run more quickly and efficiently.

“Macromedia Central was an early [version] of Apollo,” said Pam Deziel, director of the Platform Business Unit for Adobe. Apollo will allow developers to take applications built not only in Flash, but also in HTML, AJAX, and other Web development languages and create them to run locally on a user’s desktop, she said.

According to Sean Christmann, senior developer at EffectiveUI — a Denver-based company that has had an early look at Apollo — the technology acts as a wrapper, which makes it easy to take code from an existing Web application, wrap it in Apollo, and transfer it to the desktop. The key to making this transfer is Adobe’s Flex Builder tool, which developers can use to wrap their code with the technology, Christmann said.

The Apollo runtime must be installed on the desktop or embedded directly in the application to enable it to run locally, similar to how the Flash player runs Flash applications in the browser, Deziel said. Apollo will be available for free to both users and developers.

Anthony Franco, founder and managing partner of EffectiveUI, said Adobe plans to use Apollo to promote revenue-generating products, such as Flex Builder and Flex Data Services, which connects the Flex application framework to back-end data and business intelligence.

It also could lure developers away from Java and languages used to develop .NET applications on Windows, Christmann said. “A lot of users start learning programming online, and now they don’t have to learn a new language when they want to go to the desktop,” he said.

Though Apollo is not available for public release yet, EffectiveUI has used it to build a desktop application for eBay so its auction site can run on the desktop without being connected to the Internet or accessed through a browser, Christmann said. EBay will not confirm or deny the existence of the application.

There are several benefits for companies with popular Web sites to also have a desktop version that can run in Apollo, Christmann said. It allows companies to interact directly with their users without having to access a browser, and it also takes a load off of their back-end servers if users can access their applications offline.

Users benefit from running applications on Apollo, too, he said. If they want to put new products up for an eBay auction, for instance, they can type all of the information about the items and post photos of them while they are offline, then access the Internet later and have that information automatically uploaded to the site, Christmann said.

Franco said Adobe plans to release a final version of Apollo in the third quarter, and eBay likely will go live with its desktop application then. Adobe’s Deziel would only say that the company plans to release Apollo in the second half of the year.