Air, when it came out, was like most technologies sold today: “this thing is going to be huge, it’s going to change the way we look at planet earth and it’s going to revolutionize your pants”.

It has been a year now (March 19th) that Air is in our lives (first under the name “Apollo”), and where is that big revolution?

Like any other dream, especially marketed ones, it hasn’t quite happened as they sold it. It is not huge, nor changing our bias on technology or changed anything to my pants.

It’s just a tool.

A technology, a computer, an idea is just a tool and by itself, it just sits there and will not produce anything or change the world. In other words, a technology is only as good as the adoption rate and the creativity of the people using it.

Papervision 3D, another framework, rogue, made by enthusiast, is quite a different story. People love it and the early adopters have blown our minds in term of the possibilities. Many big brands have adopted 3D in their site and are using a beta framework even though it could disappear of the earth faster than it came. Suddenly, Flash 10 promises us 3D integration (of some sort).

So why is it that something like a desktop development framework pushed by Adobe, a big software maker, can fail (I wouldn’t call that a success), while a rogue 3D framework made out of geekery makes it global and changes so much the internet?

Well, it seems that Adobe and a lot of the ‘Web2.0′ world believed that the future of the internet was to integrate the desktop with the browser and somehow get away from the browser. I’m not saying that they failed at predicting the future but they did fail at realizing it.

Is this growth only slow or is there growth at all? How has Air changed your life compared to 3D in websites? How could millions of dollar fail while geekery succeeds?

Time will tell.

The strategy department in technology companies should get closer of stabbing in the dark rather than telling people what the future is. I will always remember that t-shirt I saw recently that said: “dude, where is my flying car?”.

Twitter, the biggest life-waster medium (media?) on the planet has a cool little deviation (twist’).

Twistori parses and filters twitter to find strings that begin by I love, I hate, I think, I believe, I feel, I wish.

The result is a pretty cool mood’o'meter of the internet (of ego-centric people with no life).

Tag Galaxy is a pretty cool little app using the flickr api.

I’m not 100% sure that it’s anything but cool.

Slide rocket is in private beta and I’m still waiting for my invite. It seems very promising from the look of it.

Anyone got an invite for me?

I think we have a winner.

Just brilliant.

Check it out.

Spectra is a visual rss reader of msnbc.com made in Flash and using I believe Papervision 3D.

It’s visually very impressive, 3D, quite usable, but buggy as hell!

For starters it wouldn’t start in my Safari for some reason (buggy JS?), then clicking the carrousel elements kept getting items from the same feeds in Firefox 3, and so on.

However, it looks very promising…

Less flat than my Digg UFO, for sure!

It has been a while since I’ve seen a documentation that a company can be proud about.

The Facebook Developer Documentation is one that gives me hope. it seems that web2.0 means documentation2.0 too.

Spend some time in Adobe’s documentation, or any web framework and you might find yourself with a wig soon enough.

Facebook’s documentation is clear, to the point and well explained, with multiple options. Also good documentation examples go to Mozilla’s Gecko DOM reference and Proce55ing’s.

CushyCMS is a good execution of an old idea: have a CMS that integrates within the content of a site, rather than define how the content of the site should be handled.

Simply add the cushycms tag to your content divs and off you go.

The only problem I imagine is the fact that the pricing hasn’t been defined therefor making clients very uncomfortable with the idea of using such product. They like to know how much things are going to cost and plan the website around that. That simple fact renders it a toy rather than a tool.

That said the simplicity of it makes it a definite product to watch closely…

We’ve got to look at the forces around the world sometimes. Google was primarily built on Python code. They happen to acquire the guy who started Python, Guido van Rossum, and now a very important project of Google, Google App Engine, is allowing people to build web apps using Python.

I used Python for a couple of projects myself and I agree, it’s a wonderful language. The semantic and the design of it make it really enjoyable to write from scratch, manage and expand from. It is however not as spread as PHP when it comes to web.

The fact that Google has chosen Python from the start and publishes a beta of such an important project (App Engine) using Python is a very interesting turn of events. The primary position of Google and its strategic position for the future of web developers (think google code) is going to be a huge boost for Python as a web development language.

Seeing the speed at which google sets up their own WIFI network around the world and their dominating position on the web (regardless of their not being evil motto), this is clearly making a statement.

Before it was: “we trust Python to be the answer to our problems”,
now it is: “we trust Python to be the new universal answer to your problems”.

I understand that Google App Engine will eventually support a multitude of languages but the launch of a beta with only Python available demonstrates their will to push Python as the new reference for web development. See more here. When you throw a long awaited beta to a gezillion thirsty nerds, it will push them to use Python and sets the momentum in a clear direction.

Is this the push Python needed to make it compete with PHP when it comes to web application development?

Is this a change in history, Google telling us what to use?

I’ve been looking for this for god knows long… Great, and free SQL Designer. Usability could be better but it does the job very well!

Design:
Usability:
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Further to our review of the Hobnox’s Online TV application, Hobnox recently launched an online music tool. Based on a similar interface concept as Reason, users are able to use virtual drum machines, effects pads and a 12 channel mixer to sequence some music. Similar to Reason, the system is really easy to use. Instruments look and behave just like analogue equipment and you can chain the audio inputs and outputs. It’s good fun. Also, the instruments look very cool!

Check it out.

Fontstruct is a font building application that lets you design your own fonts. You paint with ‘bricks’ into a grid. The interface is quite similar to pixel editing or image editing software, with quite similar but more simplistic tools. You built letters up one at a time, and it’s all very simple and intuitive to use, if a little visually flat. Once you have designed a true type font is generated and published on the site, allowing you to share your creation.

While now where near as powerful as dedicated font generation applications, the gallery of fonts made on the site is quite impressive, and it’s evident that while being simple, the application does allow you to create very unique and fun typefaces. I like xtrude myself.

Overall, it’s a fun little app for a while but not particularly useful. The execution was pretty effective, but nothing to write home about. Imagine if this site had come out a few years ago when absolutely everyone was pixel font mad!

Adobe had to release along the lines of picnik. It makes sense. They own both technologies (Flex/Photoshop) and therefore had the tools to make something super-great.

The result? Not so bad, but I don’t think that it’s a direct competitor to Picnik for example, another online photo editor, previously seen here.

Photoshop Express is a quick way to adjust the crop, hue, saturation, tint and the like. And it does it really well.

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Nexus creates a graph of your social network and finds commonalities between your friends.

Built with Python 2.5, PyFacebook & Javascript.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presents a 2008 online exhibition. The website is slick (although I tend to get lost with their next and previous…)

More information in this pdf.

Visit the MoMA 2008 exhibition.

Information Architects (iA) presents the 2008 Web Trend Map.

Almost 300 of the most influential and successful websites are represented on the greater Tokyo area train map.

A0 poster available.

The clickable ’start page’ is wicked for random clicking.

Hobnox is an online TV application, with concerts, interviews, series, reports, news, etc.

The execution is splendid.

Nouri.sh is a web2.0 app that let’s you send rss feeds over email.

Nourish is a next generation newsletter service which allows you to take any RSS feed from content you publish (like a blog), and convert it into an automated email newsletter your readers can subscribe to.

FeedJournal generates a journal looking format from RSS feeds. The idea is not new but for once the execution is decent. In the long run, I expect it to fail though, as it’s only mimicking a soon to be extinct format. The only good thing about it is nostalgia! Ok I’m being a bit harsh here, but text is so much better in a blog format or RSS feed than a fake online paper with columns all over the shop!