O’Reilly: Inside RIA

Nokia recently launched a new site that allows users to use their imaginations and create new visions for headphones of the future. The headphones users create are mostly fictional, adding some wildly expressive features like hot rod exhaust pipes, peacock feathers, missiles, etc. The site is part of a contest Nokia is launching around the configurator. Users are invited to create and submit their designs online, where they'll be voted on by other users. The top 10 users will get a free trip out to Nokia's headquarters in the UK, where their designs will be produced into real headsets and given to them to keep. I caught up with the development team who built the app and they were nice enough to give me an interview. Read this entry to see the full interview text as well as get some more information on the contest.

Efflex is a set of designer effects for Adobe Flex created by Stephen Downs (aka "Tink"). Stephen presented Efflex at the recent Flash on the Beach conference and has a background in building applications for the Flash platform. In this entry I'll talk a little bit about what Efflex has to offer and what sets it apart from other effects libraries.

Merapi will be featured in two separate sessions at Adobe MAX, and Merapi project evangelist Dave Meeker wants to demo your application. If you have a Merapi-powered AIR app, get in touch with Dave at meekerd@gmail.com and get on the...

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the afternoon and thought, wow, I need a graphics editing tool that's a heck of a lot better than Paint, but not nearly as complicated as Photoshop? If so, you're looking for SUMO Paint - the robust and free RIA for graphics editing.

The Skin to Win challenge is over and the winners have been posted on the Scalenine.com blog. Each of the winning entries receives mention in the post, and clicking on the screen shots leads to an interactive sample of each implemented skin. All of the winning entries look really good - browse on over and have a look. Thanks to everyone who participated in the challenge!

The ILOG Elixir team is going to present two sessions at Adobe MAX on their unique visual interface library, and they want to showcase your app. If you've built anything that uses Elixir in the past year or so, check out this recent blog post by the Elixir team and get the publicity you deserve!

Today Joost launched it's new, non-download required version of it's service, which joins Hulu and a scad of other companies in delivering real television shows and movies straight to your Flash-10-enabled browser. Joost is based out of Estonia and founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who also founded both Skype and Kazaa. In this entry I'll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the new online version of Joost.

Intelligence Gaming announced their Immersive Cultural Simulation Product today, which uses a highly specialized Flex Application designed for Flash Player 10 to deliver full panoramic 360 degree video and 8 channels of binaural audio to users. Users participate in the simulations through use of a specialized headset that projects the display through goggles and the audio through a headset and moves the scene to correspond with changes in the user's head orientation.

Intelligence Gaming built the simulator as part of a new training program for the Army, which leverages the immersive technology to train soldiers in situational awareness outside of real danger. Read the full entry to learn more about the technology used in this project as well as more details about the simulations themselves.

If you've ever developed an iPhone application, or thought about developing an iPhone application, or thought, gee, I'd love to develop an iPhone application if it wasn't for that silly, restrictive, nonsensically awful Apple NDA, then this web app is for you. Webmonkey started an online forum charting the history of Apple's descent into Evil. It's conveniently available as an embed-able timeline (below.)

The Scalenine "Skin To Win" challenge ends October 10th. If you're a Flex or AIR developer and you haven't gotten in on this action, what are you waiting for? There's a Macbook AIR, MAX tickets and more on the line. Get on it!