This week, I find out how much Adobe AIR, web-apps been popular and develop increasingly from web developers, recently?
Just remind the AIR applications, which are downloadable platform for running web applications on any operation system. Simply download and install Adobe AIR/applications on the desktop, and make it worth playing with them or just more interesting? Here, take a look at some applications with technical information.

Google Analytics Reporting Suite

Application: a useful tracking tool that puts all data from Google and easy to navigate the visitors' pageview, data pages' loading information and specific time spans, and more.

Technical: built using Adobe Flex 3 with a custom built ActionScript 3 API for Google Analytics.

Website:
Developer site and download.


Google Reader Air

Application: those whose use Google Reader then you can use this air applications instead and has the same basic UI layout/style.

Technical: open source and hosted on Google Code. HTML based and uses JQuery JavaScript Library for effects, AJAX and other behaviours.

Website:
Developer site and download.


DestroyFlickr

Application: those Flickr users, this is another AIR Flickr web based application and you can customize/navigate the photo as you do with Flickr.

Technical: built using ActionScript 3 and Flex builder IDE.

Website:
Developer site and download.


Klok Tracking Time

Application: useful to track the time on projects, tasks and anything really. The features include drag and drop timesheet data to your desktop as Microsoft excel file, comprehensive charts and reports and interact viewing calender.

Technical: not known but possibly using Flex framework.

Website:
Developer site and download.


Twhirl Twitter Client

Application: mini-messaging social network, enhancing the features with Twitter. Ease of use and if you're going to use Twitter during the workday, you might as well make it quick and simple.

Technical: built using Flex and handles the themes via specific XML files that change the colours dynamically.

Website:
Developer site and download.

So far I have reached 5 Adobe AIR applications that I use them currently. I have to say, they're really nice UIs/rich contents and the next generation of RIAs. Few more applications listed below.

• Doomi - to-do list application
• DiggTop - the social bookmarking application
• Snackr - rss ticker application
• Pandora Desktop - media station application
• AOL Top 100 music videos - collection of 100 hottest music videos application
• FLV play - YouTube video collection application
• Finetune - Desktop Music Player application

Related the article from Lifehacker.com.
Review more AIR Applications from FreshAIRApps.com.

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Shu is another Adobe flash wrapper, just like Adobe AIR but some of features look sound great for developers and users alike. The significant feature is that allows you to by pass installing AIR runtime to the user's system instead running the standalone applications on PC or Mac. Shu applications can also able to run from a CD or network share without installation. For developers, Shu provides a toolkit of commands to extend the system capabilities of your AIR application, "features include, controlling external applications, opening external files, database connectivity and control, system path retrieval and screen capture functionality". Just below the facts that Adobe AIR currently does not support the features, but Shu does.

AIR does have a number of drawbacks;

• AIR applications must be installed in order to run.
• AIR applications will only run on a machine with the AIR runtime installed
• AIR applications can not be run directly from a CD
• AIR applications can not open files such as word documents or PDFs
• AIR applications can not execute other applications
• AIR application can only make use of the built in SQLLite database, but Shu support MySQL instead of SQLLite

Let's see how Adobe AIR will approach and support more features in the coming ahead.

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Adobe Air, nice tool for Web developer like me. I just came back from the adobe air conference, yesterday and really got some ideas that I wanted to do the program/application (link between the browser and desktop). Hey, I'll be posted more information in detail near future.

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