Apollo… what a lot of people have been anxiously awaiting. Adobe’s effort to have a desktop runtime to work offline, have some OS integration for extra features not available on the web, and work with exiting AJAX and Flash / Flex applications with little to no porting.
Kevin Rowe (I think) is showing launching an Apollo application. It has a desktop icon. It looks and works like a regular windows app. He shows how the app can read a file from the local machine. Browsers can do that, so nothing new here.
He shows the same app on Mac. Looks the same. Us Flashers who’ve been doing mProjector, Director, Zinc, SWFStudio, et al aren’t impressed, but apparently the crowd digs it.
He’s talking about the role of the Apollo runtime. How it can support SWF, HTML, and PDF as well as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, AJAX, and any combination thereof.
He’s showing Google maps running on the desktop. It’s running apparently in a desktop app via the Apollo runtime. So, crowd likes it; we recognize that if Google Maps works on Apollo, a complicated AJAX app, we’re good.
He’s got transparency over Google Maps He’s also got drag and drop over Google Maps and Google Maps is showing the markers it has for destinations. Hrm… nice.
Reading and writing local files on the user’s hard drive will be available to both AJAX / JavaScript / DHTML apps as well as Flex / Flash apps. Yum.
Supports the obvious custom shape windows, multiple windows, transparency… we all already expect this since we’ve been doing it awhile with 3rd party projectors.
He’s discussing the deployment via a deployment package via the browser and how it copies the files to the local machine and is now an app the user can run.
Key point: apps you’ve already built can be ported and used.
Kevin Lynch is showing early apps created by some beta users. It shows the standard Flex fare with an integrated PDF and HTML dialogues. Nice mix!
MySpace has a beta IM client… cool. eBay has an app too. Looks pretty simple. Kevin searches for a mint Jaguar. Has some god real data. Crowd digs the presentation of data. You can apparently bid… wow, he bid and it already outbid him. Man, eBay’s tough. It’s got webcam integration, so he’s taking a picture of an Apollo shirt with him in the picture, hehe. He’s posting a bid on eBay through the app. they are donating the money they get from it to a local Nevada charity. His profile looks like him.
He is now showing Nimbus by Virtual Ubiquity, a Word Processor. He opens an existing file; he has to log into his network share via Flex… whoa. It’s got fonts, images, tables, and the formatting and re-positioning of text is wicked fast. Its ot multi-user annotation. You can filter comments as well as toggle them on and off.
He’s showing Rocketboom, an Internet TV video application via RSS feeds. Looks like a feed reader for video. He plays some of the videos; Flash video obviously. He adds the MTV pimp my ride feed, and shows the video running fullscreen. Crowd likes fullscreen. Lab release soon.
Investment fund for Apollo; $100,000,000 (one hundred million dollar fund) to help invest in companies that are building Apollo apps. Got an idea? Get bling!
He’s doing a sneak of tomorrows keynote. WTF… a car is driving in here. Kevin is getting in the car. It’s a Jaguar. Hah, apparently a lot of the crowd didn’t know it’s got Flash in it. They are showing him in the car showing how the Flash is integrated with the hardware of the car. It also has built in GPS. Flash is the GUI for all of this. It’s right there in the dashboard above the AC button.