With the announcement of Google Chrome OS tonight, it’s a great time to be a web developer. (And as an aside, I’m sure Redmond isn’t partying too hard either).

Why does the Google Chrome OS matter?

It’s not really a surprise that Google made the announcement. It’s been widely speculated for a long time that Google was working on this project. Google has continued to express that Chrome and the Web would be the basis of how they believed applications and software services would be delivered. The Google OS is simply part of the stack that will help Google fulfill this mission.

Of course, Microsoft tried this a decade or so ago and was hit with a Department of Justice lawsuit. That had a lot of implications to the web as we know it today. For example, with the DOJ lawsuit I believe Microsoft made 2 crucial decisions that have shaped today’s web:

- It removed Sun’s hopes of making Java the de facto programming language of applications running in the browser

- It removed Microsoft’s heavy investment in Internet Explorer, essentially freezing time (from a technical standpoint) for almost a decade as IE6 became the de facto web browser we were all forced to live with (and support).

Regardless of whether the DOJ decision or Microsoft’s reaction to it, our web world was impacted in a big way.

Beware of Free

There’s been a lot of relevant discussion around Free – both the good and the bad – recently from some large web and technology luminaries: Chris Andersen and Malcolm Gladwell. A number other important people have chimed in – but I think Alex Iskold at the Read/Write web makes some of the most interesting and relevant points about Freemium.

In his post, Beware of Freemium, Alex talks about how Free can be used by elite and powerful organizations to stiffle competition, create (or further) monopolistic markets and introduce complex transactions.

Tom Robinson (of 280 North fame) tweeted the following quote:

“One scary possibility [is they] create something far less expensive than a PC which is powerful enough for Web browsing”

This quote came from Bill Gates (then Chairman of Microsoft) in May 26, 1995. This was part of the Government’s evidence against in the DOJ antitrust case against Microsoft.

Back then, Microsoft was attempting to use Free as a way to enter a new market or more likely, block an emerging, threatening market, the web. Free was the concept that Internet Explorer could be given away as part of Microsoft’s dominant operating system, Windows, to eliminate the inventor of the web browser, Netscape. Prior to this, Netscape dominated (and literally created) the browser marketplace. In the early days, Netscape even sold Navigator in stores like CompUSA. But most people at the time received a subsidized version of the product from their ISP as part of your signup package.

Microsoft would give away IE, which meant that users didn’t have to install it (or worse at the time, download it from slow Internet connections over dial up). Since it was pre-installed in the Windows OS, users would just click the cleverly named “Connect to the Internet” shortcut on the desktop, thereby securing their dominant position literally overnight.

Sun and Java

At the time, Java was becoming very popular and both Netscape and Microsoft were supporting the JRE in the browser. In fact, the popular JavaScript language was created by Netscape and named (poorly, in retrospect) because of it’s quickly rising popularity. Back then, I was recruited by CSX (in Jacksonville, Florida) to work on one of the largest and most prominent Java initiatives (literally, many multimillions) – this was JDK 1.02 timeframe for some of the Java old timers reading this. Applets were the thing and lots of us envisioned that we would build rich applications delivered through a web browser using Java.

The DOJ intervened.

The world changed after this intervention. Not overnight, but close to it. Not too longer afterwards, Microsoft stopped supported the newest version of the Java runtime inside the browser – essentially eliminating Java’s chances to own the “Java in the browser” space. My guess it was more of Microsoft giving everyone (mainly Sun, given their hand in the DOJ lawsuit) the finger.

At the same time, I believe Microsoft made a conscious decision – partly understandable given the DOJ lawsuit – to stop investing in IE.

But the damage was done. Either through evil means or through a government intervention gone bad. I’m not smart enough to know the full implications of what could have happened if they didn’t intervene. However, I can make some educated conclusions based on what has happened because of the intervention. The Web innovation – in terms of the browser itself – was stifled.

Stifled, but not forever.

AJAX was an accidental success in my opinion. Timing is always the most interesting dimension of the success equation – and probably the least understood. We always remember things in more succinct historical matters where things happened nice and neatly. AJAX is an example – in my opinion – of a number of things converging over a long period of time and it just happened, quickly.

We had been using similar techniques for AJAX for a long, long time. At CSX, we used a technique that was common for a long time where all the client-to-server remoting was done using a hidden Java applet (and a technology called LiveConnect). This provided the ability to have real socket communication between the browser and the server and passing data between the Java VM and the browser’s JavaScript using the LiveConnect bridge.

Later lots of developer’s used Flash as a similar technique.

But Microsoft was really the first to introduce the XHR concept into IE. And the first main property Microsoft used this technique for was Microsoft Exchange Web. The other browser’s followed.

Also, back then, talking to the server was generally slow. We optimized around page turns. For different reasons than we optimize them today. Back then, we optimized them because it was expensive to talk to the server. We were using 96K lines (or even better, 128K ISDN). We used JavaScript sparingly and tried to reduce images (both in size and count). That’s how we rolled back then.

AJAX came along at a time when DSL and fast Internet was virtually everywhere and by then, PCs (and Macs) had many years of Moore’s Law improvement. In fact, lots of us believed (and still do) that we weren’t hardly taking much advantage of the PC itself. We had been frozen in technology time, stuck in the browser while our laptops and desktops were introducing dual-core processors and multiple gigabytes of RAM.

Google and the OS

Google is interesting and a different kind of Microsoft. But, the more time reveals, the more like Microsoft I think Google is becoming. I’m not making a value judgment about Google – I think Google is different in many, many ways than Microsoft. In fact, my belief is that technology companies gravitate toward a position of dominance and an orientation toward specific strategies that create unfair advantage, naturally, with success of their platform. Naturally, because as power is achieved through success, more power can be achieved by leverage. This is natural and mostly fair. This is our free market system at it’s best (or some would say, it’s worse).

Google wants to own the full stack. It’s logical, especially in their world view. If they can own the operating system, and the applications, and the services on top of the operating system and applications – they can extract the maximum value from the stack. It’s not evil, per se. It’s business. And they have plenty of cash, and plenty of time. For now, most people still view Google as the underdog and Microsoft as the evil monopoly.

But it’s not much different than Microsoft in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Faced with how to gain marketshare and continue to secure their dominance, Microsoft was able to make Free a lethal weapon. It’s taken over a decade for a company like Google to come along and challenge Microsoft – and it’s about time.

However, it is dangerous to believe that Google’s the white knight that will rescue the world from Microsoft dominance. They will certainly continue to put it into a more aggressive and innovative position and help level the playing field. I welcome that.

Most likely the immediate victims of the Google OS will not be Microsoft. The Google OS will first almost certainly challenge Linux – more specifically Ubuntu. This is the same as what Android will do to Symbian. While certainly Android competes with iPhone, more likely Android will challenge the rest of the Mobile OS than the Apple iPhone.

Google will also potentially stifle smaller competitors and innovative startups, first. Not because they necessarily intend to, but because they can. And they will. While Google is by far one of the largest (if not the largest) consumers and producers of open source, they have a hard time cooperating with open source communities and they don’t buy open source. This is completely OK – completely fair. It’s open source.

But I give Google credit, nonetheless. They try hard with I believe good intentions. But, it does hurt. Not personally, but as a whole. Their shear size, influence and impact have a way of simply locking out competition by simply talking about their intentions.

And, like Microsoft, Google will use Free as a way to do it. And, Free will give them a (free) pass – maybe with different means that Microsoft, but ultimately justifying the same end.

And what becomes of Google Chrome and the Google Chrome OS as it relates to Web standards?

What I like and admire about Google is that they’ve continued to support two important initiatives:

- Open Source

- Open Standards

However, this is a different means to an end than Microsoft used over a decade ago. Microsoft used proprietary and free to create unfair advantage. I believe strongly Google will use free and open to create an unfair advantage. And they will do it with the world cheering them on.

Google does these two initiatives because it makes their job easier. And it’s good for business, especially as it relates to their world view and their long-term strategy.

Let me reiterate – I don’t hate Google and I’m not trying to call Google evil. I believe it’s in their corporate interest to maximize shareholder value by creating the best and most dominant position in the marketplace. Google Chrome OS is a means to an end. And it’s a smart one.

But, the end to Google is still similar to Microsoft – albeit with different means and possibly different end goals. But, it most likely will have similar effects.

And this is the dilemma: What will Google do (WWGD)?

I started off by saying it’s a great time to be a web developer. This is because web technologies are the mainstay of all of these emerging and competing trends. And, in the end, I hope web technologies will continue to win, regardless of which desktop, phone, netbook or ebook reader we’re using in the next decade. That’s why we created Titanium. It’s going to be interesting.

The Appcelerator team has been hard at work over the past few months coding away into the wee hours and today we are incredibly excited to announce the preview release of our new product – Appcelerator Titanium™. Titanium is an open source platform for building applications using standard Web technologies (like HTML, CSS, and javascript) that extends functionality outside the browser and brings next generation applications to the desktop and mobile operating systems.

We’ve created a little video about the vision of Titanium we thought you’d enjoy:

When we say extended functionality we aren’t messing around. Web applications built with the Titanium SDK can support local file access and storage, native integration with the desktop environment, and both online and offline operation. The Titanium SDK is part of the Appcelerator Platform, so you can even leverage Appcelerator’s message-oriented architecture, pre-built integration with all the leading server-side languages and frameworks, and rich set of UI controls, layouts and themes for building desktop apps. Titanium makes coding super easy, because you can use your existing Web development skills to build apps that can be quickly deployed to Windows and Mac desktops (and in Q1 of next year, Linux). With these traits, we believe Titanium will enable a whole new generation of innovative rich desktop and mobile applications.

Now let’s get a little more technical – at the heart of Titanium is an innovative new open source, cross-platform runtime engine that provides application developers with native access to the computer’s desktop or the mobile device via a robust set of APIs. Built on top of WebKit, Gears and Chromium, the Titanium Runtime Engine provides developers with a powerful, free and open platform for building cross-platform applications using standard AJAX.

If you are craving more information, check out the following links:

• Titanium Homepage
• Download
• Demo Applications
• Titanium Screencasts
• FAQ

After you’ve had a chance to download and play around with Titanium, please help us out and post your feedback and suggestions to the Appcelerator community in the new Titanium group, or feel free to email me at jhaynie AT appcelerator DOT com.

Code Strong!

(NOTE: this is a cross post from my Appcelerant blog post).

I gave a talk last night (December 2, 2008) at the SD Forum’s Java SIG in Palo Alto, CA.

The subtitle of the presentation was: “How the web has gone beyond the browser and we’re headed back to Client/Server”. I’m including the presentation slides below:

This past week was a pretty significant event in the web2.0 world – at least to people who follow startups and Techcrunch. This week was the equivalent of the web emmy’s for startups, called the Techcrunch 50. Most startups presenting had absolutely no business model. Except one that really stood out. And, it not only stood out, but the guys at Yammer took top prize.

I’ve been a pretty active twitterer for quite awhile now. It’s quite addictive and impossible to explain. Here’s one way we discussed today at the office in an attempt to explain it:

• Phone calls are for urgency
• Emails are for content and detail
• IM is for immediacy
• SMS is for quick confirmations
• Blogs are for news and commentary
• Wikis are for knowledge sharing
• Twitter is for casual, micro conversations

With so many different ways to communicate, and so much more information available at all times, it’s becoming very difficult to manage our digital lives. However, on the other hand, we have more and more tools at our disposal.

If you don’t twitter, it’s probably hard to understand. I’d urge you to try it — but I warn you: you’ll probably hate it initially and give up quick. But, it’s one of those transformative events that will happen and you will “get it”. It’s OK – some people never get it (and shouldn’t). Others get it pretty much right away.

Yammer gave me one of those a-ha moments this morning. When I heard about Yammer, I thought, “hmmm…. that’s very interesting and obvious”. I signed up (it was a great experience) and invited a few people around me. They all joined within a few minutes. I started yamming (what do you call it?) — and within not too long — I decided to invite the rest of our employees. Within a few hours, everyone had joined (except one person who was traveling). And by the end of the day today (remember, we signed up mid-morning Pacific time), we had already had 11 members, 3 tags and 105 posts.

Yammer is twitter – but for business communications. It essentially is a clone; with finer control and a decent revenue model. With Yammer, you can use it for free. However, if you pay $1 per user per month, you unlock a number of enterprise features such as access control features (IP ranges), custom logos, etc.

Yammer will be a very powerful internal tool for communication – especially for passive information that can be followed or produced as desired. It’s much less invasive than email, a lot less urgent than a call, and provides a nice way to organize content across the company.

It’s especially nice for distributed teams like ours. We have people now in Atlanta, Texas and California. This is a nice way to bring everyone together in ways that aren’t possible with email or phone calls. It allows everyone to participate in cross-concerns across our organization.

Congratulations on the Yammer team. This is a great product.

As a parting note, there are others that are clamoring for this market as well. One that announced a little prematurely, namely because of Yammer’s announcement this week, was Present.ly. I haven’t been able to do a review yet of their application, but it looks similar and they seem to have quite a number of nice features as well and they’re ready to rumble. Ahhh, the fighting entrepreneurial spirit is so refreshing.

So, if you already twitter or are now considering it: you can follow me on twitter for random, sometimes useless, sometimes interesting tweets. You never know what might happen….

OK, this is a shameless plug, but what’s a blog for?

We’re announcing our Fall Appcelerator training schedule today.

We’re going to be offering training in Atlanta, San Francisco, Minnesota, Chicago and NYC.

We’re also partnering up with Frank Cohen from PushToTest to offer some AJAX testing as part of the training.

In addition, our Minnesota training will be led by author of the upcoming Manning book: Appcelerator In Action, Kevin Whinnery. Kevin has been a very active member of our community.

So, if you’re thinking about adding web2.0 or AJAX capabilities to your website or already knee deep in loads and loads of Javascript and need some relief – consider coming and let us show you an easier way to do it. Building great apps doesn’t have to suck as bad as it does without Appcelerator.

Also, if you’re a PHP lover and use Zend – one of the most awesome Zend PHP frameworks around – you might consider checking out our Zend/Appcelerator Webinar event on October 15th. The title: ‘Get “Rich” Quick : Building Ajax-based RIAs with Zend Framework and Appcelerator’.

We’re also sponsoring the upcoming ZendCon next week in Santa Clara, California (September 15-18, 2008). If you’re planning on attending, please stop by our booth and we’ll give you a free t-shirt!

My last post generated a lot of great discussion about the good, bad and ugly in the Atlanta startup ecosystem. Thanks for everyone who sent me updates directly, via twitter and right here in the comments on my post. I also appreciated the one or two not so pleasant emails I received. You don’t have to agree with my perspectives on things — and that’s OK. Sorry that I pissed some of you off. My original intent was to provide some discussion in the community in a way to create a dialog that allows us to move forward. I think I’ve done that. It’s now up to you guys, the community, to take it from here.

Before I finally end my blogging about the startup ecosystem in Atlanta, I figured I’d depart with one last post on a more positive note. I want to highlight 2 great companies that I think are under-funded and currently dismissed (no fault to the founders or their businesses). I’ll speak specifically about each below, but both are great companies with great prospects. Will they be billion dollar businesses? Who the hell knows? However, they’ve got a lot of early traction, good people and deserve the community and investor support in Atlanta. As a disclaimer, I’m somehow involved in both companies – not financially by any means – but as a friend/advisor/cheerleader/customer/partner. Regardless of my involvement, I think these 2 companies serve as the great hope for companies being created in Atlanta.

Loopfuse

Loopfuse was started by Roy Russo and Tom Elrod a year or so ago. They had been thinking about it when they were still at Red Hat (after the acquisition of JBoss) and I’ll never forget the night I met with them to talk about starting the company and what their plans were. My advice: “quit your day job”. Like a lot of first-time entrepreneurs with good paying jobs and families – that was not something that was as easy as it sounded. But they did it. And, they struggled through building out the business – and they’ve really built something great. Not only a great product, but a great set of satisfied customers paying them real dollars every month. And some big customers. Appcelerator is a (tiny) customer too – and we put them through the ringer and they made the product better for us and we’re happy.

These guys tipify what local, first-time, startup entrepreneurs go through. They don’t have MBAs and they’ve never been CEO of anything. But they’re passionate, stubborn and just-fine-thank-you if they have to prove it to the world. And they’re doing it one day, one customer at a time.

Loopfuse makes a lead marketing product and it kicks butt. Every person with an online website / business in the world should be using this software if you care about turning those web site visitors into satisfied, life-long customers. You can think of Loopfuse as a Web2.0 version of Eloqua that doesn’t suck and that you can actually afford.

Tom and I worked together at Vocalocity. He and I co-authored JBoss Remoting together and worked on some of JMX for JBoss. Tom later left Vocalocity to join JBoss full-time as a lead developer. Roy joined Tom at JBoss and was the lead for JBoss portal. They’re tech guys and now they’re full-time entrepreneurs building something with real value.

Here’s the thing. These guys will eventually raise money – and my bet it will be before next spring. However, my 2nd bet is that they’ll raise money from the west coast if they don’t raise regional money this Fall. I don’t have any particular insight on this — this is just my opinion. They’ve got a lot of people who they’re helping – companies that have raised a lot of money out here. And, they’re really helping them making their businesses better. If the local investor scene doesn’t jump on this, they’ll be another Appcelerator quick. This is a great opportunity to really get in and help these guys out. I know they’ve been busting their butts working day-and-night to keep up with the business. They barely have any time to talk with anyone about investment because they’re busy running their company. Watch out Atlanta, if you don’t get smart and fund these guys now – you may lose your chance soon.

Skyblox

Dave Payne started Skyblox around a year or so ago. Dave’s an ex-Earthlink guy that worked in the local wifi group in business development. I met Dave through Andrew Zuercher who works for us at Appcelerator. Dave also knows a lot of the same people in Atlanta so we instantly hit it off. Skyblox is a really bold concept. Local marketing is the next big thing if you’ve been stuck under a rock. It’s where the big boys – Google, Microsoft, etc – are going. And Skyblox is dead in the middle of this with their Wi-Fi access point lead to local marketing and content. Think Web2.0 meets City Search + Yelp + Yahoo Local.

We worked with Dave to help him launch Skyblox in Atlanta. I think Dave thought he’d only get a handful of places in the highlands and some other local neigborhoods in Atlanta when they launched. Boy was he wrong – they got a lot of neighborhood’s signed up and from everything I’m seeing and hearing, they can’t sign them up fast enough. And, they haven’t even started their multi-city launch yet – but I think they’re seeing a lot of demand and success just right here in Atlanta.

This is another set of folks that are heads down and kicking butt. They’re making it through blood, sweat and tears. And, like Loopfuse, they’ll definitely get some attention outside of town if the local scene doesn’t wise up, quick. These guys have a big idea and it’s certainly not without concerns and likely capital intensive. But, if they can quickly replicate what they’ve done in Atlanta across the remaining major cities in the U.S., they’ll quickly lock up the entire local content/search/marketing marketplace.

So, in summary, here ya go Atlanta. Let’s see what we can make of these two great companies. They’re bootstrapping it, they have revenue and customers. They’re big, bold business models that will require sufficient capital to get to the next stage. And, if the bet is right, they’ll have a nice ROI. Best of luck to you. If you’d like any helping getting in contact with them, please email at jhaynie [at] gmail [dot] com.

Last thought: if I didn’t mention your company, don’t get upset. there’s lots of other companies. I’m just highlighting two i know about well.

There might be something like this already out there but I just wanted a quick and dirty ruby class to get some relevant user information given a twitter username.

Feel free to use it as you see fit – just don’t blame me if you have an issue. You can download from here.

# Copyright (c) 2008 by Jeff Haynie.  All Rights Reserved.
#
# Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
# are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
#
#    * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
#      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#
#    * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
#      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
#      and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
#
#    * Neither the name of Jeff Haynie nor the names of its
#      contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this
#      software without specific prior written permission.
#
# THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND
# ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
# WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
# DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
# ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
# (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
# LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON
# ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
# (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
# SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
#

require 'open-uri'
require 'rubygems'
require 'json/pure'

class Twitter

	def Twitter.status(un)
		u = URI.parse "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.json?id=#{un}&count=1"
		j = nil
		begin
			j = JSON.parse(u.read).first
		rescue OpenURI::HTTPError=>e
			case e.to_s
				when /^404/
					raise 'Not Found'
				when /^304/
					raise 'No Info'
			end
		end
		o = {}
		user = j['user']
		fullname = user['name']
		if fullname == un
			o[:firstname]=nil
			o[:lastname]=nil
		else
			o[:firstname],o[:lastname] = Twitter.parse_name(fullname)
		end
		o[:url] = user['url']
		o[:location] = user['location']
		o[:image] = user['profile_image_url']
		o[:bio] = user['description']
		o[:status] = j['text']
		o[:date] = j['created_at']
		o
	end

	private

	def Twitter.parse_name(fullname)
		idx = fullname.index ' '
		if idx
			return fullname[0..idx].strip,fullname[idx..-1].strip
		end
		return '',fullname.strip
	end

end

if __FILE__ == $0
	o = Twitter.status ARGV.first || 'jhaynie'
	puts "Firstname: #{o[:firstname]}, Lastname: #{o[:lastname]}"
	puts "URL: #{o[:url]}"
	puts "Location: #{o[:location]}"
	puts "Status: #{o[:status]}"
	puts "Date: #{o[:date]}"
	puts "Bio: #{o[:bio]}"
end

You can run from command line to test it out:

> ruby twitter.rb ev

Replace twitter.rb with the name of the file you saved the code as and the 2nd argument (ev) with the twitter username.

Andy Edmonds has organized one of many Firefox 3 launch parties this coming Tuesday, June 17th, 2008. The party will be held at the Park Tavern in Midtown, 500 Tenth Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30309.

Andy was the host of the original Mozilla 1.0 Boston Party so this should be an interesting change from back then.

Please spread the word and download Firefox on this day. Mozilla is going to attempt to get into the Guinness Book of Records by getting as many people to download FF3 at the same time. This should be interesting.

If you’re not in Atlanta and would like to attend or host your own local launch party, you can get more details at the official Mozilla Launch Party website.

Last Friday we announced support for Appcelerator RIA + Google AppEngine. This means you can build rich Internet applications using Appcelerator and then deploy them into the google cloud using Google’s AppEngine - which was released last Monday.

Appcelerator already has native support for building rich apps using a Python backend – we were quickly able to add support for appengine by leveraging this backend codebase. We made a number of changes to the product to make it seamless to interact with appengine, like leveraging the appcelerator CLI to support deployment.

To use it, you’ll need to first download the following pre-requisites: Python 2.5, the App Engine SDK, and the Appcelerator SDK.

Here’s a short screencast with instructions:

Once you have everything installed and ready, it’s easy to create a new appengine project:

app create:project ~/tmp my_app_name appengine

Make sure that my_app_name matches the application identifier in your appengine dashboard.

This should create a project with everything you need to develop appcelerator apps using appengine. Open up your index.html, make some changes and then test the deployment into the cloud:

app deploy:project

This will deploy into the cloud and you should be able to navigate to your appengine URL to test it out.

You can also run locally:

app run:project

This will run your project locally for development and testing. Navigate to http://localhost:8080 to test it out after starting it up.

You should also check out a really cool demo that Tejus built. It’s called AppTunes. It’s a RIA application that sort of mimics Apple’s iTunes running in full-screen. It has a cool coverflow of album art and you can listen to streaming audio for each track in your browser. This app was built using the new appcelerator + appengine integration and is running in the cloud.

What’s cool about this application is that is shows how you can use Flash-based Flex components inside an Appcelerator based application. I believe this gives the best of both worlds: a standards-based, HTML/Ajax application that can leverage the power of the Flash capabilities.

And now, a message from our sponsors:

In the spirit of open source and shared learning, we’d like to acknowledge a few key pieces that we put together to make this demo application that Tejus built happen:

• Doug McCune for his super bad ass CoverFlow Flex Component. We’ve used the Appcelerator Widget API to widgetize this flex widget and allow it to be both declaratively added to markup and the power of Appcelerator’s Web Expression Language to add remoting capabilities for data binding. This also shows off the power of using Appcelerator + Adobe’s Flex bridge to get the best of both worlds.
• JS Sound Kit for the streaming audio for playing the MP3s. Again, we built this as a reusable widget.
• Jamendo and the independent artists for the awesome, DRM-free music and cool looking coverart.

This morning (way too early in the morning), I gave the following keynote presentation to the entire conference. I had to follow Doug Crockford, from Yahoo! and inventor of JSON. Doug gave a great, but bleak, presentation about the state of the web and how to fix it.

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