Internet applications

Failed technology trends tend to be recycled every five or so years in hopes that businesses and consumers eventually will be ready to adopt what surely is a great idea.

The idea of the "thin client" -- a processor and monitor setup that loads all files and even the operating system from a central server -- has been trumpeted as the next big thing at least three times since I replaced my baseball mitt with a keyboard and mouse.

The latest incarnation of the thin client finally is starting to gain a hold as a "netbook," an incredibly portable notebook.

Adobe Systems is poised to launch several key enhancements to its Adobe Flash platform in San Francisco this week at its MAX 2008 conference.

Any major upgrade to Flash is significant because 81 percent of worldwide online videos are viewed with Flash technology, making it the number-one format for video on the Web, according to comScore. Adobe's Flash Player is also installed on 98 percent of Internet-connected desktops and a growing number of mobile devices.

Just weeks after releasing the beta version of its Flash Player 10, code-named Astro, Adobe Systems this week released the final version for Linux, Windows and Macintosh computers. Flash Player 10 comes with a slew of new features and goes head-to-head with Microsoft's Silverlight 2, which was also released this week.

The multimedia products are competing head-to-head. Adobe has the lion's share of the market, but adoption of Microsoft's Silverlight has ramped up since it launched a year ago with 150 partners, including NBCOlympics.com, Blockbuster, Yahoo Japan and AOL.

T-Mobile is expected to be the first carrier with a Google Android-based cell phone, with an announcement Sept. 23. And HTC says it will be the first handset maker to use the open-source mobile-phone operating system.

T-Mobile promised to unveil details of the first mobile phone based on Android at a Sept. 23 press conference in New York, according to The New York Times. T-Mobile could not immediately be reached for comment.

Adobe Systems chief executive Shantanu Narayen wants to make it easier for people to watch online videos, play games and use other sophisticated Internet applications on a variety of cell phones and other mobile devices.

And he'd be extremely happy if they were doing that with the help of Adobe's software. Narayen stressed the need for industry collaboration to create a better mobile Web experience in a keynote speech Thursday at the Wireless IT and Entertainment trade show in San Francisco, sponsored by the wireless industry association known as CTIA.

The Mozilla Foundation is on the verge of adopting a new software-programming technique that promises to dramatically improve the speeds at which browsers interact with the Web. The first step, the nonprofit organization said, will be to optimize the way that JavaScript runs in Firefox 3.1 -- the next incremental update to Mozilla's popular open-source browser.

"Honey, let's see what's on the Widget Channel." That dialog is what Intel and Yahoo are hoping for with their announcement Wednesday of an application framework for TVs and other consumer devices called The Widget Channel.

The companies said the framework is optimized for consumer equipment with Intel architecture. The channel is designed to allow users to access and use rich Internet applications, even while watching TV programs.

Yahoo's Widget Engine

The old debate over HTML versus Flash has become stale. A new debate, however, has surfaced.

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) like Adobe Flash are feeling the heat as competitors move in and are expected to gain wide adoption among developers.

Adobe Flash, initially developed by Macromedia, has had widespread adoption and can be used by developers to stream audio and video and create rich-media advertisements, presentations, games and a slew of other functions.

Adobe Systems on Tuesday announced a new initiative with Google and Yahoo to improve search results for dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs).

Adobe is providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to enhance indexing of the Flash file format and uncover information currently undiscoverable by search engines.

Hoping to continue building momentum for its Silverlight technology, Microsoft announced Monday that major content providers are coming aboard and it unveiled a new digital-rights management (DRM) system.

The announcement, at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, said Silverlight technology will be used by Madison Square Garden Interactive, Tencent, Abertis Telecom, Terra Networks Operations, SCSi, MNet, and Yahoo Japan.

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