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New platforms like Adobe Air and Mozilla Prism are evolving that combine the benefits of Internet flow with the flexibility and power of desktop applications. They are part browser, part desktop app and are extremely efficient for certain types of applications.

Flash, Silverlight and Ajax get most web applications over the hump in terms of usability and are the technologies behind the fast transition of desktop applications to the web. But it’s not clear that they’ll ever kill off all desktop applications entirely. The bridge between them may very well be Air and/or Prism.

Matthew Gertner, who was a co-founder and CTO of startup AllPeers before it shut down earlier this year, is now working with Mozilla on their Prism project. I asked him to write a guest post discussing Prism and how it fits into the ecosystem v. Air as well as a number of emerging technologies for using web applications offline (Firefox 3, Google Gears).

Read Matthew’s blog, Just Browsing, here.

Thanks to innovations like Ajax and Flash video, web apps are quickly gaining ground on their desktop counterparts. With a few notable exceptions like Firefox and Skype, the big software hits of recent years have been websites such as Flickr, YouTube and Facebook. And yet web-based software cannot yet equal the high-quality user experience of the best native apps. This is the reason why Apple was forced to reverse its original decision to make Safari the official SDK for the iPhone. It also explains why online productivity suites like Google Docs are still struggling to compete with stalwarts like Microsoft Office. Web apps simply don’t provide the responsiveness, performance, whizzy graphics and access to local data that users crave, and they only work when you’re connected to the internet.

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Source: Michael Arrington

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Recent announcements on iTunes rentals certainly caused a stir amongst the neglected Mac-masses, but it looks like the online rental game is about to get a little more cutthroat for fanboys and fangirls everywhere. According to a new report (and backed up by an earlier blog post), streaming content for Netflix subscribers is headed to Mac screens in 2008 — if everyone has their way. During the company’s Q4 earnings call this week, the snail-mail service hinted that this would be the year that streaming rentals would come to Mac users due to the advent of DRM options that play nice with Apple’s gear (namely, Microsoft’s Silverlight technology). Combine this with news that the company plans to offer all-you-can-eat online rentals for $8.99 a month, its intentions to bring a STB to market with LG, and a possible game console partnership — well, it all adds up to stiff competition for Apple and other challengers, despite what they say.

[Via Mac Rumors]

Read - Netflix: Mac Streaming Coming This Year
Read - Instant watching on Mac, Firefox, and more

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Source: Joshua Topolsky

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NBC announced today that they are working with Microsoft and MSN to build NBCOlympics.com. That announcement alone is a snoozer. What’s interesting is that they’ll be using the Microsoft Silverlight platform to “deliver deeply immersive user experiences.”

The partnership was announced by Bill Gates at the CES keynote this evening in Las Vegas. The new site will host 2,200 hours of live event video coverage, with more than 20 simultaneous live video streams at peak times. An additional 3,000 hours of on-demand video will be available, including full event replays and highlights.

Silverlight will be used for an “enhanced playback mode” and will allow full screen viewing “that is as good or better than anything on the Internet today.” There will also be metadata overlays that enable viewers to additional content like results, statistics, bios, rules and expert analysis.

This is good news for Microsoft and their nascent Silverlight platform. What I want to know is how much Microsoft paid NBC to use this. It’s highly unlikely they chose it without an additional nudge. Testing a new platform at the Olympics carries significant risk. And since no one really uses Silverlight yet, this will require millions of people to download the Silverlight framework before they can use the advanced features of the site.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: Michael Arrington

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NBC announced today that they are working with Microsoft and MSN to build NBCOlympics.com. That announcement alone is a snoozer. What’s interesting is that they’ll be using the Microsoft Silverlight platform to “deliver deeply immersive user experiences.”

The partnership was announced by Bill Gates at the CES keynote this evening in Las Vegas. The new site will host 2,200 hours of live event video coverage, with more than 20 simultaneous live video streams at peak times. An additional 3,000 hours of on-demand video will be available, including full event replays and highlights.

Silverlight will be used for an “enhanced playback mode” and will allow full screen viewing “that is as good or better than anything on the Internet today.” There will also be metadata overlays that enable viewers to additional content like results, statistics, bios, rules and expert analysis.

This is good news for Microsoft and their nascent Silverlight platform. What I want to know is how much Microsoft paid NBC to use this. It’s highly unlikely they chose it without an additional nudge. Testing a new platform at the Olympics carries significant risk. And since no one really uses Silverlight yet, this will require millions of people to download the Silverlight framework before they can use the advanced features of the site.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: Michael Arrington

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