Two of the biggest launches in Rich Internet Application history took place in 2007/2008 when Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in February '08 and Microsoft launched Silverlight (September '07). At the 6th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in October SYS-CON Events is delighted to be presenting major industry keynotes from the two industry executives with overall responsibility for both of those massive richer-web initiatives: Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform.

Nexaweb announced it has contributed new software to the Dojo Foundation that will further advance the use of open source AJAX within a company's critical business applications. The software, dubbed 'dojo.E,' will allow users to more easily create enterprise Web applications based on the Dojo Toolkit, one of the industry's most advanced sets of open source AJAX tools.

The NY Times had a story yesterday, much-written-about in the blogosphere, that said that bloggers were working themselves to death. This was one article about blogging I was glad to be left out of, even so, it could have been about me, a number of years ago, when my lifestyle almost did kill me.

If you're like me, you've probably been spending every waking moment you have eating, living, and breathing the iPhone SDK. Since March 6th, that's pretty much all I can think about once I get home. So, what do you do if you want to learn how to write iPhone apps, but you want to become a pro at iPhone SDK programming? Its one thing to read the SDK, page-by-page until your eyes bleed (what I do for fun), but most people like to hang out with other developers, get hands on, do labs, see demos, and generally get their hands dirty.

I am always being told off by i-technologists for quoting Picasso as having said that computers are useless. But I still love his reasoning: 'Because they can only give you answers.' Picasso, like AJAXWorld Magazine, liked questions. So we thought we would share with you what some of the world's leading rich Internet application pioneers are thinking may be the next questions that we need to see answered. From that, readers can themselves infer: where is AJAX headed next?

This is truly the age of the browser interface. Internet Websites and Web applications increasingly offer rich, dynamic, browser-based user interfaces that deliver everything you expect from an installed desktop application. These applications deliver function and ease-of-use without requiring expensive desktop software installs.

In keeping with the longstanding SYS-CON tradition of being at the very forefront of software development with all its online and offline resources, SYS-CON Media & Events jointly today announced a double whammy, launching both 'Open Web Developer's Journal' (htt p://openweb.sys-con.com) and 'Open Web Developer Summit' (http://openweb.s ys-con.com) - to be held for the first time in New York City April 21-22, 2008.

If you use Adobe Flex Web applications that connect to Plain Old Java Objects on the server side, chances are you use a popular, robust, and freely available server called Apache Tomcat. If you use Eclipse-based Flex Builder, you can smoothly debug both Flex and Java code without leaving Eclipse. Flex Builder debugger does not need any special configuration. But we need to add a couple of parameters to the startup routine of Tomcat so it'll engage the Java Platform Debugger Architecture (JPDA), which will allow other applications attach to JVM that runs Tomcat and debug deployed Java classes remotely.

Real-time 3D is emerging as a first-class media type for the Web. Network bandwidth and graphics hardware processing power are now sufficiently advanced to enable compelling Web-based 3D experiences, including games, online virtual worlds, simulations, education, and training. Commercial developers are expressing increasing interest in exploiting real-time 3D in Web applications to enhance production values, create engaging immersive experiences, and deliver information in a more meaningful way.

From the beginning, the World Wide Web that Tim Berners-Lee imagined was a place where the architecture of participation ruled. Berners-Lee's first application for accessing the information Web was both a browser and an editor, and throughout the early 1990s he worked diligently to encourage Web browser development groups to develop editors and servers as well as browsers. As early as the spring of 1992, the challenge was clear: 'Although browsers were starting to spread, no one working on them tried to include writing and editing functions....As soon as developers got their client working as a browser and released it to the world, very few bothered to continue to develop it as an editor' (Weaving the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee).

When I was learning how to work with AJAX, I went through a number of 101-type articles. The biggest problem with these tutorials is that the authors are trying to explain several things at once, which is confusing. I'll try to offer you a very simple example of an Ajax application.

Everyone has one or two words or phrases that people associate with them. For example, I always think of my friend Rob eating squid when I hear the words 'What do you mean it's not chicken?' Just thinking about those words is enough to transport me through the years to that moment. And the look on his face still makes me smile.

AOL has announced its continued involvement with and support of the Dojo Foundation, by hosting the recently launched Dojo version 0.3.1 to help further AJAX and JavaScript adoption in the open source community. According to Forrester Research, open source usage is quickly increasing.

Open-Xchange has posted a fresh position paper intended to review the forces changing the market for information technology in general and collaborative solutions in specific. The position papers are written by the world-renown software analyst, Daniel Kusnetzky, who is now the Executive Vice President, Market Strategy, Open-Xchange Inc.