Hehe – this is so cool. I’m on the cover of this month’s ComputerWorld Canada Magazine. While at this year’s FiTC Conference in Toronto I had the chance to interview with ComputerWorld Canada’s Shane Schick and talk about Adobe’s Apollo project. In the interview, “The rich get richer: RIAs for the enterprise”, I explained how the growth of web-based applications has led to a premium value being placed on rich user interfaces resulting in the explosion of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). We talked about how RIAs are becoming more and more sophisticated and developers are starting to realize the limitations of the browser. While developers require the benefits of the browser (wide reach, approachable development tools and languages, community resources, etc) they are also interested in leveraging a richer set of capabilities not currently available to them in the browser (local file system access, offline capability, highly branded interfaces, desktop integration, etc). I explained that this is where Apollo fits in. It allows web developers to use their existing skills, tools, and technologies to deliver RIAs to the desktop to provide richer user experiences.

Shane and I also talked about some of the great applications that are already being built with Apollo such as Ebay’s San Dimas project, which provides Ebay users with a rich desktop application for accessing Ebay’s services, including the ability to create new auctions while running offline. I mentioned to Shane that Ebay was also very interested in leveraging Apollo’s capabilities for issuing system notifications, a feature they can use to notify an Ebay user when they have been outbid on an auction, whether they’re currently using the application or not. I also showed Shane the Finetune Desktop player, created by online music site Finetune.com. Finetune’s desktop player is a great example of the power of Apollo in that it leverages existing code already deployed on their website and blends your local music with your streaming music – a perfect combination of web and desktop. Of course all of this can be delivered to either Mac or Windows users, and sometime early next year, Linux users as well.

You can read the full interview here.

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