Alan Lewis, Product Manager for eBay Desktop over at eBay, has reported the very exciting news that AIR-based eBay desktop has been downloaded over 1 Million times! I first demonstrated this application at the DEMO conference in Palm Springs after Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch lost his voice the day before the presentation. I have since demonstrated this application to thousands of people in all parts of the world.

It is great to witness the ongoing success of this desktop application. I can’t wait to see what new features get rolled out next.

If you haven’t installed it yet, get it at desktop.ebay.com.

One of my favorite industry blogs, ReadWriteWeb, has a good analysis of the recent acquisition of the popular AIR-based Twitter desktop client, twhirl. If you’re not familiar, twhirl is regarded as the most popular Twitter client available today – with a rapidly-growing user base.

Michael Arrington’s Techcrunch first broke the news:

San Francisco video/chat startup Seesmic has acquired Twhirl, a popular application created by German developer Marco Kaiser that allows users to access the Twitter service directly from their desktop, and also cross post to other services like Pownce and Jaiku. The acquisition price is not being disclosed.

Twhirl is considered among the better third party Twitter applications. ReadWriteWeb, for example, just yesterday identified it as the third most used method for posting to the Twittersphere, behind the web and instant messaging, and just in front of Twitterific. It has been downloaded 100,000 or so times.

In the ReadWriteWeb analysis, Marshall Kirkpatrick mentions the “best thing about Twhirl” (by the way, I’m going to recommend that our marketing team use Marshall’s description, “the AIR/Flex/Flash ecosystem is made for hotness”:

AIR – Cross Platform RIA
The best thing about Twhirl is that it’s built in Adobe AIR. While Microsoft’s Silverlight is coming on hard and fast, the AIR/Flex/Flash ecosystem is made for hotness and has the most momentum in the grassroots developer community.

AIR lets developers write in HTML, Javascript and Flash – but run it on the desktop – of a Windows, Mac or Linux computer. These are Rich Internet Applications – apps that sit on the desktop and function outside the browser, but that are tied to the web and leverage connectivity as well. Check out Redmonk’s RIA Weekly Podcast if you want to get excited about RIAs on a regular basis.

Congratulations to Marco and the Seesmic team. This deal has a lot of promise. I’m very excited to see AIR-based applications become the subject of compelling Web 2.0 acquisitions.

Get twhirl >>

Even though leg 1 of on AIR Europe is sold out, we still have a bunch of other cities open to registration. Also, the capacity of the Paris event has been expanded due to overwhelming demand.

If you want a deep dive on Adobe AIR and can make it to one of the cities below, make sure you sign up now while there’s still room.

• Paris, 02-Apr-08
• Stockholm, 02-Jun-08
• Berlin, 04-Jun-08
• Warsaw, 06-Jun-08
• Prague, 09-Jun-08
• Munich, 11-Jun-08
• Milano, 13-Jun-08

To learn all about the on AIR Europe tour, visit onair.adobe.com.

I recently did an interview with Computerworld’s Heather Havenstein for an article about Adobe AIR. Heather also posted a brief Q&A with me discussing the types of applications that can be built with AIR. As I told Heather in the interview, AIR can be used for developing a wide range of applications from consumer-facing to line-of-business software. 

Chuck Joiner of MacVoices recorded the audio from a presentation that I gave to a large number of Mac-related user group managers while at Macworld Expo in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. This was my standard Adobe AIR overview which was followed by Adobe’s Dave Helmly giving an impressive demonstration of Adobe’s Production Premium suite and Adobe’s Terry White diving into the Creative Suite design tools. Terry was the MC of the event and managed to change my title when he introduced me (though we did write it down for him). So if you listen to the recording don’t think that I’ve changed jobs again. :)

Hello everyone – I’m on stage at Macworld showing off the Bee sample application for Adobe AIR. Find it on the samples page at labs.adobe.com.

PC Magazine reports that AOL is working on a new interface for it’s Xdrive service will be based on Adobe AIR. It’s great to see major offerings from media giants like AOL utilizing Adobe AIR to deliver integrated desktop applications built around web-based technologies and services. I can’t wait to try this out.

The new interface for Xdrive, codenamed “Oxygen” will offer an Adobe AIR-based desktop client that will give access to media and files on your local machine in the same interface in which you access your Xdrive contents. Any devices connected to the PC will also show up in the client, and you’ll be able to drag-and-drop their contents to your Xdrive storage. This interface targets less-sophisticated users who may struggle with the concept of file system integration already available in Xdrive. The AIR client will eventually look identical to the web client, so that no adjustment will be needed on the part of user when moving from one to the other. The new Xdrive clients will be available as a public beta on February 8.

Grant Skinner first showed me his components for spell checking in Flex, Flash, and AIR at MAX Chicago. I was interested in them because they were being used in Buzzword (which Adobe recently acquired), and because I’m always interested in checking out Grant’s latest work. I also wanted to see them because they were built partly as a result of a challenge that the AIR team gave Grant: the first versions of his spell check engine used server side spell checking, and we challenged him to make it work client-side so it could be used offline with AIR applications.

The thing that really stood out for me after looking the components over is how polished the whole product is. The code is very slick and optimized, the API looks really robust, the documentation is complete, and the whole package is really well organized. Grant also made it really simple to implement: drag a component onto a textfield or component in Flash to add spell checking, or add a simple tag in Flex. The Flash community would really benefit if there was a wide variety of professional components like these.

This latest update improves Flex integration, and makes it behave more like spell checking in Word or Pages.

Check out the SPL product page for more info, and demos of the components in action.

Want to learn more about Flex 3 and AIR – for free? Check it out:

Flex and AIR User Group Pre-release Tour

Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, the Adobe Platform Evangelist team is traveling to select cities to show off the great new features and some brand new demos.

Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder.

Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you’ve been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour. Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded schwag, we will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability) and a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium at this event!

Check out the comprehensive listing of dates at flex.org/tour to see if the tour is coming to your city!

If you’re a Flash user and want to learn about Transitioning to the Desktop with Adobe AIR, you should check out the eSeminar on Wed 8/21 at 10am PST delivered by Lee Brimelow of Frog Design. In the eSeminar, Lee will demonstrate how to work with the newly released AIR extension for Flash CS3.

I had a chance to talk with Edward Mansouri of AIRApps.net while at our AIR Camp event in Atlanta on August 14. In our interview, Edward talks explains all of the things that he and his team are doing to allow AIR developers to monetize their applications. I was really blown away by all of the services that they are offering developers.

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