RIAction: Rich Internet Application Event (Feb 2009)

Yesterday (26/02/2009) was quite a long day as I attended the first Rich Internet Application event in Singapore. The event brought saw Google, Microsoft as well as Adobe giving presentations on Rich Internet Applications (RIA) as well as some snippets of  new technology. The idea for this event was a big welcome since Singapore doesn’t get big technology showcase events like Adobe Max and CES.

The keynote address by Jonathan Wong was quite interesting, letting us see some of the best Silverlight applications as well as Windows 7 Beta running. What was captivating was the deep zoom capability of Silverlight. In fact, in one of the small breakout sessions we had later, we were told that Silverlight 3, with GPU improvements and other capabilities will be announced later this year.
Other than that, there was a short part about Microsoft Surface, bringing to attention an emulator for development of software for MS Surface.

The Adobe talk was given by Harish Savi, who flew in from India for the event. The way he speaks reminds me of my friend who speaks just as fast as he does. There were moments when his colleague at the back of the room was signaling him to slow down.
Adobe gave developers quite a bit to consider, especially with the upcoming adobe standard file format which can be used across all Adobe products. We got a preview of Flex 4, codenamed “Gumbo” as well as Flash Catalyst. Furthermore, we got hints of one of the newer preview release technology which almost the entire audience didn’t here about. Codenamed Alchemy, it is a research project that allows users to compile C and C++ code that is targeted to run on the open source ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2). There was a demo of this using Quake III running as a flash program.

The Google talk by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaa was more of a social talk. It wasn’t as much about RIA development as the other two. It was more of “how to market and distribute your products”. The speech was geared towards the OpenSocial Platform and developments for it. The idea behind OpenSocial is definitely a applaudable one. Developers really look forward to the day when we need to develop only one version of any social network app which works across all social networks.

At some point or another, all the addresses were haunted by software errors, system hang, and some other problems which isn’t really desirable for a speech to developers. However, I guess for the MS keynote address, it is tolerable as the operating system in use is still in beta.

It was quite interesting to see evangilists from 3 rival companies in many products together in the same room. However, as pointed out in the keynote address, the theme is interoperability. What we have now are choices which developers in the past may not have..

As for the afternoon sessions, I decided to go for the jump-start sessions. I was a little disappointed with the Flex/Air one as I didn’t learn anything at all. The Silverlight was interesting though. As for the Google Apps Engine session, it was very engaging. Especially the part where somebody questioned the speaker regarding the rationale behind Python scripting. There was also a short debate on the progress of databases and whether a datastore, which keeps information in entity-value pairs are a step backward from relational databases.

The event lasted from 9am till 6pm. Met my BMT Buddy and Web Host there. Wanted to go to the PHP User Group Meetup thereafter. However too tired to do so. Ended up having dinner with a new acquaintance before heading home.

Overall, it was great for as the first such even in Singapore. Hopefully, they will come back bigger and better in the second half of this year or maybe next year.

EDIT 03/03/09: Jonathan Wong has posted a Post-Mortem of RIAction at his blog.  Slides from his presentation is also available on his blog.